A South African anti-immigrant vigilante group called March and March raided a camp of more than 300 legally verified refugees outside the Department of Home Affairs offices on Che Guevara Road in Durban’s Umbilo area on Thursday, September 3, injuring several people and hospitalising at least four, in one of the most direct and violent expressions yet of the xenophobic tensions this newspaper has tracked in South Africa in recent weeks.
What happened
Around 100 members of March and March arrived for what the group billed as a community “clean-up” campaign; although the event’s own promotional poster explicitly stated no weapons would be permitted, participants showed up carrying sjamboks and sticks. The crowd broke through a police line, despite being outnumbered by police, metro police and private security personnel, and began moving refugees’ belongings out into the road. Stones and tear gas were deployed as the confrontation escalated, according to reporting from the scene. The camp’s residents, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda, have been camping at the site for more than three months after being displaced by earlier xenophobic threats elsewhere in the city; the Department of Home Affairs has itself verified that the refugees are living in South Africa legally. Civil society monitors observed police positioned between the two groups rather than actively preventing vigilante access to the camp, a detail rights advocates have cited as evidence of inadequate state protection for a population that had specifically sought official shelter and safety.
The broader crisis
Thursday’s raid is not an isolated event but the latest flashpoint in a months-long anti-migrant mobilisation that has already reshaped daily life for foreign nationals across South Africa. March and March’s campaign, which had earlier demanded all undocumented migrants leave the country by June 30, has continued to disrupt the economy well past that deadline: in Bellville, Cape Town, dozens of documented traders holding valid permits have abandoned a once-bustling market after sustained harassment, while Somali- and Ethiopian-owned spaza shops and cross-border trading hubs have reported similar closures. An Afrobarometer survey found seven in ten South Africans believe immigrants have a negative economic impact, and 85 percent believe authorities should reduce or halt refugee arrivals altogether, sentiment that helps explain why the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project has recorded more than 61 anti-migrant demonstrations in the past three months alone, a period coinciding with South Africa’s approaching November local elections, in which several parties are campaigning explicitly on curbing illegal immigration.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has appealed for calm and stated there is “no place for vigilantism,” while acknowledging widespread public concern over illegal immigration’s scale and impact, a carefully balanced position that has not, evidently, translated into the kind of robust protective policing refugee advocates say Thursday’s incident required. With a further vigilante-set deadline of September 30 looming, authorities face a narrowing window to prevent further escalation, and this newspaper notes that other African governments, including Nigeria’s, whose own formal complaint to the African Union over attacks on its citizens in South Africa this newspaper reported in an earlier edition, and Ghana, have already taken steps to evacuate or repatriate their citizens amid the deepening unrest.
