The South African government repatriated 2,745 foreigners in the week following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s pledge to crack down on illegal immigration, the country’s interior minister announced on Sunday (the 14th).
South Africa has been the target of xenophobic protests in recent months, and the recent looting of stores and attacks on foreigners have led citizens from Mozambique, Nigeria, Malawi, Ghana, and Zimbabwe to accept voluntary repatriation organized by their governments.
“We can report that 2,745 repatriations have been carried out during this period since the President’s intervention,” Interior Minister Leon Schreiber told the press, adding that the numbers could “change.”
On June 7, Ramaphosa acknowledged concerns regarding illegal immigration but warned that authorities would not tolerate anyone taking the law into their own hands.
The government clarified that the majority of those repatriated were in the country illegally.
Among the undocumented immigrants, South Africa has approximately 7,000 Malawians living on a vacant lot in the port city of Durban, in the eastern part of the country, according to the recently established interministerial committee on migration.
These citizens began to be transported out of the country on eight buses chartered by the Malawian government, with South Africa providing ten additional vehicles, the committee said.
South Africa is one of the continent’s wealthiest economies and has long attracted migrant workers from across the region, both legally and illegally.
With an unemployment rate exceeding 30%, the country faces recurring episodes of xenophobic violence, with new and serious incidents reported in recent weeks.
Crowds of South Africans armed with sticks, whips, and shields have been demonstrating in some regions of the country, demanding that foreigners without legal documents leave by June 30.
Tensions escalated following the deaths of two Mozambicans, according to local authorities, in the wake of a march organized on May 29 against undocumented migrants in the city of Mossel Bay, in the Western Cape province. Mozambican authorities, however, report five deaths.
More than three million foreigners live in South Africa, representing 5.1% of the population, according to the national statistics institute.
