Abahambe! Africans unwelcome in Africa

Members of the Zulu regiment known as the ‘Amabutho’ chant slogans as they march during a demonstration marking an unofficial deadline set by citizen-led groups for undocumented foreign nationals to leave South Africa, in Durban, on June 30, 2026. [AFP]

South Africa is experiencing a replication of the 1992 film Sarafina, in which hordes of armed police officers constantly tailed relentless protesters, running roughshod over innocents and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Only this time, brutality on civilians is not being meted out by bloodthirsty, trigger-happy officers, but rather by thousands of natives who are calling for the departure of African immigrants in a not-so-rare case of Afrophobia.

Behind the attackers are police officers who are frantically trying to protect property and lives, thwarting looters at every corner. At the height of the protests, on Tuesday, June 30, police arrested over 900 people as more than 20 civil society groups overran streets in a final march to purge the country of undocumented migrants. While most of the marches tried to maintain peace, a few were characterised by high levels of violence. June 30 was the unofficial deadline for the departure of these unwanted foreigners.

Change of tune

Initially, it looked like an innocent, harmless push by natives to drive out illegal, undocumented immigrants, some of whom overstayed their visit and took advantage of the country’s hospitality. In 2023, South Africa was home to more than 3 million immigrants (5.1 per cent of the country’s population) according to the Migration Statistics Report based on the 2022/23 Income and Expenditure Survey.

However, reports have emerged from local media, and video clips circulated on social media, of legitimate business and home owners being flogged and even killed by irate protesters, amid accusations of collusion with corrupt officials to deny native South Africans job opportunities. Properties have been vandalised and houses burnt down as even properly documented immigrants are ordered to depart.

The rage is palpable and the protesters have not been backing down. In altercations with some of the documented migrants, protesters urged them not to listen to the government and to disregard its stance on legal migration and to ensure they booked flights out of the country before the militia could unleash havoc on them.

A taxi drives past anti-xenophobia banners during a demonstration organised by the activist Collective Visual Intifada at Yeoville Market in Johannesburg on June 29, 2026. [AFP]

One of the protesters said to cameras during one of the latest marches: “We’re tired of you. You are coming into our country, taking our women, taking our jobs. We’re doing the same job, but you’re driving a car while I’m not driving one. We are tired. Abahambe!”

Abahambe! means ‘They (or you) must go!’ in isiZulu, the most widely spoken language in the country.

Repatriated

As the agitation for the departure of migrants hit a crescendo, repatriations began in earnest in late June, with South Africa’s neighbours quick to facilitate the exit of their nationals. The anti-immigrant protesters gave a final deadline of June 30 for the departure of undocumented immigrants, an extension of an earlier ultimatum for some nationalities to have left by the 24th of the same month.

According to South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA) Commissioner Dr Michael Masiapato, about 9,000 Malawians and 3,000 Zimbabweans were repatriated or deported through the Beitbridge Border Post, with 900 Ghanaians and 300 Nigerians also processed through OR Tambo International Airport just days before the deadline.

South Africa, one of Africa’s biggest tourist destinations, beloved by the rest of the continent, has been bleeding some of its most dedicated investors and hardworking immigrants who had, in pursuit of greener pastures, found a home away from home.

For a while now, South Africa has not been in the good books of the United States either, with President Donald Trump repeatedly accusing the country of mistreating minority whites, including through executing a genocide. The United States slapped South Africa with a 30 per cent tariff on its exports and boycotted the G20 meetings hosted by the country earlier in the year.

Amid claims that the United States was putting pressure on allies to support its vendetta and distance themselves, South Africa and France retracted an invitation it had extended to South Africa to attend the G7 Summit held from 15 to 17 June 2026 in Évian-les-Bains, Haute-Savoie, France. Kenya, which had earlier hosted the Africa Forward Summit, was invited as a replacement.

In the meantime, South Africa continued to deny claims by Trump that there was a white genocide, just as another fire was building in its belly.

Déjà vu

The film Sarafina was shot at a time when South Africa was battling Apartheid, the racial segregation under the all-white government of South Africa which dictated that non-white South Africans (a majority of the population) were required to live in separate areas from whites and use separate public facilities, and contact between the two groups would be limited, as described by the African Union Human Rights Memorial Project (AUHRM).

Investigative authorities and restorative justice organisations such as The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that over 21, 000 people were killed during Apartheid, and that millions were displaced.

As it ran for almost 50 years, the black South African population found itself devoid of opportunities, pushed to the brink of despair, clutching at straws. The best education, homes, healthcare and jobs had long been a preserve of the whites, and black Africans settled in shacks and never really got going.

Many years since the collapse of Apartheid, a brutal attack on Africans who have sought a livelihood, and have gained a foothold, in South Africa mirrors the agonising battles of years gone by, with destruction of property, looting and attacks on individuals rampant in the streets of major cities across the country. The country remains scarred by the activities of the white regimes that frustrated black Africans, creating a ripple effect whose results can be seen in the happenings in the country today.

The protesters decry the entry of other Africans and their ability to, subsequently, take up opportunities within the economy with ease, relegating many natives to unemployment and, consequently, a continuation of the state of suffering that Apartheid inspired, something they fear could be passed down generations until the country seeks dependence from immigrants, relegating natives to the position of spectators in the running of their own country.

Institutional failure

South Africa, the largest economy in Africa with a nominal GDP of approximately $400.26 billion, has the largest income inequality in the world, with a Gini index above 60, according to the World Population Review.

Official records show that South Africa's official unemployment rate is at 32.7 per cent. The latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) shows that approximately 8.1 million South Africans remain officially unemployed.

Thus, the sentiment among protesters is that African foreigners, who have nailed jobs in the country, are responsible for the natives’ problems and that their exit would leave opportunities open for the locals.

According to Prof Naituli Gitile, a professor of management and leadership at Multimedia University of Kenya’s Faculty of Business and Law, stubbornly high unemployment rates, deterioration of public services and widening inequality breed frustration.

“If political leaders fail to provide convincing solutions, immigrants often become convenient scapegoats,” he says.

As millions struggle daily to find work amid high crime rates, stirring hate becomes easy. “In such an environment, it becomes easy for populist politicians and criminal groups to redirect public anger away from failed policies and towards foreign nationals.”

South Africa is a truly diverse country. Over 81 per cent of its citizens are black Africans, with about 8.2 per cent Coloureds, 7.3 per cent Whites and 2.7 per cent Indians, according to the 2022 South African census. Their national anthem, perhaps one of the finest representations of the country’s diversity, which was very recently blasting across stadia in the United States while the South African national football team played in the 2026 World Cup, has five languages in it: Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English.

From as early as 1984, hate and fear of African immigrants, Afrophobia, have been experienced to a great extent within South Africa. Back then, during the War of Independence and Cold War-era Civil War in Mozambique, tens of thousands of Mozambicans who fled into South Africa faced discrimination and persecution.

Following the election of a black majority government in 1994, documented cases of mistreatment of refugees increased. Initially, the focus was always on undocumented immigrants, until it was not. In 2008, for example, about 80 foreigners were attacked and killed in what was largely reported to be xenophobic motivations.

Prof Naituli says that while every sovereign state has both the right and the duty to regulate its borders, there is an important distinction between enforcing immigration laws and attacking innocent people because of their nationality.

“Conflict, corruption, dictatorship, economic collapse and poor leadership push people across borders in search of safety and livelihoods,” he says.

According to him, the events in the country are disturbing and profoundly ironic.

“During apartheid, Africans from across the continent stood with South Africans in their struggle for freedom. Independent African states offered diplomatic support, military training, scholarships and sanctuary to South African liberation movements. Today's violence against fellow Africans therefore carries a painful historical contradiction,” Prof Naituli says.

Questions have been asked about the government’s handling of the threats by different groups of protesters, with warnings of violence, especially to documented immigrants, not accorded the seriousness they deserved, according to some observers. Some have accused the government of being complicit and of allowing chaos without much effort to intervene.

With the deadline of June 30, announced by the marchers, fast approaching, President Cyril Ramaphosa, through a newsletter, said, inter alia:

“Some foreign nationals who live in South Africa are here lawfully. They work, study, raise families, invest in our economy and contribute positively to our society. They, too, are entitled to the protection of our laws and our Constitution. South Africa is a constitutional republic governed by the rule of law. The exercise of rights by any citizen in a constitutional democracy cannot be determined by intimidation, threats or ultimatums.

It must be determined through democratic institutions, evidence and the rule of law. Where there is criminal conduct, those responsible will be held accountable and the law will take its course. We must reject the idea that acts of violence or intimidation are justified based on a grievance, for political reasons, or because those who commit such acts claim they were somehow provoked.”

Sad recollections

Post-repatriation, many Africans who have spoken to the media, and who still look scarred, narrate horror stories of their time in the face of unsmiling goons who shooed them out of places they had called home for years.

A Nigerian woman said, “I’ve been in South Africa for 11 years and my husband for 12 years, and it has been struggle after struggle. No job, no permit, no healthcare for foreigners.”

She explained how, during one of her deliveries, she was made to clean blood off the hospital floor.

A repatriated Kenyan, Wambugu, told the media that some South Africans’ penchant for treating black immigrants as unwelcome foreigners would backfire on them, as investors would flee to more habitable economies.

“Even white people are not coming out on the streets. I am asking foreign investors who have been thrown out of South Africa to all come to Kenya.”

A Ghanaian man, who has lived for two decades in the country, was shot in his shop. Videos circulated of a car being torched in the middle of a street, as governments, including Nigeria’s, say they will seek compensation from South Africa for their citizens who have left the country following these protests.

Amid mass repatriations, and with scared families huddling in street corners and camping outside homes, fearing for their lives, some of the protesters justify their crackdown on immigrants, claiming to be working to liberate their country.

South African activist and leader of the March and March Movement, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, said, in a radio interview, that student visas were being exploited unfairly by many foreigners, with a Nigerian Uber driver, who was brutally killed in South Africa by a passenger, initially coming in as a student and never attending school.

The exit of panicked foreigners has excited some local activists. Dr South Africa wrote on X, “My cousin got a job that was previously occupied by a Zimbabwean chef. The success of 30 June.”

Prof Naituli says that if this trend continues, it threatens the very idea of African unity that inspired the founders of the Organisation of African Unity and now underpins the African Union and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

“Regional integration cannot flourish where ordinary Africans fear crossing borders,” he says. “Governments that create jobs, strengthen public services, fight corruption and reduce inequality leave far less room for politics built on resentment. Immigration systems must be credible, transparent and efficiently enforced. Citizens are more likely to remain calm when they believe the state, not vigilantes, is managing migration responsibly. Political leaders must stop using foreigners as convenient campaign tools.”

Accelerated economic development and basic civil education could go a long way in halting these protests and inspiring a return to peace, he says.