To save lives, South Africa must learn performative cruelty. Maybe the US can help.

If new xenophobic-platform leaders don’t get visible progress from the government, they will need blood. That’s not going to go well for foreign academics, and kids in cages is a real possibility.

At the end of June, South Africa averted significant, widespread violence against foreigners. That was not a given, and it represents an all-too-rare victory for law and order.

But if anything, that marks the start of a new form of official xenophobia, one that will see foreigners – primarily those with the right documents and possibly those in the upper reaches of society – targeted, and squeezed.

Foreign academics are going to have it hard. Foreign property owners can expect trouble. Companies that operate across borders will probably feel the pain in various ways.

See also on Signal & State: Belfast’s very un-South-African xenophobia

And there is nothing to be done about it. In fact, it would be dangerous to even try to do anything about it. The best thing the government can do now is lean into dramatic, performative cruelty towards foreigners.

The kind the US is getting so good at.