Anti-immigrant protesters march after an unofficial June 30 deadline set by anti-immigrant groups for undocumented migrants to leave the country had passed, in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 9, 2026. Image@ REUTERS/Oupa Nkosi
Vigilante-style raids replaced simple marching in Johannesburg on Thursday, as anti-immigration groups pulled foreign nationals from their homes and handed them directly to police, deepening a crisis that has rattled communities and tested South Africa’s relations with its neighbours.
A Reuters reporter in Alexandra township watched as protesters broke down doors and forced their way into houses believed to be sheltering undocumented migrants, marching those they found, among them a Malawian woman and her small child, to waiting police vans. One man swept up in the raids, Zimbabwean national Total Mhlanga, insisted he had done nothing wrong. “I am a ZEP holder,” he told Reuters, referring to the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit that allows tens of thousands of his compatriots to live and work legally in the country.
The Alexandra raids were part of a broader pattern that has taken hold since protest leaders declared a “peaceful march” followed by “door to door” searches. “We are walking around doing door to door removing foreigners,” community leader Bongani Msomi said at the Alexandra demonstration. Similar scenes played out in Soweto, where marchers carrying sticks and flags set out to hunt for undocumented immigrants, and in Durban on the east coast, where another march took place the same day.
Thursday’s action was the latest in a campaign that has become a fixture of South African life since a June 30 protest deadline passed. Movement leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, a former radio presenter, has vowed the demonstrations will continue indefinitely, telling supporters in Durban that marches would go on “every Thursday, for the next six months,” until undocumented immigrants were gone. Her organisation, March and March, blames foreign nationals for the country’s economic troubles and is pushing for tighter borders, mass deportations, and rules limiting schools and clinics to South African citizens.
The government has pushed back against the group’s tactics without fully disavowing its grievances. President Cyril Ramaphosa has cautioned against scapegoating migrants for problems with deeper roots, and officials have repeatedly reminded citizens that enforcing immigration law is not their prerogative. Even so, Ramaphosa has acknowledged that South Africans’ concerns about illegal immigration, border management and pressure on public services are real and deserve to be heard, while warning that taking the law into one’s own hands amounts to vigilantism with no place in a constitutional democracy.
Police have responded to the pressure by accelerating enforcement themselves. Authorities have arrested more than 40,000 undocumented immigrants since the start of 2026, including over 7,400 in the past month alone, and officers have been deployed at recent marches for safety. A Johannesburg police spokesperson was not immediately available to comment on Thursday’s citizen-led detentions or the conduct of officers at the scene.
The toll of the crisis is mounting beyond South Africa’s borders. Malawi’s government said Thursday that more than 38,000 of its citizens have returned home from South Africa in recent weeks under an emergency repatriation drive, while over 60,000 people have similarly returned to Zimbabwe. Uganda and other neighbouring countries have reported smaller but significant waves of returnees amid the unrest.
Analysts warn the confrontation may not ease soon. South Africa’s Police Minister, Firoz Cachalia, has noted that the weekly protests are timed to run up to November’s local government elections, suggesting the movement’s demands may be entangled with broader political mobilisation ahead of the vote. Migrants make up roughly four to five percent of South Africa’s population, according to Statistics South Africa, a relatively modest share by international standards, even as anti-immigrant groups claim far higher, contested figures for undocumented arrivals.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah