Portrayed as a rabble of guerrilla-like vigilantes baying for the blood of foreign nationals and wielding a belligerent rhetoric to match, Operation Dudula is yet another ensemble who will be contesting next year’s general election. Barely known outside of Soweto, the entity would gain notoriety in the wake of the 2021 July riots where rampant looting and violence in parts of KZN and Gauteng saw some 350 people dead and billions (R54bn according to one estimate) wiped off the economy.
Although national intelligence had warned the police service of the imminent uprising, they dithered to act and by the time they did, hordes of looters were liberally helping themselves to the illicit bounty as the outnumbered cops helplessly looked on.
Amid the anarchic bedlam, a band of what initially seemed like ordinary citizens converged around Maponya Mall in Soweto. To a man, they vowed to defend the famous black-owned extravaganza. Their courage and zeal in the face of the chaos and gore captured the nation’s imagination. Media cameras came swarming in, and out of the fold would emerge a charismatic Nhlanhla ‘Lux’ Dlamini, seemingly ready to save the day all kitted out in military fatigues. He became an overnight sensation.
And, in the coming months, talk show hosts were falling all over themselves to get him in studio, this while his social media following skyrocketed as one of the figureheads of the controversial Operation Dudula. In no time the hashtag #PutSouthAfricaFirst began bleeping on the national radar. Unnerving videos of foreign nationals being accosted or intimidated began surfacing on pro-Operation Dudula websites.
From a policy perspective, however, it is unclear exactly what the party stands for except that it’s been thumping a singular plaint – Dudula; Zulu for “forcing out” foreign nationals. The group had been making headlines – mostly for all the wrong reasons since 2021 – but had, recently, gone quiet. At least on mainstream media. That is until BBC Africa Eye flighted a documentary entitled Fear and Loathing in South Africa a few weeks ago, which roused the group’s ill repute all anew. Despite the title, don’t expect any of Hunter S Thompson’s psychedelic humour and innocuous hallucinations in the production, only what seems like a township Gestapo wreaking havoc in the lives of black migrants.
A cursory Google search suggests that mayhem and violence dog the party incessantly. See here and here along with the BBC’s worrisome production (below).
On 24 March 2022, Dlamini himself was arrested when he and members of Operation Dudula raided the home of Victor Ramerafe in Dobsonville, Soweto, searching for drugs. The arrest drew packed crowds outside the Roodepoort Magistrate’s Court and Dlamini has since been handed two suspended sentences for his role.
Sometime in July that same year, citing differences of opinion, Dlamini would sever all ties with Dudula, whom he felt were misguided in their stance which sought to get rid of all and not just illegal foreign nationals. Evidently the departure has done little to dent Dudula’s appeal.
In May, a massive crowd of some 800 people attended the group’s maiden national conference in Johannesburg where the executive leadership resolved on contesting next year’s general election. The event, clearly well-organised even garnered a compliment from the BBC Africa Eye journalist, Ayanda Charlie, but also aroused questions around who exactly was funding the party. An unyielding Zandile Dabula whose responses to Charlie did little to persuade the viewer that the party was in fact nothing other than a group that, when push came to shove, would not settle scores through strong arming, was appointed president.
She believes that “foreign nationals are working on a 20-year plan of taking over South Africa” but is at pains to reveal the source of that information. “It’s a rumour,” she ultimately concedes, “but…the way that we see things happening we believe that the rumour is actually true.” Later, she says, “most of the problems that we have are caused by the influx of foreign nationals.”
Not too long ago, the EFF’s Julius Malema caused a furore for his singing of the Struggle song Kill the Boer at his party’s 10 year anniversary celebrations. Yet seemingly not much fuss has been made over Dudula’s own pointed dirge (translated from Zulu):
We will go to the garage
Buy some petrol
And burn the foreigner
With such thorough lyricism, NGOs and civil society might be forgiven for regarding the group apprehensively. A number of politicians have also come out strongly against all that Dudula seemingly stands for. Said BOSA’s Mmusi Maimane: “Operation Dudula is hating on fellow Africans and I have a problem with that.”
