The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has called on the Congress of South African Trade Unions to spearhead a nationwide campaign against xenophobia, warning that mounting attacks on African migrants threaten working-class solidarity across the continent.
In a letter dated 7 May 2026 and addressed to COSATU president in Johannesburg, NLC president Joe Ajaero accused South Africa of failing to protect migrant workers as violence against foreign nationals intensifies.
“We cannot claim to fight for the working class while allowing a section of that class to be hunted like wild animals,” Ajaero wrote. “We therefore call upon COSATU to lead a mass educational and sensitisation offensive within every union, every community, and every workplace in South Africa.”
He argued that African migrants were being scapegoated for deepening social and economic crises, insisting that workers from elsewhere on the continent were “not a cause of poverty but victims of the same system”.
The NLC condemned the recent killings of African migrants and the destruction of migrant-owned businesses in South Africa, describing the violence as the product of economic hardship, unemployment and failed state policies.
Invoking the long history of African labour solidarity during the anti-apartheid struggle, Ajaero said Nigerian workers had once stood firmly behind South Africa’s liberation movement and expected the same spirit of unity to prevail.
“We extend our hand of solidarity and kinship to you as co-travellers in the long and bitter struggle against exploitation, racial capitalism, and neoliberal savagery,” he wrote. “We write to you today with the urgent alarm of a fellow labour centre that is watching with horror as the ghosts of nativism and xenophobia once again stalk the streets of South Africa.”
Ajaero warned that migrants were increasingly being targeted “not for any crime, but for the sin of being African in Africa”.
While acknowledging widespread frustration over housing shortages, unemployment and failing public services, the labour leader said political and economic elites were redirecting anger towards vulnerable foreign workers instead of addressing structural inequality.
“Our common enemy is not the migrant worker hawking goods in Soweto or mining in Rustenburg,” he said. “Our common enemy is neoliberalism, capitalism’s most vicious mask.”
The NLC urged COSATU to move beyond public statements and organise mass action against xenophobic violence, calling for every “trade union hall, shop floor and picket line” to carry the message that “an injury to one is an injury to all”.
The union also demanded urgent intervention from the South African government, accusing security agencies of standing by while migrants came under attack.
“The passivity of the security forces in the face of these attacks amounts to complicity,” Ajaero said, urging authorities to prosecute perpetrators swiftly and compensate victims and bereaved families.
According to the NLC, xenophobia poses a direct threat to organised labour across Africa because it fractures worker solidarity and weakens collective bargaining power.
“Xenophobia is not good for anybody, especially the world of work, because it fractures working-class unity,” Ajaero said, warning that anti-migrant sentiment could spread beyond South Africa if left unchecked.
The congress proposed an emergency gathering of African labour organisations under the International Trade Union Confederation and the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity to develop continent-wide mechanisms for protecting migrant workers.
“Xenophobia is a cancer that, if not excised in South Africa, will metastasise across the continent,” Ajaero warned.
The intervention comes days after Adams Oshiomhole called for Nigeria to revoke the operating licences of South African companies, including MTN and DStv, following renewed attacks on Nigerians in South Africa.
Oshiomhole’s remarks followed reports that two Nigerians, Amaramiro Emmanuel and Ekpenyong Andrew, were killed in separate xenophobic incidents in South Africa.
