In brief
- Police have arrested 900 people during the protests.
- Anti-immigrant groups have blamed illegal migrants for social and economic problems in South Africa.
Anti-migrant demonstrations have spread across South Africa, in a long campaign targeting undocumented migrants that has claimed lives and driven thousands to flee.
Police announced on Wednesday that most of the protests were peaceful, but that around 900 people were arrested on Tuesday.
The country’s deputy national police commissioner, Tebello Mosikili, said that of 120 marches, 108 were peaceful, while 12 required police intervention, and the reasons behind the arrests were immigration violations, public violence, harbouring undocumented migrants and robbery.
In a separate statement, police said that one person was shot dead late in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township, where residents were looting informal corner shops owned by foreign nationals.
In the port city of Durban, police have opened an inquest into the death of a foreign national who allegedly jumped from the eighth floor of a building on the eve of the protests, believing he was being targeted.
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In Clermont, outside Durban, Mohammad Abdul said his shop was targeted by a group of protesters.
“We are not illegal in the country, but they just started looting. I was scared and felt betrayed because we had 19 people employed here, but today they have no job,” he told Agence France-Presse.
What led to South Africa’s anti-immigrant protests?
The protests followed months of unrest that have drawn international criticism as foreigners have been driven from their homes and seen their businesses and property vandalised.
It marked a “deadline” that anti-immigrant campaign groups had set for undocumented migrants to leave South Africa. The deadline has been rejected by the country’s government, saying only authorities can enforce immigration laws.
In the days leading up to the deadline, at least three people, including one Malawian and two Mozambican nationals, have been killed. The Mozambique government said seven Mozambican citizens have died in recent days, with five deaths a “direct consequence of xenophobic attacks”.
South African police told Agence France-Presse that only two Mozambique nationals had been killed, both from injuries due to assault.
Around 25,000 foreign nationals, mostly Africans, have already left the country, according to police.
One of the most prominent groups opposing undocumented immigration is March and March. Its leader, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, demanded “for the next six months” the country’s “national resources to be used to take the illegal immigrants out of this country”.
“From building to building, they must go,” he said.
What are the anti-immigrant groups claiming?
Groups such as March and March blame undocumented migrants in South Africa for driving unemployment — a view shared by much of the country’s population. A survey conducted by the African research network Afrobarometer found that seven out of 10 South Africans view immigrants’ economic impact as negative.
Anti-immigrant groups also blame illegal migration for social problems in the country, such as high crime.
Ngizwe Mchunu, one of the protest leaders, told the Associated Press that he blamed illegal migration for a proliferation of illicit drugs in South Africa.
The numbers behind South African migration
The numbers are showing something else.
A national statistics office survey by StatsSA in 2023 showed there were 3.1 million migrants in South Africa, equivalent to about 4.1 per cent of the population, down from 5.6 per cent a decade ago.
Campaigners claim the number does not reflect undocumented migrants.
On the other hand, a recent study by researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg found that if all foreigners’ jobs were handed to unemployed South Africans, the unemployment rate would fall by only 6 per cent, from 43.6 per cent to 37.6 per cent.
A 2018 World Bank report also showed that for every migrant employed, about two jobs are created for South Africans through business activity.
The country’s police do not release data on the nationalities of convicts, but prison population figures from the justice department in 2017 showed that 11,842 foreigners were held in South African prisons, accounting for about 6 per cent of the prison population.
Is the country’s faltering economy playing a role?
The country’s economy has been facing severe challenges in recent years. Well over a third of the population is unemployed, which is among the world’s highest rates.
By some measures, South Africa has the highest inequality in the world.
Experts say that for some South Africans, the economic crisis has fuelled anger directed at migrants — but the reason might lie elsewhere.
“Immigrants are by no means the reason why services and the economy have faltered, but people remember what confirms their biases,” Loren Landau, professor of migration and development at the University of Oxford, told Reuters.
“What they don’t see is the foreigners investing, trading or providing skills the economy needs.”
— With additional reporting by the Associated Press and Reuters.
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