JOHANNESBURG — South Africa broke ground Thursday on a second temporary facility designed to process the return of Malawian nationals to their home country. The move comes after thousands of people took to the streets earlier this year in Johannesburg and other South African cities to protest illegal immigration — unrest that has stoked tensions between South African residents and foreign nationals living in the country.
At the same time, thousands more Malawian citizens continued arriving at the first deportation processing site, located in the Sherwood area of the city of Durban. Roughly 10,000 people have been camped at that location for more than a week, waiting for transportation back to Malawi.
On Wednesday, the situation at the Sherwood site turned violent. Police deployed rubber bullets and stun grenades against migrants who were throwing rocks, sticks, and logs at officers. Local media in South Africa attributed the clashes to growing frustration over how long the deportation process was taking.
The second facility is intended to ease conditions at the overcrowded Sherwood site, where women and young children have been packed in alongside thousands of men. South African officials reported that at least 12 women had given birth at the site since Malawians began gathering there.
Authorities from both South Africa and Malawi have spent recent weeks working together to organize the large-scale return of Malawian citizens who say they left due to fears of anti-migrant hostility and potential violence.
South African officials explained that the deportation process requires Malawians to appear before a court, since they were in the country without legal status. The pace of returns has also been slowed by a shortage of buses provided by the Malawian government, which has also appealed for donations to help cover the cost of transporting people home.
