South Africa experienced widespread disruption on Tuesday as fears of escalating anti-immigrant violence prompted a de facto shutdown across the nation.
Businesses remained closed, public transport stood idle, and many workers opted to stay home amid concerns that planned marches targeting foreign nationals could turn violent.
Thousands of foreign nationals from other African countries had already fled, while many more avoided their workplaces, ahead of a Tuesday deadline set by demonstrators for all undocumented migrants to depart.
The ultimatum was widely interpreted as a direct physical threat, echoing previous xenophobic protests in South Africa that have resulted in violence against immigrants and their possessions, often without distinguishing between those who entered legally or illegally.
Landlords in the main city Johannesburg and port city of Durban were evicting foreign tenants for fear of their buildings being vandalised, witnesses said.
“All these people, they were chased out by their landlords,” Mabako Majole, a leader of the Congolese community, said next to a crowd of 100 people sleeping on the street in downtown Durban. “All these people are legal. They have documents.”
Police and military were deployed to the streets to try to keep order during the marches in several cities, `which are expected to attract many thousands of mostly poor or unemployed South Africans. “The state has the duty and obligation to ensure that those that are demonstrating do so peacefully,” Deputy National Commissioner for Policing Tebello Mosikili told a news conference late on Monday.
The latest anti-immigrant sentiment, and a failure by police so far to protect victims of attacks, have tarnished South Africa’s post-Mandela reputation as a human rights defender, and strained its relations with the rest of the continent. Statements by politicians have also endorsed the marchers’ concerns, even while they condemned thuggishness.
“South Africans’ … deep concerns about illegal immigration … are real and they deserve to be `heard,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement on Monday. “But the right to protest … does not allow people to threaten or intimidate others, or to engage in acts of vandalism or violence,” he added.
As one of Africa’s richer countries, South Africa has long attracted migrants from elsewhere in Africa seeking a better life. The latest census figures from 2022 show there were 2.4 million foreign nationals who had immigrated in South Africa’s population of 62 million — less than 4% of the population.
Critics of the government say those figures do not count many others in South Africa without proper documents.
While immigration becomes increasingly polarizing in the United States and Europe, Africa’s leading economy is also confronting the issue.
In the last two years, South Africa has deported more than 100,000 people the home affairs ministry says were in the country illegally, while also stopping around 500,000 others at borders trying to enter without documents.
Those figures have strengthened the claims by anti-immigration groups of a larger problem.
Police are investigating recent attacks as anti-immigrant sentiment surges, including the killing of two Mozambicans in a small coastal town this month during unrest that also saw more than 50 homes set alight in an immigrant neighborhood, according to local authorities.
A Malawian man was allegedly stoned to death in another part of the country during anti-immigration protests last week, prompting another police investigation. Other attacks have been reported.
South Africa has a history of xenophobic violence as migrants from poor nations like Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi generally end up settling in impoverished communities in South Africa where unemployment and frustrations are high.
A spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres has said that Gutteres was “deeply concerned by reports of xenophobic attacks and acts of harassment and intimidation against migrants and foreign nationals in parts of South Africa.”
In 2008, more than 60 people — both South Africans and foreign nationals — were killed in a wave of anti-immigrant violence that spread from the biggest city of Johannesburg. There have been intermittent outbursts of violence against immigrants since then.
The latest tensions have led to strong criticism of South Africa by several African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana and Mozambique, who say their citizens are being targeted.
