A woman named Melissa arrived in South Africa a decade ago, taking whatever jobs she could find and sending money back to her family in Zimbabwe. This month, she began packing her bags.
“I am planning to go back home, because I’m no longer safe in this country,” she told The Media Line. She noted that many of those departing had been living there legally. “Some of us have papers, but now we are forced to go.”
Melissa is one of tens of thousands of foreign nationals who have departed South Africa as anti-immigrant demonstrations, scattered violence, and fears of further unrest have rippled across the country. What started as a domestic dispute over immigration has grown into a full-blown diplomatic crisis for a nation whose post-apartheid foreign policy has long championed Pan-African unity.
Several neighboring countries — including Ghana, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria — have assisted their citizens in returning home while voicing alarm over their safety. By early July, Malawi reported bringing back more than 38,000 of its nationals, while Zimbabwean officials said more than 60,000 citizens had returned during the unrest and stepped-up immigration enforcement.
Anti-immigrant groups set June 30 as a deadline for undocumented foreigners to leave, following weeks of confrontations and attacks. Mozambique reported that five of its citizens were killed in Mossel Bay in late May. Ghana and Nigeria each raised concerns about the deaths of their nationals, while thousands of migrants lined up at consulates, temporary camps, and repatriation centers.
March and March, the most prominent group within a coalition of more than 20 anti-immigrant organizations, organized demonstrations across South Africa on June 30. Its leader, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, has consistently pushed back against characterizations of the movement as xenophobic.
“We don’t care if it’s white people, Chinese or anyone else,” Ngobese-Zuma said at a June 24 press briefing in Midrand. “We just want people to be in the country legally.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa met with protest organizers ahead of June 30 and urged them to pursue their grievances through lawful means. In a weekly letter released by the Presidency on June 29, Ramaphosa acknowledged that South Africa’s immigration system needed “substantial reform” and said the government was working to strengthen border security and crack down on undocumented immigration. He also cautioned that private citizens and groups cannot take on powers that belong to the state.
Police and military personnel were deployed across the country on June 30.
Deputy National Police Commissioner Tebello Mosikili told reporters at a July 1 press conference that officers recorded 120 marches that day. Of those, 108 remained peaceful while 12 required police intervention.
In Johannesburg’s Alexandra township, one person was shot and killed late on June 30 as residents looted shops owned by foreigners. A separate shooting in Hillbrow, in the heart of Johannesburg, left two people wounded. Police arrested more than 900 individuals on charges that ranged from public violence and robbery to immigration violations and harboring undocumented migrants.
On July 3, Ramaphosa informed Parliament that 3,405 members of the South African National Defense Force had been deployed beginning June 28 to assist police.
The unrest has also sparked questions about how South Africa’s internal tensions square with its long-held Pan-African foreign policy commitments.
Chrispin Phiri, spokesperson for the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), told The Media Line that the government does not believe the unrest signals an abandonment of those principles.
“Our commitment to the continent remains foundational to our foreign policy identity,” Phiri said. “We do not see our historical role as a champion of Pan-African solidarity as diminished by localized tensions, but rather as being tested.”
DIRCO views the unrest, he said, “not as an ideological failure of Pan-Africanism, but as an urgent domestic governance issue that requires a human-rights-centric response.”
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has sought influence through the African Union and the Southern African Development Community, while holding up human rights and international law as cornerstones of its foreign policy.
Loren Landau, a migration scholar at the University of Oxford and the University of the Witwatersrand, told The Media Line that the protests reveal something deeper than frustration over immigration policy.
“My greatest takeaway from the marches and the lead-up to them is that they are less about immigration and more about the nature of South African politics,” Landau said, “and the degree to which it has become captured by people willing to use the language of hate, threats of violence, and actual violence to shape the country’s political future.”
“Politicians who lack genuine or practical solutions to economic inequality, poverty and unemployment are using immigration to advance their political careers,” he argued.
Phiri said the government is working to resist populist pressures while defending its regional standing.
“As Minister Lamola has recently articulated, we reject populist or xenophobic narratives that seek to turn Africans against each other,” he said. “Our standing relies on our ability to openly confront these internal social challenges while remaining steadfast in the AU and SADC agendas.”
Ronald Lamola, the minister of international relations and cooperation, expressed that position in a May 8 statement after Ghana requested a debate at an African Union summit on what Accra described as xenophobic attacks against African nationals in South Africa.
XenoWatch, a research project at the University of the Witwatersrand, has documented 1,321 xenophobic incidents since 1994, including 698 deaths and the displacement of nearly 129,000 people.
John J. Stremlau, an honorary professor of international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, told The Media Line that political calls for tougher immigration enforcement cannot simply be brushed aside.
“We live in a world of nation-states,” he said. “South Africa has experienced an inflow of people who are desperate for work. South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world, so political pressure to restrict illegal immigration is understandable.”
