President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced a series of long-delayed immigration reforms, including dedicated courts and biometric digital ID cards, as South Africa moves to contain a fresh wave of xenophobic violence that has forced multiple African nations to repatriate their citizens and left at least five Mozambicans dead.

The measures, unveiled during a televised address on Sunday, June 7, 2026, come after years of recurring attacks on foreign nationals, with critics questioning why such reforms were not implemented earlier. Ramaphosa acknowledged that the government was now acting against “forces who are exploiting the concerns of our people about illegal immigration to further their own political, personal and criminal agendas.”

“We will and must not allow groups to use the legitimate concerns of South Africans to destabilize our country through inciting lawlessness and violence,” he said, without specifying which groups would be targeted or what immediate enforcement actions would follow.

Special Courts and Secure IDs

The President outlined several policy initiatives aimed at overhauling South Africa’s overwhelmed immigration enforcement system. Among them is the establishment of dedicated courts to handle immigration cases speedily, a recognition that the regular court system has been unable to process the backlog of matters involving undocumented migrants and asylum seekers.

Additionally, Ramaphosa announced the upgrading of the paper-based “green book” identity documents currently carried by South African citizens and legal migrants. These are being replaced with more secure, biometric digital ID cards, which officials hope will reduce document fraud and make it easier to distinguish between legal residents and undocumented individuals.

Both measures, while presented as forward-looking solutions, have been discussed by policymakers for years without concrete action. The latest wave of anti-immigrant protests – some of which turned violent – has finally pushed the government to announce a timeline for implementation.

A Belated Response

The timing of the announcement has drawn scrutiny. Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, and Mozambique have all begun repatriating citizens caught up in the violence. Mozambique confirmed that five of its nationals were killed.

Ghana’s Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has already begun assembling documentation to pursue compensation for Ghanaian evacuees who lost properties and businesses.

South Africa has a long and painful history of xenophobic attacks, with major outbreaks recorded in 2008, 2015, 2019, and now 2025. In each instance, foreign nationals – many of whom have lived and worked in the country for decades – have seen their shops looted, homes burned, and livelihoods destroyed. Immigrants are frequently blamed for high unemployment and crime, though economists and migration experts say such scapegoating ignores structural economic problems.

Ramaphosa himself acknowledged this dynamic in his address.

“Migrants are being blamed for problems that have arisen because of poverty and high unemployment,” he said.

He also cautioned citizens against taking the law into their own hands, warning them against stopping people on the streets to demand their identities.

“Enforcement of immigration laws is a responsibility solely for the state,” he said.

Root Causes and Regional Cooperation

Beyond the domestic legal reforms, Ramaphosa said the government would work with other countries to address the root causes of illegal immigration – a nod to the push factors in neighboring nations that drive migration to South Africa, Africa’s most industrialized economy.

But for the families of those killed, and for the thousands of foreign nationals now contemplating whether to remain in South Africa, the President’s words may arrive too late.

Analysts note that previous government pledges following outbreaks of xenophobic violence have often failed to produce lasting change. Whether the promised special courts and biometric IDs materialize, and whether they actually deter future attacks, remains to be seen.

For now, South Africa’s reputation as a regional leader has been tarnished once again, with neighboring governments forced to evacuate their citizens from a country that many once viewed as a land of opportunity.

For 40 years, Steven Mabugana called South Africa home. He arrived from the rural village of Faebom in Limpopo province as a two-year-old, raised by parents who worked as domestic workers in Verulam.

He built a business, employed hundreds, and poured his profits into caring for vulnerable children. But after decades of being treated as a perpetual outsider, he has closed his factory and joined a growing exodus of foreign-born investors fleeing xenophobic hostility.

“A warning to KZN,” Mabugana wrote in a social media post that has since gone viral. “Investors are leaving, jobs are going, Textile is dead, crime is thriving. I employed over 350 staff and closed.”

In an accompanying video, the clothing manufacturer detailed a lifelong pattern of alienation in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), a province that has seen recurrent waves of xenophobic violence targeting foreign nationals and even South Africans from other provinces. Despite being born in the country and having lived there for four decades, Mabugana said he was repeatedly labelled a “foreigner.”