Julius Malema: “Black people are not loved all over the world. And for a black person to hate another black person who is hated all over the world, what is that?”
Snuki Zikalala of the ANC’s Veteran’s League perhaps came closest to the real heart of the matter. “The majority of our youth,” he noted, “are unemployed. I think Operation Dudula is a very dangerous movement because they saw a gap in that, they started hyping South Africans’ emotions.”
In the BBC documentary, Dudula’s unnerving impunity is demostrated for all to see. Following a certain landlady’s complaint about a tenant who so happens to be an illegal foreign national and hasn’t settled his rent, members of the group descend on her property. In full glare of the cameras they then proceed to threaten the man, demand his immigration papers and ultimately force him to sign an agreement to vacate the premises in two months.
“This is vigilantism,” says the journalist. “No,” retorts the Dudula taskforce man. It was just a peaceful intervention. “In some instances,” Dabula later adds, “you need to really be harsh. We don’t promote violence … but at some stage …we need to push harder… because these people have attitude and they are very rude.”
Vigilantism! Insists the journalist. Dabula is unwavering: “The fact that someone laid a complaint to us, it means he or she has been failed by the law enforcement and who’s going to help … so someone needs to do something.”
Their tactics and nomenclature appear to acutely suggest that Dudula are aware of ‘violence as political technology.’ The faithful are known as ‘commanders.’ When foreign nationals lay eyes on a Dudula vehicle, they are known to ‘disperse, disperse!’ Dudula’s songs are belligerent odes to burnings and being feared – or respected, as one member sees it – out on the streets.
Yet for residents of Alexandra Township, for years neglected and denied basic services, the movement is not without allure. Over the years that township has been a hotbed of protest. We’ve seen its residents on the news barricading roads in an effort for government attention and although such resorts have seen high-profile ministers popping by, they have largely resulted in precious little for the people. Now comes a group that is seemingly empathetic to their plight; that arbitrary orders foreigner nationals out of the RDP homes they are renting and pushes a message of putting South Africans first, and this inevitably strikes a chord.
In an orderly world, outfits like Dudula might be seen as agitating outliers. However, in a South Africa where leadership are often considered little more than besuited pop-ups, a heroic veneer belies these vigilante types as they tend to speak to issues that intimately affect the grassroots. Sadly, particularly for vulnerable foreigners, these almost always end badly, mostly in tears and blood.
In July last year the United Nations “condemned reports of escalating violence against foreign nationals in South Africa and called for accountability against xenophobia, racism and hate speech that were harming migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and even citizens perceived as foreign throughout the country.”
But without meaningful government intervention, coupled with the anger that is seething in the shantytowns, our experts at the UN might as well be speaking to the wind. Truth is, as ugly and abhorrent as outfits like Dudula are, in marginalised and forgotten communities they have the logic of gravity. Think about it: despite that the group is yet to make any extravagant promises about what it will deliver should it be in power, it seems that the solitary objective of seeing foreign nationals off is good enough for the thousands who are already singing their praises.
If that’s not worrying you, hopefully it tells you something. That perhaps when the masses have been let down opens up a gaping vacuum where even the most suspicious characters are able to step in and be seen to be acting, to be accessible, to be marching shoulder to shoulder alongside the community and by so doing are able to suspend those tenets that a critical for democracy to survive and nobody really cares.
Because our search for anything else that might tickle Dudula’s fancy turned up nothing other than hostile rhetoric around foreign nationals, the BBC journalist Ayanda Charlie’s observations bear mentioning; “scapegoating foreigners is not going to fix the drug issue, it’s not going to fix crime, unemployment or corruption, inequality. It’s not going to address those things.”
Be that as it may, Operation Dudula will be on the ballot sheet come 2024.
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