As Xenophobic Violence Grips South Africa, African Nations Race to Bring Citizens Home

Have you ever imagined leaving your home not because of war or disaster, but because your identity alone made you a target? For thousands of Africans in South Africa, that fear has become reality. Families are sleeping in fields, consulates have become temporary shelters, and governments across the continent are sending buses and aircraft to bring their citizens home. The crisis reveals a painful contradiction at the heart of Africa’s most industrialized economy: a nation built on the promise of liberation now confronting accusations of exclusion from its own neighbors. As anger over jobs and inequality grows, the cost of scapegoating is being counted in lives, displacement and a widening continental divide.

For more than three thousand Malawians, winter in South Africa has meant sleeping in an open field in Durban, waiting for buses that will take them home. They fled their houses after mobs accused them of stealing jobs and shelter. Some have been there for weeks. In Cape Town, hundreds of Zimbabweans camped outside their consulate for the same reason. Across the country, an anti-immigrant ultimatum set for June 30 has now expired, and the government that dismissed it as having no legal force is bracing for what comes next.

The deadline was set by March and March, a citizen-led movement that has organized marches through Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town since April demanding that undocumented migrants leave the country. Demonstrators, some carrying sticks, have chanted “Mabahambe,” Zulu for “they must go,” and have conducted unauthorized document checks despite having no legal authority to do so.

The unrest has already turned deadly. Five Mozambicans were killed in Mossel Bay, a Malawian national died after being detained and beaten by police, and Ethiopian and Nigerian-owned businesses have been attacked in Gauteng province, bringing the confirmed toll since April to at least a dozen foreign nationals.

“Vigilante groups feed off the country’s frustrations and socioeconomic rights regression.”

— Mpho Makhubela, Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa

A Recurring Pattern

South Africa’s reckoning with xenophobic violence did not begin this year. In May 2008, mobs killed 62 people, including 21 South Africans mistaken for foreigners, 11 Mozambicans, five Zimbabweans and three Somalis, in attacks that swept through Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and the Free State.

Further waves followed in 2015 and in 2019, when armed mobs targeted Nigerian-owned businesses and killed at least 12 people. Vigilante groups hardened into a more organized movement between 2021 and 2022 with the rise of Operation Dudula, Zulu for “force out,” which built a following by blaming migrants for unemployment and crime despite research disputing both claims.

That online infrastructure did not disappear. Its roots trace to April 2020, when the hashtag #PutSouthAfricansFirst surged during the Covid lockdown, amplified early on by former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, who went on to found the party ActionSA, and by African Transformation Movement leader Vuyo Zungula.

This year’s wave was reignited by a missing-person campaign around a South African teenager, Mazwi Kubheka, which spread under hashtags including #BringMazwiBack before pivoting into broader anti-migrant mobilization. The lines between street movement and party politics have since blurred further. Zandile Dabula, a former Operation Dudula leader, joined ActionSA and became the party’s candidate for a Johannesburg municipal council seat.

Established political parties have absorbed the sentiment ahead of South Africa’s November local elections. The Patriotic Alliance and uMkhonto we Sizwe, the party led by former President Jacob Zuma, have both campaigned on anti-immigrant platforms, and MK-affiliated organizers that swept KwaZulu-Natal, the province anchoring much of the unrest.

Mpho Makhubela, a member of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa and an activist with the Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia coalition, said the movements were capitalizing on the country’s economic strain rather than creating it, citing unemployment above 30 percent and youth joblessness above 60 percent.

A Continent Evacuates

The scale of the exodus has become the story’s defining image. Nigeria has repatriated more than 1,000 citizens by air, with a first group of 262 landing in Lagos in mid-June and further flights following. Ghana has flown and bused out roughly 1,000 nationals, including an early charter of 297 from OR Tambo International Airport.

