The Catholic archbishop of Cape Town has issued a strongly worded pastoral letter condemning recent attacks on foreign nationals while also acknowledging the frustrations driving many South Africans to support anti-migrant protests.
Archbishop Sithembele Sipuka issued the pastoral letter on behalf of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), of which he is the president.
The letter appeals to Christians to reject xenophobia and vigilantism, and insists that grievances about crime, unemployment and poor service delivery can never justify violence against migrants.
In recent months, anti-immigration protests have spread across parts of KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, the Free State and the Western Cape. Groups presenting themselves as defenders of South African citizens have organised marches, business closures and actions against people suspected of being undocumented migrants. In some cases, violence, intimidation and displacement have followed, prompting concern from church leaders, civil society groups and governments elsewhere in Africa.
Reports received from church leaders across the country paint a “troubling and consistent picture” of hostility towards foreign nationals, Archbishop Sipuka says. Thousands of migrant families have been affected, with many people displaced from their homes and businesses and left without adequate access to food, shelter, healthcare and trauma counselling.
“So much of this hatred is fed by false information spread through social media: rumours, fabricated messages, manufactured deadlines and panic. Let us teach our people to test what they are told, to refuse to pass on what inflames, and to seek the truth,” the archbishop says.
Seek the truth without ignoring concerns
At the same time, he cautions against simply dismissing the concerns of South Africans participating in the protests.
“It would be easy, and it would feel righteous, to condemn those who march,” the archbishop says. “But we have come to believe that this is not enough.”
The statement notes that many protesters are members of church congregations who raise concerns about unemployment, crime, illegal trading, poor-quality goods, pressure on public services, and a perception that government has failed to regulate migration effectively.
These concerns should not be ignored, Archbishop Sipuka says, but adds that migrants are often wrongly blamed for problems rooted in deeper structural failures.
Addressing the common claim that foreign nationals take jobs from South Africans, the pastoral letter points instead to chronic unemployment, corruption, weaknesses in the education system, and especially the exploitation of migrant labour by employers seeking cheap workers.
“To blame the stranger is to let these true culprits escape scrutiny, and to turn against the powerless an anger that ought to be directed at the powerful,” Archbishop Sipuka says.
Similarly, while acknowledging concerns about crime, he stresses that criminality should be dealt with through the justice system rather than through collective punishment.
“Crime has no nationality,” the letter states. “The answer to crime is justice applied to the guilty, never violence visited upon the innocent because of where they were born.”
Never claim the Gospel for hatred
It urges Christian communities to “let our pulpits, our Bible studies, and our liturgies proclaim the dignity of the stranger and the spirit of ubuntu, so that no one may ever claim the Gospel for hatred”.
However, Christian prophetic voices should also be even-handed, condemning not only those who raise a hand against migrants but also “any foreign national who does wrong; who deals in drugs or sells poisonous goods to the poor”.
“We do not excuse wrongdoing because the wrongdoer is a stranger, nor condemn a whole people for the sins of a few. The Gospel calls each person, citizen and foreigner alike, to conversion.”
“The elephant in the room,” Archbishop Sipuka says, “is the failure of the state to manage migration effectively, enforce laws consistently, and communicate clearly about immigration policy.”
He welcomes recent commitments by President Cyril Ramaphosa to strengthen border management and improve immigration administration, but also notes that communities remain frustrated by what they perceive as delayed government action.
The SACC president reminds Christians of the biblical obligation to welcome strangers. Quoting Leviticus 19:34 — “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself” — and Christ’s words in Matthew 25, he argues that hostility towards migrants is incompatible with Christian teaching.
The archbishop also echoes the teaching of Pope Francis, who distinguished between natural fears about migration and the sin of allowing those fears to become hostility and rejection.
Archbishop Sipuka calls on churches to preach the dignity of every human person, facilitate dialogue between local communities and migrants, provide humanitarian assistance to those affected by the unrest, and challenge misinformation circulating on social media.
“Let us not theorise while people suffer,” he says. “If it is a cup of water that we can give, let us give it. If it is a blanket, let us give it.”
The SACC urges South Africans not to allow economic hardship and social tensions to turn Africans against one another.
“The stranger at our gate is not our enemy; he is our neighbour, and in him we meet our Lord,” the pastoral letter says.
Archbishop Sipuka concludes: “Who benefits when Africans turn upon Africans, and when the children of one continent are set against one another? Let us refuse to be made instruments of any division, whatever its source, that serves interests other than the Kingdom of God. Let us instead be peacemakers and so be called the children of God.”
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