Anti-migrant protests draw thousands across South Africa

S'thembile Cele, Paul Vecchiatto and Ntando Thukwana, Bloomberg News on Jul 5, 2026

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Thousands of people joined anti-migrant protests in South Africa on Tuesday, watched over by a massive police contingent that was deployed to prevent violence and intimidation.

The demonstrations in Johannesburg, Pretoria, the port cities of Durban and Cape Town, and other towns were called by an organization known as March and March to demand that all undocumented foreigners leave the country. The rallies, which marked the culmination of weeks of protests that have displaced thousands of mainly African expatriates, were mostly peaceful bar a few isolated incidents.

The protests have stoked fears of xenophobic violence on a scale that erupted in South Africa in 2008, when 62 people were killed and more than 50,000 others were forced to flee their homes in a wave of attacks. Five years ago in July, 354 people died in riots in the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces — the two biggest contributors to national economic output — after protests over the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma.

“The police did extremely well in enforcing the law with restraint,” Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia said in a televised media briefing Tuesday evening. “There was a lot of expectation of a repeat of July 21 that didn’t happen. We had peaceful protests and effective law enforcement across the country.”

The rand reversed earlier losses to trade 0.2% stronger at 16.384 per dollar by 9:17 p.m. in Johannesburg on Tuesday, after traders added hedges against short-term swings in the currency. Overnight implied volatility for the rand-dollar pair jumped, while the premium of options to sell the South African currency against the greenback climbed to a three-month high.

“A repeat of July 2021 unrest was highly unlikely,” but there was some relief in the financial markets that they were largely peaceful, said Tom Gale at Standard Bank Group Ltd.’s global markets trading desk.

While policing operations had been largely effective, several individuals were arrested in connection with looting incidents, the police ministry said in a statement. The army was deployed on a contingency basis in areas where the situation was getting out of control, including the Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville, Cachalia said.

The police will maintain vigilance and operational preparedness through Tuesday night and in the months leading up to local government elections scheduled to take place on Nov. 4, the minister said.

Africa’s biggest economy has long been a magnet for people in neighboring countries such as Zimbabwe and Malawi, who are drawn by better job prospects and access to healthcare and education than in their own countries.

The demonstrations, widely seen as a manifestation of the anger among some locals who see foreigners as competitors for economic opportunities and state services, are set to continue. March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma said protests will be held every week to press its demands for undocumented foreigners to leave.

“As long as they do not leave, every Thursday we will march,” she said in remarks broadcast by the Kaya FM radio station. Cachalia said that linking the protests to the local government elections adds a “political dimension” to the anti-migrant demonstrations.

“That suggests to me that there are some involved in mobilizing sentiment driven around the grievances that are genuine, but that there is a political dimension,” he said. “This may be part of a project to mobilize politically as a lead-up to the local government election.”

Surveys conducted by the national statistics agency show more than 3 million immigrants are present in South Africa, which has a population of about 63 million. It doesn’t provide data on how many of those immigrants are undocumented. Poor border management and a lack of enforcement of immigration laws has enabled many foreigners to enter and stay in the country illegally.

The protests are taking place against the backdrop of a widening global backlash against migration. U.S. President Donald Trump has made mass deportations a central pillar of his second term. Immigration has also become one of the most combustible political issues in Germany and the U.K.

At least six African governments repatriated citizens before Tuesday’s protests.

Hundreds of Zimbabweans were gathered at a repatriation center in Cape Town on Tuesday morning, waiting for buses to take them home. Many had been sheltering under a tent since Sunday, where aid workers handed out eggs, sandwiches and yogurt as police looked on.

“They were chasing us. They don’t want to see us,” said Nadia Nyamayaro, a 36-year-old domestic worker from Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, describing how she was driven away from Strand outside Cape Town by members of the community where she had been living. “We don’t have work permits to go to work, so it’s better to go home.”

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