As Mthwakazi leader Mqondisi Moyo urges Zimbabweans to prepare, the government that took Israel to The Hague must prove that it can prevent threatened violence against Africans on its own streets.

On June 18, Mthwakazi Republic Party President Mqondisi Moyo issued a warning to Zimbabweans living in South Africa: remain calm, avoid demonstrations and likely confrontation points, keep identification documents accessible, preserve electronic copies of important records and establish communication plans with family, employers, churches and community organizations.

“Preparation is not panic, and prudence is not provocation,” Moyo said. “Every Zimbabwean should act responsibly, remain peaceful and protect life.”

His statement recognizes South Africa’s sovereign right to administer its borders and enforce its immigration laws. It also states the constitutional boundary that matters: those powers belong to lawful public authorities, independent courts and established procedures. They do not belong to mobs, vigilante groups or private political movements.

June 30 is not an official South African government deadline. A fraudulent notice using the government’s coat of arms attempted to give the date official authority, but the government confirmed that it was false. The ultimatum is nevertheless real in a more dangerous sense. Anti-immigration groups have repeatedly invoked June 30 as the day by which undocumented foreigners must leave “or else,” while videos have shown men marching with sticks, clubs and whips.

The date has acquired enough organizing power that, on June 17, South Africa’s four major labor federations urged workers not to participate in anti-migrant protests. A legally meaningless deadline that requires a nationwide warning from organized labor is no longer merely an internet rumor.

The violence has not waited for the deadline. Migrants have reported looted businesses, burned homes, forced displacement and failures of police protection. Mozambique reported that five of its nationals were killed in violence in Mossel Bay. On June 17, police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades near a Durban site where thousands of mainly Malawian migrants had gathered while waiting to return home.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has declared that responsibility for enforcing immigration law “rests with the state and the state alone”. He said private citizens may not stop people in the streets and demand proof of nationality, and promised action against those inciting lawlessness and violence.

He is correct. His statement also defines the test: will the state actually exercise the authority that he says belongs exclusively to it?

A government does not prove that it controls a country by announcing that it should.

The word that matters is “successfully”

Max Weber did not formulate the modern expression “failed state.” He supplied the definition from which........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)