“I’ve always been treated and referred to as a foreigner, been looked at as a foreigner,” he said in the video. “I’ve been called all the names. I’ve been called ‘Kwere Kwere’. I’ve been called Shangan. I’ve been called Nigerian.”

He added that the discrimination often came from law enforcement officers.

“Be it a roadblock, be it a stop and search… those comments and questions would come up.”

A Business Built, Then Abandoned

Mabugana started a clothing manufacturing plant, specifically a CMT (cut, make, and trim) operation, in Hammersdale, a town west of Durban, approximately eight to nine years ago. Within a short period, the business grew to employ around 350 staff, he said.

The monthly wage bill was approximately 1.2 million rand (about $65,000), money that flowed into hundreds of families in a community marked by deep poverty and intergenerational trauma.

Beyond employment, Mabugana launched an early childhood development (ECD) centre that cared for 150 babies, allowing mothers to bring their children to work.

He said he did not request government assistance:

“It was my vision. It was something that we felt that we needed to do.”

The context of Hammersdale, he explained, is shaped by violent political clashes between the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the African National Congress (ANC) in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which left many children orphaned.

“A child would escape under the bed and then you see an article: seven family members butchered, one survives. That baby has now become the young youth that I am having to deal with.”

Despite the surrounding social breakdown, including child-on-child rape and sexual violence that affected his own employees’ families, Mabugana said he embraced KZN as home:

“I saw all of the different races and cultures that we have. I totally embraced it.”

The Breaking Point

Mabugana did not specify a single triggering incident for his closure, but his warning comes amid renewed tensions in South Africa over the presence of foreign nationals in the small-scale retail and manufacturing sectors.

KZN, in particular, has experienced sporadic outbreaks of xenophobic violence, often targeting Somali, Ethiopian, Pakistani, and Zimbabwean shop owners, as well as other African migrants.

His case is distinct, however, because he is a South African citizen by birth—having been born in Limpopo—yet was consistently treated as an outsider due to ethnic and linguistic prejudice. He noted being told:

“You are in KwaZulu-Natal. Why can’t you speak isiZulu?” and “This is our province.”

The closure of his textile plant represents a tangible economic loss for Hammersdale. The textile and clothing sector in South Africa has long been a critical source of semi-skilled employment, particularly for women. Each factory closure accelerates job losses in a country with an official unemployment rate exceeding 32 percent.

A Wider Pattern

Mabugana’s experience reflects broader trends documented by civil society groups. The African Centre for Migration & Society at the University of the Witwatersrand has repeatedly found that xenophobic attitudes in South Africa are not limited to foreign nationals but extend to South Africans from other provinces perceived as “outsiders.” The term “Kwere Kwere” is a pejorative slang originally used against undocumented migrants but has been applied broadly to anyone deemed not belonging to the dominant ethnic group in a given area.

The South African government has repeatedly condemned xenophobic violence and launched public awareness campaigns. However, critics argue that enforcement remains weak and that statements from some political leaders have scapegoated foreign nationals for crime and unemployment.

Mabugana’s parting words in his video underscore the personal toll:

“With all of that, I saw it as home… but I was always reminded that [I did not belong].”

He has not indicated whether he plans to permanently relocate his business outside South Africa.

A wall against crime or against the poor? As xenophobic attacks rise, critics say Black South Africans are fighting the wrong enemies

CAPE TOWN — A controversial $7 million wall rising along Cape Town’s N2 highway has reignited a painful debate about race, poverty, and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa.

For a growing number of pan-African voices, the structure is a symptom of something deeper: a dangerous misalignment of priorities among black South Africans, who are simultaneously turning violent against fellow African immigrants while a resurgent settler class consolidates power.

The nearly 9-kilometer “N2 Edge” safety barrier, branded by critics as an “apartheid wall,” is designed to separate the highway leading from Cape Town International Airport from the sprawling, impoverished black townships of Nyanga and surrounding settlements. The route has long been known as the “N2 hell run” due to frequent hijackings, smash-and-grab ambushes, and occasional deadly attacks on motorists.

