Bulelwa Maphela is associate professor, School of Economics, College of Business and Economics, University of Johannesburg.

In an unprecedented show of force, thousands of South Africans recently took to the streets across many cities and towns to highlight their frustration with the government’s failure to regulate illegal migration in the country. The overriding message from the protests was unambiguous: address this challenge now, or risk deeper social unrest.

For many South Africans, illegal migration is a matter of life and death – just as it is for the migrants themselves. Migrants expose themselves to the perils of exploitation, abuse and even death at the hands of unscrupulous companies and individual employers. For locals, illegal migration robs them of the quality of municipal services, as they have to scramble for whatever sparse resources available with their foreign counterparts. While government officials and big business speak from their lofty positions, the widely held view is that it is the poor who bear the brunt of the immigration regulation failures by the state. That is the uncomfortable truth that cannot be ignored.

The problems are starker in the outlying municipalities, where unemployment is alarmingly high and the collapse of essential services is abysmally shocking, from public roads to other basic infrastructure. Successive reports by the Auditor-General and Statistics South Africa have flagged these issues. Section 152 and 153 of the Constitution is unambiguous: municipalities have the obligation to provide social and economic development and structure their budgets to give priority to basic needs of the communities for a cohesive society.

This is not a suggestion. It is the legal foundation of Local Economic Development (LED). This is a tool meant to ensure that those that are historically excluded could finally secure livelihood. How then, does one explain the decision by the National Treasury to withhold R13.5 billion in funding from 69 municipalities across all nine provinces?

Yet, as South Africans take to the streets again in March and March, we must ask, why does the law’s promise feel so distant from the people’s lives? It is easy to dismiss protest as isolated anger. Contrary to popular belief the 2021 Kwa-Zulu Natal looting was not an aberration. It was a warning. When malls are burned and trucks torched, it was a revelation of a deeper despondency, the kind that festers when livelihoods are precarious, with a 60% of the youth unemployed and the entire communities depending on grants because the local economy and the mainstream economy have no place for them.

Citizens desire dignified work and real support for micro-enterprises for a start to sustain families and the urge to loot or march in rage will have no room. People protect what they own. The township economy is estimated at R900 billion per year, where activity is driven by informality and microenterprises. Townships are not grant dependent voids, yet they remain unrecognised economic engines. The engineering of a democratic state 30 years ago promised inclusion, but still the National Framework for LED remains unmeasured because, in many towns, it is unfelt and remains an abstract.

Watching the Madlanga Commission and the Ad Hoc Committee hearings confirms what many have always suspected, the rot in not only at municipal level. Testimonies pointed to systemic governance failures, corruption and insatiable greed in the structures meant to ensure municipalities deliver on Section 152 and 153 of the Constitution. We often blame ailing municipalities for lack of capacity and prescription of endless training resulting into a further decay. But how can they secure livelihoods when provincial and national oversight bodies are swimming in the same rot? As the adage goes, “a fish rots from the head”.

With another local government election not far away, ordinary citizens will be regaled with manifestos that promise jobs, while the Independent Development Plans (IDPs) continue to promise development. Yet on the ground, we see fatigue, not pride in ownership. This is what Carl Max called alienation, when people are separated from means to secure decent livelihoods. The demonstrations we witnessed last week across provinces is not just about current policies but a bill arising out of LED neglect.

If the government is serious about stability, it must stop treating LED as a buzzword. It is a Constitutional mechanism for undoing the ills of the past and emancipating people. If we continue singing about unimplementable policy frameworks like LED, despondency follows.

If government truly belongs to the citizens, then Section 195 of the Constitution is not a suggestion, it is an employment contract. Public servants must be accountable, transparent, efficient and put people first. Accountability cannot be a slogan trotted out during manifestos and conveniently forgotten once in office. It is the absence of that accountability and integrity that has left communities desperate, and desperation has been weaponised into the engineered “xenophobia” which is not an identity of South Africans.

It is time for the government to stop toying and start delivering. That means urgent, funded interventions programmes at local level to address the plight of marginalises citizens in South Africa. Unemployment is a problem and it must be treated as such, not as a nice story to tell. Citizens are able and ready to be part of this economy, that seems to be a window of a distant future possibility. When people get tired, any event will be appealing including March and March. The question is: who is listening? It’s been two weeks now after March and March. The citizens are watching. The people.

*The views expressed in this article are that of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect that of the University of Johannesburg.