African countries including Kenya, Malawi, Lesotho and Zimbabwe have warned migrants in South Africa to be cautious and remain indoors due to attacks targeting foreigners, and Ghana has lobbied the African Union regional bloc for action.
South Africa has seen a wave of protests against illegal immigration which have been accompanied by instances of violence against migrants from other sub-Saharan African countries in South Africa, which has the largest economy on the continent.
Migrant rights groups say they are being scapegoated by South Africans who blame them for the country’s economic problems, namely high unemployment, which hovers at over 30% and disproportionately affects the Black population.
Ghana said on Wednesday it had facilitated the safe return of a citizen who was seen being targeted in a video that went viral while Nigeria also said it was repatriating at least 130 citizens after the deaths of two Nigerians.
Ghana’s statement did not identify the incident it was referring to, but one video circulating on social media showed a Ghanaian man being harassed by a crowd of people who demanded to see his papers and then questioned their authenticity. “We don’t want you here,” one woman says.
Mozambique’s President Daniel Chapo met South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday and called for calm, while Ghana’s government wrote to the African Union asking it to take up the issue.
The other countries issued their warnings in statements to their citizens.
Xenophobic attacks in South Africa have flared up periodically. The vigilante group Operation Dudula has led campaigns against undocumented migrants, including at times blocking them from entering public health facilities.
The government has condemned the violence while also expressing sympathy for its citizens’ frustration over illegal immigration.
“South Africans are within their right to protest against the spiralling illegal immigration challenge, but violence linked to those protests … is not acceptable and law enforcement must deal with the instigators of such violence,” a cabinet statement said on Thursday.
South Africa’s immigrant population has seen a steady rise over the past few decades, increasing from 2% of the total population in 1996 to 4% in 2022, according to a report from the national statistics agency Stats SA. Most of them are from the Southern African Development Community region, it said.
