A quiet day, a loud warning

In the days leading up to Tuesday, 30 June, there was a heaviness in the air. It wasn’t overt, but sat quietly niggling in our heads as we got on with our daily lives. It was an ominous worry about what was to come and what the so-called national shutdown was going to bring. 

We had received the warnings. We had seen the messages flying around. There were fears of xenophobic protests across South Africa, of anger spilling into the streets, of all shops being closed, roads being blocked, people being targeted, and communities being hurt. And yes, as a Jewish community, we asked ourselves the question we have learnt to ask far too often: would this somehow find its way to us too? 

It wasn’t an irrational fear. In South Africa, and the world, we know how quickly a protest can become something else. We know how easily frustration can be redirected, how poverty and anger and political opportunism can become a dangerous mixture. We know, too, that when people begin speaking about “foreigners” as if they are not human beings with names, families, fears, and dreams, the ground beneath us becomes less stable. 

We also had memory on our side ‒ and memory is not always comforting. We remembered July 2021, when what began in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and spread to Gauteng became days of looting, burning, blocked roads, destroyed businesses, frightened families, and lives lost. We remembered the images from KZN in particular: shopping centres gutted, supply chains broken, communities barricading themselves in, and people wondering whether anyone was coming to protect them. Once you have seen a country tilt that quickly towards chaos, you don’t easily dismiss warnings as hysteria. 

So we worried. We worried for immigrants who have already lived with too much uncertainty. We worried for business owners, workers, domestic employees, children, elderly people, and anyone who might be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. We worried for our country because when any group is singled out and made to carry the blame for a nation’s pain, the whole country is diminished. 

And then 30 June came. And in so many suburbs, it was eerily quiet. Streets that people feared might become tense were super-calm and all but empty. It was reminiscent of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. So many shops stayed shuttered and for a country that so needs economic activity, there appeared to be none ‒ or very little. 

People peered at their phones, checked community groups, listened for sirens that did not come, and slowly exhaled. 

Quiet didn’t mean there was no pain. It didn’t mean the fear was imagined. It didn’t mean those who felt threatened were safe. But it did mean that what we feared would happen did not. It meant that, in many places, restraint held. Communities held. Protesters did not run rampant and use the opportunity to harm and destroy. The security organisations maintained law and order. 

Was that R600 million the government allocated to prevent violence and protect the infrastructure necessary? If so, we deserve a clear accounting of it. Where did the money go? What exactly was done? What was learnt? In a country with so many urgent needs, transparency is not a luxury; it is part of trust. 

There is something unsettling about being grateful for a day simply because it did not turn violent. Yet that is where we are. We are grateful that most people came home safely. Grateful that our suburbs did not erupt. Grateful that the Jewish community, like so many others, was not drawn into further fear. Grateful, but not complacent. 

Because beneath the quiet lies something we cannot ignore. Xenophobia does not disappear because one planned protest passes without widespread chaos. The language that fuels it remains dangerous. The social conditions that make it persuasive remain urgent. The failures of governance, policing, border management, service delivery, and economic opportunity remain real. 

The question we should be asking honestly is if this is really about foreigners “taking” South African jobs, or is it about a devastating unemployment crisis and deep economic despair that have left too many people looking for someone to blame? Blaming the vulnerable for those failures is neither moral nor practical, and it will not create a single job or repair a broken system. 

As Jews, we know what it means when a society decides that its problems can be solved by pointing at an outsider. We know what happens when fear is given a target. That knowledge should not make us inward-looking; it should make us more alert to the dignity of others. Our safety is bound up with the safety of every minority, every migrant, every person whose belonging is questioned by those who need someone to blame. 

So perhaps the lesson of 30 June is that fear must not be allowed to lead us. It can make us prepare, stay informed, and protect one another. But it must not harden us. It must not make us suspicious of every stranger or indifferent to someone else’s terror. 

In the end, the quiet of the day was a gift, and maybe even a warning. It showed us what did not happen ‒ and reminded us what still could, if we fail to confront hatred early, honestly, and together. 

Government dare not simply celebrate a quiet day and move on. It must account for the money spent, explain what worked, and then turn with equal urgency to the reasons xenophobia takes hold in the first place: unemployment, poverty, corruption, failing services, porous systems, and the daily humiliation of people who feel abandoned. 

Community leaders, faith leaders, civil society, and ordinary South Africans also have work to do. We must challenge reckless language wherever we hear it. We must refuse to forward fearmongering messages. We must protect people who are being scapegoated. And we must demand solutions that create work and restore dignity rather than slogans that turn neighbour against neighbour. 

For now, we can breathe, but we are not done. South Africa needs a sustained commitment to confront xenophobia before it becomes violence, to fix the economic despair that feeds it, and to insist that no person’s safety depends on whether they are considered “one of us”. 

Our future cannot be built on fear of the foreigner. It has to be built on the courage ‒ and the discipline ‒ to see one another as human, and to act before fear becomes fire. 

Shabbat shalom! 

Peta Krost 

Editor