City officials, led by the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA), defend the R114 million (approximately $7 million) project as a necessary crime-fighting measure. Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said the road is used by “hundreds of thousands of people a day,” many of them local commuters who feel unsafe.

A woman was fatally stabbed at a traffic light just off the highway after leaving the airport complex in December 2025, an incident that accelerated the project’s approval.

But former anti-apartheid activist and cleric Allan Boesak has called the wall an attempt to “hide the poor.”

“They are trying to build a wall behind which they are trying to hide the poor,” Boesak said at a recent Ramadan community gathering. “They are trying to hide the fact that there is indeed a black Cape Town and a white Cape Town – a privileged Cape Town and a privileged-deprived Cape Town.”

A Wave of Xenophobic Violence

The wall controversy comes amid a resurgence of xenophobic and Afrophobic attacks across South Africa. In recent months, immigrants from Ghana, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, and other African nations have been assaulted, robbed, and driven from their homes in townships near Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town (as shown in many viral videos inundating social media feeds).

Shops owned by foreign nationals have been looted, and at least seven people have been killed in xenophobic mob attacks since the beginning of the year, according to civil society monitors.

South African police have made dozens of arrests, but community leaders say the violence reflects deep-seated resentment over unemployment, housing shortages, and crime, frustrations that are frequently misdirected at fellow Africans.

One pro-African unity commentator, whose analysis has circulated widely in response to the recent violence, argues that black South Africans are being manipulated by a familiar colonial playbook.

“The settler class has always been unified,” the commentator, Shannel R Oliver wrote. “When will Africa be?”

The U.S.-based commentator pointed to historical precedents:

“The Belgians turned the Hutu against the Tutsi. The British divided the Igbo and the Yoruba, the Fante and the Ashanti — specifically to crush unified African resistance. Today the targets are Xhosa and Zulu, township against township, African immigrant against South African.”

Strategic Assets and Secessionist Ambitions

The wall’s construction also coincides with renewed efforts by some members of Cape Town’s white minority to break the Western Cape away from South Africa entirely. A UK-born immigrant named Phil Craig has been lobbying Washington to support secession, reportedly comparing Cape Town’s strategic value to Panama and Greenland — two territories former U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to seize by military force.

Oliver described Craig’s campaign as “an invitation to a foreign power to invade a sovereign nation” and “treason.”

Cape Town generates approximately 10% of South Africa’s entire GDP. With Red Sea shipping lanes disrupted by conflict, the Cape Sea Route has emerged as one of the world’s most strategically valuable maritime corridors.

“Whoever controls Cape Town controls the southern gateway of an entire continent,” Oliver warned.

Two Crises, One Question

On the ground in Nyanga, residents say the wall does nothing to address their own vulnerability to crime. According to police statistics, the Nyanga Police Station recorded the highest number of robberies with aggravating circumstances in the country between October and December 2025, and the second-highest number of murders — a 29% increase from the previous quarter.

“Walls might stop bullets but it doesn’t stop crime,” said city councillor Jonathan Cupido of the GOOD political party. Cupido accused the DA-led city government of trying to “hide what we cannot fix.”

At the Cape Town Mardi Gras festival this month, activists carried banners reading “Homes not walls!” — redirecting attention to the city’s deepening housing crisis. Nyanga Community Policing Forum chairman Dumisani Qwebe urged authorities to focus on improving living environments “rather than thinking of building a security wall on the N2.”

Yet as black South Africans protest the wall and, in other moments, attack African immigrants, the commentator’s central question lingers: Who is the real enemy?

“European immigrants are flooding in, buying up land and driving up costs, welcomed by the same settler class building the apartheid wall,” he wrote. “While South African communities are turned against each other, the settler class has always been unified. When will Africa be?”

City authorities have not responded to accusations that the wall is racially motivated. The N2 Edge project is proceeding as planned, with completion expected in early 2027.