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Foreign governments whose citizens are deported from South Africa for breaching immigration laws could soon receive a bill for the expense, as Pretoria toughens its stance on undocumented migration in a move that echoes the hardline deportation policies pursued by US President Donald Trump.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) confirmed the plan, which comes at a time of mounting anti-immigrant sentiment, public demonstrations against undocumented foreigners, and growing calls for stricter border controls. Officials argue the policy is overdue given the financial strain enforcement places on the state. According to figures from the Department of Home Affairs, deporting foreign nationals by road already costs the country more than R60 million annually, while a single chartered flight to return deportees to their countries of origin can cost up to R5 million.
Speaking to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), DIRCO spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said the government had observed that several countries had recently shown they were capable of organising the return of their own citizens, which made cost recovery a reasonable next step. “Moving forward we will also be billing countries for their foreign nationals who have to be deported or who are in our criminal detention facilities and have to be deported back into their countries. At least now we can see that there’s capacity for countries to extract the foreign nationals who have fallen foul of the law,” said Phiri.
The shift follows a wave of voluntary repatriation drives launched by African governments, including Ghana, Malawi and Mozambique, to bring their nationals home from South Africa amid fears of xenophobic violence, with Ghana understood to be the first to organise a mass evacuation. Phiri suggested this demonstrated capacity could now be leveraged into a more structured financial arrangement between Pretoria and the affected countries, noting it was something the Department of Home Affairs intended to pursue as government policy.
Tensions with Ghana’s diplomatic mission, however, appear to have deepened. Phiri said South Africa was unhappy with how the Ghanaian government had handled certain allegations, insisting the matters had already been dealt with through existing diplomatic channels, including engagements with Ghana’s High Commission. “We must say we are quite disappointed by how the Ghanaian government continues to articulate these problems. We do believe we have been speaking to them through the diplomatic channels that we have with them, including the High Commission, where we have consistently seen them repeating issues that have been clarified, but most disconcertingly, not providing evidence for their own claims,” he said.
Among the contested claims, Phiri singled out a statement by Ghana’s High Commissioner to South Africa that a Ghanaian national was receiving intensive care after a violent assault. “We have seen the High Commissioner saying that there is an individual in South Africa hospital in ICU who has been beaten to a pulp. We have asked the High Commissioner for further evidence around where the individual is and the circumstances leading to them ending up in hospital. Nothing has come forward,” he added.
The proposed billing system forms part of a broader enforcement push unveiled by President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this week, as anti-foreigner marches and frustration over unemployment continue to escalate. His package of measures includes prison sentences for employers caught hiring undocumented workers, the establishment of dedicated courts to fast-track deportation cases, and a nationwide biometric register intended to curb identity fraud. Ramaphosa also appealed to South Africans to refrain from taking the law into their own hands.
The urgency behind the crackdown is underscored by the scale of unauthorised crossings the country is grappling with: the Border Management Authority reportedly intercepted more than 450,000 attempted illegal border crossings over the past year alone.
On the ground, the human cost of rising xenophobic tension has become increasingly visible. The BBC reported that several hundred African migrants fled their homes in the Overberg region of the Western Cape last weekend after reports of intimidation, following the killing of two Mozambican nationals in Mossel Bay. Many sought refuge in community halls, on beaches and in nearby mountains, while others opted to return home altogether, about 140 migrants joined organised bus convoys bound for Malawi and Mozambique.
Adding further pressure to an already volatile situation, anti-migrant groups have set a June 30 deadline for undocumented migrants to leave South Africa, a demand that has heightened anxiety among foreign communities even as several African governments scramble to coordinate evacuations for their citizens.
It is worth noting that the billing proposal has not yet been formally adopted as government policy, DIRCO has previously described cost recovery as one option among several still under discussion as part of broader efforts to strengthen cooperation with countries whose citizens face detention or deportation in South Africa.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah