South Africa has become a hostile place for undocumented migrants, as a deadline set by protesters for them to leave the country approaches.
“I am very scared and traumatised,” Esnat Joseph, a 36-year-old Malawian woman, told the BBC as she tried to comfort her crying one-year-old triplets.
She fled her home in an informal settlement in the port city of Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal province, seeking refuge in an open field where up to 7,000 foreigners – mainly Malawians – began gathering with their belongings two weeks ago.
“The people came to my house and told me: ‘You must leave. We don’t want you people to stay here any longer, so you have to go to your country.’ There were 10 and they were carrying weapons,” she said, describing how the group of South African men were holding machetes and whips.
“They cut my husband on his head and his neck. They were holding his neck like they wanted to kill him. Because of God he still survived, but he’s in the hospital.”
Many others at the field, where aid groups have been giving out blankets and food, report such door-to-door intimidation.
It follows a series of mainly peaceful protests this year led by the anti-migrant group March and March, opposition party ActionSA and others which have set 30 June as the deadline for undocumented migrants to leave.
Sticks in hand, the marchers have been chanting “Mabahambe” – a Zulu phrase meaning “They must go”.
As the countdown continues, President Cyril Ramaphosa warned South Africans on Tuesday that the “scapegoating of vulnerable people” was not the solution to country’s complex economic challenges.
Joseph came to South Africa three years ago and was working as a domestic servant before having her children.
Her legal status is not clear – she says she lost her passport and other paperwork in a robbery. She aims to go back to Malawi on one of the buses the Malawian consulate has been arranging with the help of donations for its desperate citizens to leave Durban.
Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria and Zimbabwe have also been organising repatriations by air or bus over the last few weeks – with about 3,500 foreigners volunteering to leave so far.
The South African authorities said the more than 500 Nigerians recently repatriated had been in the country illegally.
Arriving in Lagos last week after nearly nine years in South Africa, Benjamin, a returnee who only gave his first name, told the BBC: “South Africans don’t like foreigners, especially Nigerians. South Africa is not a place to be – it’s a place you can lose your life at any time.”
Protest organisers deny their actions are xenophobic. They say they are sick of other Africans abusing the system and, as March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma put it, “playing the victim card”.
“If you come into South Africa with a passport that allows you to stay for 30 days. When it’s 50 days, when it’s two years, when it’s five years, you know you’re breaking the law,” she told the BBC at one protest in Durban.
“We can’t have South Africa being turned into a refugee site for all failed African states… every country prioritises its citizens and we want the South African government to do the same.”
Latest figures show South Africa is home to more than three million foreigners, about 5% of the population – most from neighbouring countries in southern Africa.
But the statistics do not record the many more migrants believed to be in the country without papers – a bone of contention for the protesters.
Their anger is rooted in growing hardship as the country grapples with growing youth unemployment and economic inequality.
South Africa has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the world at 32.7%, according to Statistics South Africa, which recorded 350,000 job losses in the first quarter of 2026 – the majority of whom are young people.
However, the continent’s most-developed economy remains a magnet for citizens of poorer countries who risk their lives to go there to seek work such as security guards and domestic servants.
Protesters, like Mecha Ramorola, also point to the country’s strained public services with South African “people fighting for scarce resources”.
“We are struggling to get our children into schools. We are struggling to get our old people into hospitals,” Ramorola told the BBC during a march in the capital, Pretoria.
But there are fears these protests could lead to a repeat of the violence that broke out in 2008, when 62 people, including 21 South Africans, were killed in riots that forced thousands from their homes. There were also outbreaks of xenophobic violence in 2015, 2016 and 2019.
Last month the Mozambique government said five of its citizens had been killed in xenophobic attacks in Western Cape province. South Africa’s foreign minister disputed this, saying two Mozambicans had died and that the circumstances of their deaths were being investigated.
Videos on social media are fuelling the hostility towards foreigners.
In one, a Ghanaian man is harassed by protesters telling him to go home, which prompted Ghana to summon South Africa’s ambassador to demand better protection for foreign nationals.
Another widely shared one shows prominent protester Nkosikhona Ndabandaba, popularly known as Phakel’umthakathi and who has 1.4 million followers on Facebook, approaching a man standing by the roadside and asking him his nationality.
When he replies that he is Congolese, Ndabandaba – wearing his trademark Zulu headdress – tells him in a polite tone but without inquiring about his legal status: “30 June is the deadline, but it’s not that you have to leave on 30 June. Leave now.”
But foreigners living in the country legally say they are also being targeted – some are camping outside Durban’s Home Affairs office for protection.
“I have my own document that recognises my refugee status in South Africa, but all of us are still being chased away,” a Burundian woman, who was there with her four children, told the BBC.
“I am very afraid for my life. The children are afraid. There is no respect. When you pass by here, you are insulted. The children are insulted even at school,” she said as she wrapped herself in a blanket to shelter from the cold of the southern hemisphere winter.
Just going to the shops can be intimidating these days, a Malawian beauty therapist in Cape Town, who has lived in South Africa for 16 years without legal status, told the BBC.
She, her husband and their nine-year-old daughter had a scary incident in a taxi on the way to a shopping centre: “We were in an Uber, just the three of us, and we were being asked by an Uber driver where are your papers? Where are you from? You sound different.”
The beauty therapist says she can understand why Ramaphosa recently set out an action plan to deal with illegal migration – but stressed that human beings, legal or not, had a right to safety.
“My child is not even going to school because we’re scared. We’re terrified of what would happen now.”
In a special national address earlier this month, the president warned that no individual or group had the right to demand proof of nationality from people in public spaces and said government would act against them.
“There is no space for xenophobia, racism, sexism, Afrophobia or any other forms of intolerance in South Africa,” he said, explaining his coalition government’s five-point strategy to deal with the crisis.
These include refusing asylum claims from people who had travelled through other “safe” countries, the introduction of a quota for the naturalisation of citizens and extending the reach of digital IDs to non-citizens.
There will also be jail terms for employers who give low-paying jobs to undocumented migrants.
“You find an immigrant being employed in jobs that a South African will ordinarily not accept, or that pays less than what the government demands, because one, they’re desperate, two, they’re open to abuse in being short changed,” analyst Prof Shepherd Mpofu told the BBC.
Ramaphosa said efforts would also be made to crack down on corruption within the system.
A 36-year-old Malawian woman in Johannesburg, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, told the BBC that she came to South Africa on a visitor’s visa and had been bribing border officials to stamp her passport for a fee every couple of months without crossing the border.
“I have decided to go back home for a while and close down my hair salon because of threats,” she said, explaining that she feared for her young children’s safety.
The latest spike in protests comes as political parties seek support ahead of local government elections in November.
Some unscrupulous politicians have been using misinformation to fuel fear and anger over illegal migration – sharing old videos and confusing the narrative.
A debunked claim that South Africa has 15 million undocumented migrants, first popularised five years ago by ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba, who is campaigning to become mayor of Johannesburg, keeps resurfacing.
“Political parties are scraping the bottom of the barrel in trying to lie to people that all our problems are the migrants, and if we get rid of the migrants, then we’ll have no problems in South Africa,” says Sharon Ekambaram, a human rights lawyer and member of the Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia movement.
“This has been an ongoing phenomenon in South Africa and more recently, it has been associated with elections.”
The government keeps pushing back – its ministerial task team on migration saying this week that 40,000 illegal immigrants have been arrested so far this year for contravening the Immigration Act.
The public face of this – known as Operation New Broom – can be seen in downtown Johannesburg where for the last few months excavators have been demolishing informal corrugated iron shops set up on pavements.
Officials see the areas as possible “hot spots” for criminals and illegal migrants.
On the day I visited, Ethiopian migrants looked on at horror at the destruction – though they had been warned by the authorities.
Such measures as well as the protests are leaving many migrants feeling like the walls are closing in.
uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the country’s third largest party led by former President Jacob Zuma and which has a lot of support in KwaZulu-Natal, has not backed the deadline for migrants to leave – but endorses its sentiments.
“We all agree that undocumented migrants are breaking the law… They must leave our country peacefully without any violence or intimidation,” MK member Bonginkosi Khanyile told the BBC.
Nonetheless there is a tangible fear nationwide given the ominous warning from Ndabandaba, one of the main protesters.
“On 30 June I can’t control the people of South Africa,” he said.
Lines of vehicles are reportedly backed up at Mozambique’s border post with foreigners anxious to leave.
Back at the field in Durban, terrified Malawians – most, according to officials, without papers – cannot wait to get out.
When the first bus arrived to evacuate some of them on Sunday, the crowds chanted in Zulu “Siyahamba”, meaning “We’re leaving”.
