“Groups of anti-immigration South Africans seized foreigners from their homes in Johannesburg on Thursday and handed them to police in a hardening of protests that have sown fear in communities and strained ties with some countries,” reports NBC News.
These “anti-immigration” protesters are black, not white. They are mostly Zulu — the largest ethnic group from South Africa’s black majority — and are led by a Zulu, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma. They are expelling people from South Africa people who came from poorer nations in Africa.
In Johannesburg’s Alexandra township, a Reuters reporter saw protesters breaking down doors and entering houses where they believed undocumented immigrants were hiding.
They escorted the people to police vans where they were taken away, including a woman and a small child from Malawi. Another man who was apprehended by the marchers told Reuters he was in the country legally.
“I am a ZEP holder,” said the Zimbabwean national, Total Mhlanga, referring to the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit, which allows tens of thousands of nationals to live and work in South Africa.
Malawi’s government says 38,000 of its citizens returned from South Africa in recent weeks. 60,000 have returned from South Africa to neighboring Zimbabwe.
Malawi is much poorer than South Africa. Per capita income is about $600 in Malawi, versus $7500 in South Africa. Malawi is one of the poorest countries on Earth.
Some Ethiopian immigrants to South Africa have been murdered. In late April, a series of targeted attacks occurred in the Johannesburg Central Business District, including a shooting inside a restaurant that claimed the lives of several Ethiopian nationals.
Demonstrations and threats demanding that undocumented foreigners leave the country have led to the looting and closure of many Ethiopian-owned shops. Thousands of immigrants, including Ethiopians and Mozambicans, have been displaced, and tens of thousands have been repatriated or have fled South Africa following warnings and protests from local groups.
Saudi border guards have slaughtered hundreds of Ethiopian migrants.
Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa, recently had a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. That increased the number of people fleeing Ethiopia. Some who left for other countries were lured with promises of good jobs in South Africa or Kenya, only to be used as slave labor in other African countries, or extorted for more money from their families by human smugglers.
Hundreds of Ethiopians have died of starvation, overwork, or other causes in countries that are even poorer than Ethiopia, like Malawi, or nearly as poor, like Zambia. Some have been murdered by smugglers who extorted what they could before killing their captives. Zambia’s police service investigated “the deaths of 27 men, all believed to be Ethiopian nationals, whose bodies were found” in 2022 “dumped by the roadside near” Zambia’s capital, Lusaka.
