South Africa\u2019s President Cyril Ramaphosa moved to diffuse growing anti-immigrant tensions on Sunday with a speech on national television. The country has seen weeks of protests and violent attacks, amid calls for a crackdown on immigration.<\/p>\n
“We will not be fooled or influenced by social media campaigns that spread misinformation, fake news and lies about people who are in our country,” Ramaphosa says. “We must be concerned that anti-foreigner sentiment is at times accompanied by tribal and ethnic slurs, insults and attacks aimed at other South Africans. This is not acceptable.”<\/p>\n
Anti-immigrant groups say\u00a0foreign nationals in South Africa\u00a0illegally are exacerbating the country\u2019s high unemployment and putting pressure on public health and education services.<\/p>\n
But Ramaphosa said iIllegal immigration is not the cause of all of the country’s economic challenges:<\/p>\n
“There are other causes. The answer must be faster economic growth, greater investments, industrial expansion, infrastructure development and the creation of new jobs.”<\/p>\n
South Africa’s coalition government placed a new focus on the issue of immigration after it was formed in 2024 and says it has deported over 100,000 people in the last two years who were in the country illegally.<\/p>\n
Ramaphosa said there had been \u201cweaknesses\u201d in the way South Africa has managed migration and promised the government would take \u201cdecisive\u201d action now.<\/p>\n
“The Department of Home Affairs, the Border Management Authority, the South African Police Service, and other law enforcement agencies have been — and will — intensify the process of identifying and deporting undocumented foreign nationals residing illegally in South Africa,” he said.<\/p>\n
But he warned that authorities would not tolerate anyone taking the law into their own hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly authorized government officials can act against violations of our law,\u201d Ramaphosa said, warning that some groups were \u201cinciting\u201d tensions.<\/p>\n
Anti-migrant protest groups have said they’ve set a June 30 deadline for foreign nationals who are in South Africa illegally to leave and have requested talks with the government.<\/p>\n
Ghana has already repatriated around 300 of its nationals and said more will be offered the chance to return home because of what it called threats against them. A number of other countries including Nigeria and Malawi have announced they will\u00a0repatriate\u00a0their citizens.<\/p>\n
Mozambique’s government said that\u00a0five of its citizens\u00a0were killed in what it referred to as “xenophobic attacks” in the town of Mossel Bay on South Africa’s south coast.<\/p>\n
South Africa has a history of violence against migrants, including in 2008 when more than 60 people were killed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa\u2019s President Cyril Ramaphosa moved to diffuse growing anti-immigrant tensions on Sunday with a speech on national television. The country has seen weeks of protests and violent attacks, amid calls for a crackdown on immigration. “We will not be fooled or influenced by social media campaigns that spread misinformation, fake news and lies about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10082,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"AFP","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,2377,30],"tags":[218,122],"class_list":["post-21073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-migration","category-southern-africa","tag-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21074,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21073\/revisions\/21074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}