Unemployment of 43.6% in the second quarter of 2026, with more than 12 million people officially jobless, is the number doing the political damage. ActionSA, in a statement published at https://www.actionsa.org.za/south-africans-are-at-breaking-point-with-a-government-that-cannot-read-the-room/, calls it the highest sustained unemployment rate in the world under the expanded definition. Behind the figure sits an eroding tax base: households without income, graduates without opportunities, and consumers whose spending power keeps shrinking, along with the revenue that funds the state.
The party’s argument is fiscal at its core. South Africans pay VAT on food, income tax on wages, and fuel levies, rates and duties, and they expect government to prioritise the very people whose taxes keep the machinery of the state running. That expectation, ActionSA argues, does not require denying humanitarian protection to those who qualify. It does require a functioning system able to distinguish a genuine asylum seeker from a lawful migrant and from someone with no legal right to remain.
The enforcement numbers come from government itself. Since June, authorities have announced tens of thousands of repatriations and deportations of undocumented foreign nationals. Between April and July, more than 4,200 undocumented foreign nationals were intercepted attempting to enter outside formal ports of entry, while almost 90,000 people were repatriated. President Ramaphosa announced in June that government would intensify identification and deportation of undocumented foreign nationals and strengthen inspections of companies employing them, reporting that the Border Management Authority had intercepted more than 450,000 people attempting illegal entry over the preceding year.
For the party, those figures cut both ways. Government has acknowledged the problem, so the political question becomes why it appears surprised when citizens demand action. ActionSA insists the demand is not hostility toward foreigners, nor a rejection of legitimate refugees or legal immigration, but a demand for sovereignty, lawful migration and accountability. Anyone in the country illegally, it argues, cannot expect their unlawful presence to be accepted indefinitely.
Meanwhile, the economic stakes sharpened with a recent Constitutional Court judgment. The Court held that certain procedural barriers in the Refugees Act could prevent people from having asylum claims properly assessed. It did not grant automatic rights to remain, refugee status or permanent residence to those entering illegally. But it places the burden on government to show it has the capacity and political will to implement the law without letting the asylum system become another channel for unlawful migration.
The operational risk surfaced almost immediately. On 9 October, the Department of Home Affairs announced that its Director-General had withdrawn a directive concerning the intake of asylum applications after refugee reception offices. Within days, DHA offices were overwhelmed, raising serious concerns about public safety and order. ActionSA reads this as a familiar pattern: government reacting after a crisis arrives rather than anticipating it.
The statement’s author grounds that reading in precedent. He recalls 1976, when, as a 16-year-old Form 3 learner, he watched the National Party government become profoundly disconnected from the governed. The Soweto Uprisings were driven by opposition to the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in Black schools, an opposition students had expressed repeatedly. On 16 June 1976, thousands of Soweto youth marched in peaceful protest; police opened fire, young lives were lost, and unrest spread to townships across the country. A government that believed it could impose its will on a population that had clearly rejected its directive failed to read the room and underestimated public anger.
The lesson drawn is that ignored grievances do not disappear; they grow. ActionSA endorses the message of a recent opinion piece by Lebo M, titled “Your Vote Matters,” which argues that democracy requires participation, questioning of those in power, and refusal to disengage. But participation, the party adds, must be matched by government listening, because democracy is not merely the right of politicians to govern after an election but an obligation of accountability between elections.
The prescribed remedy is more democratic accountability, stronger institutions and political consequences at the ballot box. The party’s closing message to government is blunt: stop ignoring the message, start listening and start acting. South Africa, it argues, cannot carry the burdens of the world while neglecting its own people, and the interests of the taxpayers who fund the state must sit at the center of policy.