South Africa deploys forces as anti-migrant protests result in 900+ arrests

On Tuesday, June 30th, South Africa erupted. Thousands of police officers and soldiers fanned out across the country as anti-migrant protests that had been building for weeks finally reached their stated deadline—a date set by vigilante organizers as the moment when all undocumented immigrants were expected to leave or face consequences. Reuters documented at least 120 separate marches that day. In a dozen of them, the crowds turned violent enough to require police intervention, and by the end of the day, more than 900 people had been arrested.

The largest demonstrations gathered in Durban, where thousands of protesters dressed in traditional Zulu clothing moved through the streets chanting "Abahambe"—"They must go" in Zulu. Some carried clubs, whips, spears, and shields. One demonstrator, speaking to a reporter outside an apartment building believed to house migrants, explained the logic with an unsettling politeness: "We know they live there. We know these buildings well. They have to leave. We've told them they must leave before 30 June. We're telling them politely. We're not going to kill them. They just have to leave." Another protester described a shift in his own thinking, saying that he had initially doubted the marches would accomplish anything, but then began noticing that undocumented migrants were actually leaving in response.

The human toll became visible almost immediately. By Wednesday morning, at least four people were dead. One was a foreign national who jumped from the eighth floor of a building in Durban, reportedly in fear of being targeted by the crowds below. Thousands of other migrants, some with help from their home governments, fled the country before the deadline passed. The displacement was not limited to those who left voluntarily. Landlords evicted foreign tenants to protect themselves from being targeted. Businesses shuttered their doors ahead of the marches to avoid vandalism. In Soweto, protesters looted the informal shacks where migrants had been living. The streets filled with people who had nowhere to go.

Jacinta Ngobese, a leader of March and March, one of the main organizing groups behind the protests, framed the campaign as just beginning. When asked about the violence and property destruction, she said the organization could not be held responsible because it could not be "in every single community" controlling how people behaved. But her vision for what came next was explicit: "For the next six months, we are asking for our national resources to be used to take the illegal immigrants out of this country. From building to building—they must go." She called for mass deportation, for the government to spend the coming half-year removing anyone who had not already fled.

The lived reality behind these demands emerged in the story of Jackson Makungwa, a Malawian who had been living in South Africa illegally for two years. He could not renew his work permit through official channels, so he remained undocumented despite holding a job and building a life. After a fellow Malawian was attacked by seven men, Makungwa decided to leave. But he could not take his child with him—a child born to a South African mother—because he had no travel documents for the baby. "It's not like I want to be illegally in the country," he told a reporter, "but the system doesn't allow me to be here legally." He left his child behind and crossed the border.

What unfolded on June 30th was not spontaneous. It was the culmination of weeks of organizing, the enforcement of a deadline that had been publicly announced, the mobilization of thousands of people around a single demand. The police and military deployment was a response to a crisis that had been telegraphed in advance. Yet the speed and scale of the displacement—the evictions, the suicides, the families torn apart, the thousands on the streets—suggested that even those who had organized the deadline may not have fully anticipated what their success would look like.