“Personally, I wish South Africa could afford to receive more refugees, but it can’t,” he added.
Even so, Stremlau made clear that economic and political pressures do not justify attacks on migrants.
“The violence itself is not understandable,” he said, connecting part of the political climate to Zulu nationalism and figures including former President Jacob Zuma and his MK party.
The diplomatic friction has been intensified by conflicting accounts of deaths involving foreign nationals.
Nigeria raised concerns over the deaths of two of its citizens in separate incidents involving South African security personnel in April. In early May, Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu called the deaths “utterly condemnable and unacceptable” and demanded that justice be served.
South African police said on July 7 that one of the men, Nnaemeka Matthew Andrew Ekpeyong, collapsed after being arrested by officers during a drug-related operation at his apartment in Pretoria. Police said the death had no connection to anti-migrant violence. The Independent Police Investigative Directorate is looking into the matter, and South Africa has asked Nigeria to submit evidence regarding allegations against its security forces through official diplomatic channels.
Ghana has also disputed South Africa’s account of the death of one of its citizens. Ghanaian authorities identified the man as Bashiru Isak, 40, and said he was killed in Cape Town during the period of the June 30 protests, calling for an independent investigation.
South African police said they had no record of a murder in Khayelitsha matching Ghana’s description and asked for more details. Police said the Ghanaian death they were investigating involved Kwabena Boagen, 35, who was shot on June 29 in Nyanga, outside Cape Town. They characterized that case as suspected extortion-related violence rather than a xenophobic attack.
Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi has said police records showed no deaths during the June 30 demonstrations.
Phiri confirmed that DIRCO had received formal communications from several African governments regarding the safety of their citizens.
“Receiving these concerns is standard diplomatic practice during periods of social friction,” Phiri said. “We welcome this direct engagement, as it allows us to counter disinformation with verifiable facts about our domestic stabilization efforts.”
On July 7, Ghana postponed high-level bilateral meetings with South Africa that had been set for August.
Ghana’s minister of state for government communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, told Reuters that anti-migrant violence risked overshadowing the meetings, which Ghana was scheduled to host and which Presidents John Dramani Mahama and Cyril Ramaphosa were expected to co-chair.
Phiri pushed back against reports framing the postponement as a diplomatic snub directed at Ramaphosa.
“We want to explicitly correct the record here. There was no ‘snub.’ Neither the Presidency nor DIRCO requested a formal state visit that was subsequently declined by Accra,” he said. “We recognize that relations have experienced some strain due to broader concerns over anti-immigrant rhetoric on the continent.”
He added that Minister Lamola remained in “continuous, constructive communication with his Ghanaian counterpart to strengthen our historical bilateral bonds.”
The diplomatic strain actually began before the June 30 demonstrations. In May, African ambassadors and high commissioners did not attend South Africa’s Africa Day celebration.
The protests have not stopped since June 30. Ngobese-Zuma had promised weekly demonstrations for six months, and protesters returned to the streets in Johannesburg, Soweto, and Durban on July 9.
Reuters journalists in Alexandra reported that protesters entered or tried to force open homes and businesses while searching for suspected undocumented migrants, removing some individuals and handing them over to police.
Among those taken was a Malawian woman carrying a child. A Zimbabwean man told Reuters he held legal status under the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit.
Some flyers promoting the July 9 demonstrations advertised a “peaceful march” followed by “door to door.”
The government has repeatedly stated that only official state authorities have the legal power to arrest, deport, or determine a person’s immigration status.
South Africa’s migrant population is deeply woven into the construction, agriculture, retail, and transportation sectors. United Nations data from 2024 estimated that 2.6 million international migrants live in South Africa, making up roughly 5% of the population. A 2018 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Labor Organization estimated that immigrants contribute about 9% of the country’s gross domestic product.
Landau warned that the reputational damage from the unrest could hurt South African companies doing business elsewhere on the continent.
“South African businesses will find it harder to operate because their brand has been damaged,” he said. “Many countries now have alternatives, and I think they will increasingly choose non-South African options where possible.”
Landau described the June 30 security deployment as “unfortunately necessary” but said authorities had allowed tensions to fester through an extended period of inaction.
“It came after a long period of non-response,” he said.
The long-term solution, he argued, requires broader negotiations “about how migration can strengthen the regional economy for everyone.”
Meanwhile, South Africa is ramping up immigration enforcement. Justice Minister Kubayi said at a July 12 briefing that 53,449 foreign nationals had been processed for deportation or repatriation as of the previous day. Authorities deported 4,898 people in June alone.
As for Melissa, her mind is made up. After a decade in South Africa, she is heading back to Zimbabwe.
“My family calls me every day and tells me to come home as soon as I can,” she said. “So now I’m going back to Zimbabwe and starting over. I know it won’t be easy. Even finding work there is difficult.”