Mozambique has evacuated about 700 citizens after the Mossel Bay killings. Zimbabwe says it has brought home 3,624 people. Malawi has processed more than 15,000 nationals through its consular operation, transporting many by road through Zimbabwe and Mozambique to Kamuzu Stadium in Blantyre for registration. Uganda has announced plans to repatriate 746 citizens, and Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo have launched similar operations.

Ghana and Nigeria summoned South Africa’s high commissioners in April and May to register formal protest, and Nigeria has demanded an investigation into the deaths of its citizens. South Africa’s Home Affairs Director-General, Tommy Makhode, has insisted the June 30 deadline carries no government authority. “Our Constitution and immigration laws protect the rights of everyone inside South Africa,” he said.

Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi has warned that the violence is damaging the country’s standing and its economy, noting that South African performers are losing bookings elsewhere on the continent. South Africa’s foreign ministry has disputed that all recent deaths were xenophobic in nature, attributing some to organized crime, and spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said of the losses, “We deeply regret the tragic loss of life in these recent incidents,” according to CNBC Africa.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the violence a “tragic betrayal” of the African solidarity that backed South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, in comments on X reported by the same outlet.

Washington’s Retreat

The unrest has unfolded against a fracturing relationship with the United States that began within weeks of President Trump’s return to office. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order halting American aid and assistance to South Africa and directing agencies to fast-track resettlement of white Afrikaners as refugees, citing unsubstantiated claims of a targeted genocide and land seizures that South Africa’s government, independent researchers and many Afrikaners themselves have rejected.

The first group of 59 white South African refugees arrived in the United States in May 2025, and by March 2026 all but three of the 4,500 refugees admitted under the program were white South Africans.

Relations deteriorated further at a tense Oval Office meeting in May 2025, when Trump confronted President Cyril Ramaphosa with video clips and printed articles he characterized as evidence of violence against white South Africans, an exchange Ramaphosa rebutted on the spot and that outside observers described as an ambush.

The Trump administration boycotted the G20 summit South Africa hosted in Johannesburg in November, the first held on African soil, and Trump subsequently announced South Africa would be excluded from the 2026 summit in Miami. “South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that the United States would halt all remaining payments to the country. South African presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya told the BBC that G20 counterparts “should by now accept there won’t be a reset of the relationship,” a comment relayed by Al Jazeera.

Trade ties have frayed alongside the diplomatic rift. The African Growth and Opportunity Act, which had granted duty-free access to the American market, lapsed in September 2025 and was renewed by Congress for only one additional year. Trump’s global tariff package imposed a 30 percent rate on South African exports, among the steepest applied to any AGOA-eligible country, effectively erasing the trade preference even as the underlying law remained on the books.

Washington had earlier expelled South Africa’s ambassador, Ebrahim Rasool, in March 2025 after he accused the American political movement behind Trump of being white supremacist in orientation.

No Resolution in Sight

South African police say they have deployed additional security nationwide and that military units remain on standby as the June 30 deadline passes without the government conceding to vigilante demands. The African Union has called on Pretoria to guarantee the safety of foreign nationals within its borders.

For migrants like Mapezi, a Congolese asylum seeker who fled sexual violence 15 years ago and remains in what advocates describe as bureaucratic limbo, the political maneuvering offers little comfort. She has told her children that if protesters come to the house, they must run and hide, because there is nothing more she can do.

With flights and buses still departing for Lagos, Accra, Blantyre, Harare and Kampala, what does South Africa’s government intend to do now that the deadline its own officials refuse to recognize has come and gone?

Zanele Muholi (South Africa)

Most Famous Photo: Images from their ongoing series “Faces and Phases,” which documents the lives of black
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex individuals in South Africa.

Short Bio: Born in 1972, Zanele Muholi is a visual activist and photographer who focuses on empowering and
reclaiming the visibility of the LGBTQIA+ community in South Africa. Their powerful black-and-white portraits challenge stereotypes and highlight the struggles and triumphs of individuals often marginalized and subjected to violence.

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