South Africa struggles with migrant exodus and economic unrest

When a vehicle carrying donated diapers pulls into a muddy open field outside a mosque in Durban, Cassim Ibrahim quickly steps forward and asks the driver not to unload them.

There are thousands of people gathered here and supplies are scarce. If the diapers are handed out too quickly, he worries, a stampede could follow.

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The 30-year-old tailor spends most of his day calming disputes, translating between South African officials and frightened migrants, and answering a constant stream of questions from people desperate to know when they will finally be allowed to leave.

“I haven’t slept in days,” Ibrahim said, gesturing toward rows of makeshift shelters fashioned from blankets, plastic sheeting and cardboard. “Where would I sleep?”

What began two weeks ago as a group of about 70 Malawians seeking refuge has swelled into an unofficial camp of roughly 10 000 people outside a mosque in Sherwood, a suburb north of Durban. More arrive each day carrying bags, blankets and children.

The gathering has become one of the clearest manifestations yet of mounting anti-migrant sentiment in South Africa. Led by the March and March organisation, which started out staging protests at schools and hospitals on the false grounds that foreign nationals were being given preferential treatment over locals, the vigilante group has been holding daily anti-migrant demonstrations for the last two months. It has demanded that all foreign nationals leave the country by June 30. The people assembled here are looking for a way out.

With the end of the month approaching, tensions are escalating. False information about Malawians being moved to a holding facility in Pretoria – instead of back home – resulted in a riot at the Sherwood Camp last Wednesday, culminating in police firing rubber bullets and stun grenades into a crowd.

As the threat of violence percolates, the camp also tells a larger story about the strain on Southern Africa’s economic order.

For more than a century, South Africa served as the region’s economic magnet, drawing workers from Malawi, Lesotho, Mozambique and elsewhere to its mines, factories and cities. Wages earned in South Africa supported families and created migration routes that have endured for generations. Compared to Malawi’s $18 billion economy, for example, South Africa’s is worth roughly $480 billion economy.

Yet as South Africa grapples with economic stagnation, high unemployment and failing public services, that dynamic is increasingly under pressure.

While the governments of Ghana, Mozambique and Nigeria have repatriated a total of about 2,500 people, many thousands more Malawians responded to their state’s efforts earlier this month, creating a humanitarian crisis that neither South Africa nor Malawi appear fully equipped to manage. Malawi’s government acknowledged this week that it had run out of money for buses to continue moving its citizens home. Officials said the operation was facing “unprecedented financial, logistical and humanitarian demands” and appealed for support from businesses, aid organizations and private citizens.

As Malawi’s government-sponsored buses stopped arriving, South African authorities stepped in to initiate deportation proceedings.

The Department of Home Affairs, Immigration Services, the Justice Department and the police have set up temporary offices at the Sherwood site to verify the status of migrants and put them through virtual court hearings.

About 2 000 people have been processed so far. This, too, is going slowly: Officials are only able to handle about 60 people per day.

“None of these people are legal. All of them are undocumented and illegal in this country,” said Cyril Mncwabe, Home Affairs’ manager at the camp. “This process has been a tiring one. I am feeling bad for my officials because everyone is trying their best but the situation here is very difficult to manage.”

Meanwhile, conditions inside the camp continue to deteriorate.

Volunteers from nearby Muslim communities cook meals over open fires. There is only one portable toilet for every 1,000 people. Healthcare workers from a lone mobile clinic move between families treating dehydration, exhaustion and illness. Flies gather around piles of rubbish. Children run barefoot through muddy pathways.

At least three people have fainted in one day. Twelve women have given birth at the site in the past two weeks.

Twenty-eight-year-old Madanitso Banda stands in line for her deportation hearing with her one-year-old child strapped to her back.

“I have been here for about a week,” she said. “My baby has gotten so sick and it has been painful for me to see her in this condition.”

Banda arrived in South Africa five years ago after her husband found work and sent for her.

“We had to run here because we were being chased away,” she said of the camp. “They said foreigners must go back to where they come from. We don’t have the money to go back to Malawi.”

Many around her have similar stories.

Some say landlords forced them out after threats linked to the June 30 deadline. Others fled after seeing foreign nationals assaulted during protests. Some simply saw the camp as their best chance of receiving government assistance to return home.

The rise of March and March comes as South Africa struggles with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, with more than 13 million people out of work. Economic growth has averaged roughly 1% for more than a decade, while infrastructure failures, electricity shortages and weak growth have eroded living standards and made it more difficult to find opportunities.

Professor Jo Vearey of the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand said migrants are increasingly being blamed for problems created by policy failures.

“Even if you removed every foreign national from the country, it’s not going to suddenly create the number of jobs needed to address unemployment,” she said.

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Moreover, foreign-born residents only account for an estimated 5.1% of South Africa’s population.

“That is not an influx and it is not particularly high compared to global standards,” said Economist Duma Gqubule. “People are making up statistics on the number of migrants in the country and this misinformation is geared toward inciting xenophobia and violence.”

For Ibrahim, who has been waiting his turn to get on a bus to go home for two weeks, the crisis feels deeply personal.

His mother is Malawian. His father is from Lesotho. He arrived in South Africa 13 years ago and found work as a tailor, earning about R5,000 ($303) a month in good periods. The shop where he worked has now closed because of the protests.

If he goes to Lesotho, he says, he could earn around $36 a month as a herdsman.

“I can’t survive on that,” he said.

Like many at the camp, Ibrahim followed a path established long before he was born.

His parents’ generation looked to South Africa as a place where hard work could provide opportunities unavailable elsewhere in the region. He had hoped to save enough money to buy a television, generator and solar panels for his family home in Malawi, but those ambitions have now been replaced by uncertainty.

As darkness settles over Sherwood, new arrivals continue to trickle through the gates carrying children and belongings wrapped tightly together with tape.

Standing among thousands of people waiting for a future that remains unclear, Ibrahim says he hopes wealthy Malawians will help fund more buses home.

If they come, he will return to Malawi and try to rebuild his life through seasonal fishing work. If they don’t, he isn’t sure what will happen next.

© 2026 Bloomberg