South African Refugees Live in Fear as Anti-Immigrant Deadline and Local Elections Approach

Anti-immigrant protesters marched in Durban, South Africa, on June 30, 2026, amid calls by anti-immigrant groups for undocumented migrants to leave the country.

Durban, South Africa – Bishop Raphael Bahebwa is in hiding, afraid he could be attacked for speaking out for the rights of foreigners in South Africa. “I am in hiding now because they say they are going to kill me for speaking about the rights of foreigners,” he told Al Jazeera. Bahebwa has lived in South Africa for 26 years, after arriving as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In that time, he has watched antiforeigner sentiment flare repeatedly in the country he came to call home, but he says this year feels different.

A September 30 deadline declared by March and March, an anti-immigration movement that has led protests across South Africa this year, has renewed fears of violence among migrant communities. The group has called for undocumented foreign nationals to leave South Africa and has warned of further demonstrations if its demands are not met. For Bahebwa and other refugees in Durban, however, the distinction between documented and undocumented migrants offers little comfort. They say the hostility they experience on the streets rarely begins with a request to see their papers.

South Africa will hold local government elections on November 4, in a campaign in which migration has become an increasingly prominent political and social issue. For months, Bahebwa was among hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers who slept on the pavement outside the Durban Refugee Reception Centre on Che Guevara Road. Many were from the DRC and Burundi, with others from Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania. They said they had fled their communities because they feared antiforeigner attacks and sought safety outside the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) office.

For roughly four months, men, women and children slept outside, exposed to the elements and dependent on civil society organisations and volunteers for food and other necessities. “It has been very tough,” Bahebwa said. “Never before have I experienced something like this.” Some of the migrants told Al Jazeera that conditions became desperate, with irregular access to food and medication, and reported that one man who had tuberculosis died while living at the camp. Al Jazeera has not independently established the circumstances of his death.

On September 3, members of March and March confronted refugees and asylum seekers living outside the centre. Violence broke out, and police intervened, leaving at least four people reported injured. At another protest days later, police officers stood between the two groups, forming a barrier as tensions rose. March and March has described its mobilisation as a campaign against undocumented immigration, crime and deteriorating conditions in South African communities, rejecting accusations that their campaign is xenophobic.

Bahebwa said documented and undocumented migrants alike have been caught in the hostility. Earlier this year, six refugees working in salons around Durban’s Warwick Street Market were beaten by men carrying sticks, according to public-interest news outlet GroundUp, and two were hospitalised. Bahebwa alleged that the migrants also struggled to obtain help from the authorities after earlier attacks. Police have not publicly responded to that specific allegation.

In mid-September, the government moved to clear the makeshift camp, giving refugees a choice: return to the communities they had fled or accept temporary accommodation at the Lindela facility in Gauteng, hundreds of kilometres from Durban. Lindela is a government-run immigration detention facility used to hold people facing deportation. The choice divided them. On September 15, 274 people were transported by bus from Durban to Lindela, while about 150 others chose to remain in Durban and began trying to find alternative accommodation.

For those who stayed behind, leaving the pavement did not resolve their problems. Kafuti Muyumba, a small business owner from the DRC and a representative of the refugee community, said many were afraid to return to neighbourhoods where they had built businesses and lives. “People are afraid,” he said. “Even the police allow March and March violence.” Muyumba noted that many refugees had lost their livelihoods during the months of upheaval. Recalling previous outbreaks of xenophobic violence in 2008 and 2015, he said those memories make the rhetoric surrounding September 30 difficult to dismiss. Police have stated there are no plans to change their normal policing approach because of the deadline and that any protesters will be expected to remain within the law.

In response to ongoing protests, the South African government said it had intensified its immigration enforcement. Between June 14 and August 20, authorities processed 86,596 foreign nationals for deportation and repatriation, according to the government’s Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration. Malawians made up the largest group, followed by Zimbabweans and Mozambicans. Government data indicates 90 percent of those repatriated had entered South Africa illegally, while 95 percent crossed the border outside official ports of entry. The government says the operations form part of a broader effort to strengthen border management and enforce immigration law, while officials have repeatedly warned private groups against taking immigration enforcement into their own hands.

March and March’s September 30 deadline has no legal authority, and the government maintains that common citizens cannot deport anyone from South Africa. However, deadlines do not need legal force to create fear. For the refugees who spent months sleeping outside the DHA office in Durban, September 30 is another uncertainty layered on top of many others as they navigate relocation or attempt to find new homes in the same communities they once fled. Bahebwa, who has spent more than a quarter of a century in South Africa, says he is hiding and does not know what September 30 will bring. “They are scapegoating us as foreigners,” he said. “It is not going to end on September 30. It has to do with the elections.”