(Preface: For a third year in a row since 2024, the APN succeeded in bringing activists together in a public meeting dedicated to Women’s Month in South Africa. Leading themes, agenda items and format of proceedings changed over the 3 years. Also, the numbers in attendance fluctuated from year to year. When looking beyond these differences, steady progress in collective action through the APN is visible. Whilst the capitalists and their guardians are determined to disarm us politically and organisationally, these APN public gatherings inspire working class participation and free exchanges of progressive political views. It has become a self-organised forum to collectively advance a consistent anti-capitalist political vision and practice.)

Four key speeches delivered at the August 2026 women’s month meeting of the Anti-Capitalist Political Network (APN) stimulated lively contributions from those who participated in this event. Atrocities against migrant and refugee women in South Africa, as the four speakers detailed, predate the 2026 wave of assaults and barbaric mass deportations. Under the shameless and dehumanising pretext of “clearing South Africa of undocumented foreigners” the state spearheaded this ruthless mass deportation of migrant women, including their children uprooted from schools. The main speakers and those who spoke from the floor resolutely opposed the violence against migrant and refugee women. The urgent task is to build organised solidarity with women migrants and refugees and unite it with political resistance against the system which profits from xenophobia.

Organisations involved in the APN agreed that mobilisation for the public meeting should follow how we went about it in previous years. After deciding on the theme for August 2026, the APN issued a poster and a pamphlet to raise awareness of and invite people to the meeting. All organisations involved in the APN undertook to promote the public meeting among their members and supporters. In addition to the four main speakers, timeslots for musical items and poetry readings were also woven into the day’s programme. Young people who performed these cultural items with inspiring social justice messages are part of the Bishop Lavis School of Arts. When asked for their reflections on the misguided attacks on migrants (including fellow students who are at school with them), some of the youths did not hesitate to powerfully explain their own understanding and rejection of xenophobia. This incipient radical left sociopolitical awakening among the youth signals progress which the APN should advance.

The headline of the APN poster, “Resist Discrimination Against Women and LGBTQI+!: Build Unity and Solidarity Against Xenophobia”, calls for mobilising against hatred of labouring people from other countries. The APN pamphlet backed this demand for an end to xenophobia, firmly connecting our anti-xenophobia resistance to anti-capitalist internationalism. Speaker after speaker at the gathering exposed and condemned this poisonous hatred towards “others”. Such hatred, prejudice and dehumanisation foster division among people who suffer common hardships. Xenophobia is founded on myths, outright lies and backwardness for the ultimate benefit of those who oppress, exploit and suppress us.

Speakers introduced different but tightly interconnected topics without exhausting all aspects of xenophobia. In the final analysis, one speaker emphasized, xenophobia is a result of a system in which a minority obscenely profits from exploiting society’s labour. It stems from the political economy of crisis-ridden capitalism. Knowing the systemic origins of xenophobia will empower us to collectively struggle against the main social classes fomenting this assault. Another speaker used facts and figures on health crises to illustrate how xenophobia aggravates the violence against migrant women and LGBTQI+ people. Rights to healthcare (and education!) are universal human rights, but South Africa’s neoliberal Constitution and laws pay lip service to these rights. One of the main speakers began by dissecting the orientation of South Africa’s trade union movement towards this wave of xenophobic assaults. Drawing on many years of trade union activism, this speaker stated that the interests of women migrant workers are absent from trade union issues.

The speakers converged on a resounding call to action: our condemnation of xenophobia must be carried into every working-class neighbourhood. In fact, the August 2026 APN gathering is an example of what is doable. Organisations can and should work together to have similar public meetings in local communities.