The recent spate of food poisoning incidents across South Africa has caused panic and anxiety in township and urban communities alike, creating fertile ground for conspiracies and baseless accusations against migrants and migrant-owned businesses. In October, Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi, the minister of health, confirmed that the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (NATJOINTS) was treating the fatal incidents as a potential national security threat. This came after at least 12 children died within a month following a number of incidents of food poisoning, allegedly from food and snacks bought from migrant-owned spaza shops and township vendors.

“Those affected have concluded that these ailments are a result of food poisoning emanating from foodstuff, particularly snacks, sold by foreign-owned spaza shops. This has become the generally held view in the country, which prompted some people to take action based on this belief,” Motsoaledi said.

These incidents have fueled a much older narrative that foreigners are somehow unclean or carry disease. This stereotype has long historical roots, serving as a convenient explanation for social problems and health crises across the world. As an example, in the early 20th century, immigrants in the United States, particularly those from Eastern Europe, were accused of spreading tuberculosis and other diseases. Entire communities were stigmatized, creating barriers to health care and jobs and justifying restrictive immigration policies.

Similar scapegoating was seen in West Africa during the Ebola outbreak, where people from affected regions were banned from travel and faced violent stigmatization globally. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the initial hysteria around the virus, brought its own share of nativist fear-mongering in the name of public health. Donald Trump, who was president of the US at the time, called it the “Chinese virus,” insisting the term was not racist or xenophobic. Despite his denials, there was an increase in anti-Asian racism around the globe.

Associating a certain group of people with danger and disease allows societies to deflect blame, avoid accountability, and project internal fears onto those seen as “outsiders.” In South Africa, we have become accustomed to this in many different forms. From Motsoaledi’s previous term as minister of health, where he blamed migrants, and especially migrant mothers, for many of his department’s failures, to the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba’s public citizen’s arrest of a street vendor. Mashaba at the time proudly tweeted: “We are going to sit back and allow people like you to bring us Ebolas in the name of small business. Health of our people first. Our health facilities are already stretched to the limit [sic].” The tweet was grossly xenophobic and devoid of fact.

The recent food poisoning incidents have not only led to accusations against migrant spaza owners and vendors but also given rise to dangerous conspiracies, resulting in the looting of spaza shops in a number of areas in Gauteng. The people who run these informal businesses in the townships often deal with long supply chains, poor refrigeration, and tight finances. Instead of a malicious conspiracy about migrants who want to poison the nation, the reality so many are willing to overlook is that potential spoilage in these shops may be the result of poorly enforced regulations and having to cut corners to save money. For these same reasons, shopkeepers sometimes use unregulated pesticides to deal with rodents and other pests—such as the pesticide terbufos, which was found to have resulted in the deaths of the children in Naledi.

As Loren Landau, a professor of migration and development at the University of Oxford and research professor at the University of the Witwatersrand’s African Centre for Migration and Society, explains, migrants already have a precarious legal and social status in the country, so it would be absurd and completely counterproductive to want to kill off customers, as many conspiracies have suggested.

“What I see happening here is akin to blood libel charges against groups of yesteryear. Foreigners are disliked and their presence correlates with a generally anxious society. Naming and accusing is a way of channeling those anxieties—of helping to explain unknowns or disappointments with people’s economic, social, or material security. It is not surprising that these anxieties exist, given the state of South African society. Nor is it surprising that people are being scapegoated for them. But that makes this no less absurd or dangerous,” he said.

“These specific events may be a fulcrum for further action, yet that action remains undetermined. Such accusations may well be the justification the government feels it needs for further ‘Operation Fiela’—style sweeps and arrests. Already deportations are up and this may encourage more. If people don’t see the government taking action, they may well take it on themselves—as they have in the past—to clean up their townships. By this I mean targeting specific migrants or migrant groups. Such actions may be violent and spontaneous, but may also be supported and organized by SA-owned businesses who stand to benefit by eliminating the competition.”

And that is exactly what’s already happened in Naledi, Soweto, where six children died as a result of food poisoning. Lazarus Mmota, a local ward councilor, told me that some members in his community decided to loot, vandalize, and close the business where the food was allegedly bought, along with some other spaza shops. Mmota said that those who looted and closed the shops did so for their own interests and not because they were particularly interested in justice or the law.

Amir Sheikh, the chairperson of the African Diaspora Forum, told me that the phrases “Somali business” and “Pakistani business” are used as a blanket term to refer to any migrant-owned business in the area. In the case of the Naledi incident, many made the accusation that the food was bought from Somali spaza shops, with one man who made the accusation later admitting to me he wasn’t sure whether the owner was Somali or Ethiopian. “I don’t know how to differentiate between them,” he said. “People just say, ‘Go buy from the Somali shop.’”

Sheikh warned that the food poisoning incidents and the people inciting xenophobic rhetoric and actions in response pose serious risks to society. We can see how these narratives are opportunistically exploited by those with hateful agendas. When migrant shopkeepers are blamed for isolated food poisoning cases, it gives vigilante groups and angry community members a pretext to enact violence.

Rather than examining the real causes of food safety issues—such as insufficient regulatory standards, economic desperation, or the failures of public health oversight—these groups target migrant shopkeepers, vandalizing their stores, assaulting them, and driving them out of neighborhoods. This provides a temporary release for communities facing hardship but ultimately perpetuates the cycle of poverty, violence, and lack of access to basic needs, as those who provide affordable goods are forced out.

To prevent the continued exploitation of these stereotypes, South Africa must first address the root causes of these narratives. Public leaders need to stop stoking the fires of xenophobia and, instead, work to foster a more inclusive national identity that values diversity. A shift in political and media discourse is critically needed. Educating the public on the contributions of migrants to the economy and society can counteract the narrative that foreignness equates to impurity.