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.

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.

Ghana’s decision to evacuate its citizens from South Africa amid rising xenophobic attacks has triggered a regional domino effect, with Nigeria now set to begin withdrawing its own nationals next week, according to Ghana’s High Commissioner to South Africa, H.E. Benjamin Quashie.

Speaking on Citi Eyewitness News, Quashie disclosed that discussions with his diplomatic counterparts suggest growing regional backing for Ghana’s stance, positioning Accra as the catalyst for what could become a continent-wide exodus.

“A lot of them are following what we have done. I am aware that Nigeria will be evacuating its citizens next week,” he said.

The High Commissioner’s remarks come in direct response to criticism from some South African figures, including politician Julius Malema, who has argued that Ghana overstated its decision to evacuate. Quashie’s disclosure that Africa’s most populous nation is preparing to follow Ghana’s lead appears to undercut those claims, suggesting that fears over foreign nationals’ safety are far from exaggerated.

Ghana began its evacuation exercise on Wednesday, May 28, with the first batch of 300 citizens arriving at Accra International Airport, where they were received by a government delegation led by Chief of Staff Julius Debrah and Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa. More than 800 Ghanaians have so far registered for voluntary evacuation following renewed fears over xenophobic attacks and insecurity targeting foreign nationals.

The evacuation exercise, announced earlier this month by Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, forms part of measures to ensure the safety and welfare of Ghanaians abroad. The government has indicated that returnees will receive transport support, reintegration assistance, psychosocial counselling, as well as access to employment and start-up support programmes.

With Nigeria’s evacuation now imminent, questions are mounting over whether other African nations with large diasporas in South Africa—including Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Mozambique—will similarly activate repatriation plans. The growing exodus threatens to deepen diplomatic tensions between South Africa and its continental partners, even as Ghana’s High Commissioner maintains that the evacuations are a necessary precaution rather than a hostile act.

For the hundreds of Ghanaians who have already registered to leave, the decision is deeply personal. Many have spent years building livelihoods in South Africa, only to feel forced out by rising hostility.

As one returnee from the first batch reportedly shared upon arrival in Accra, home now feels like the only safe option.