The writer hosts the annual Africa In the World ideas festival and is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
On June 30, thousands of Black South Africans marched in the streets demanding that fellow Black Africans, whom they have deemed “illegal”, must immediately leave the country. So far, the worst fears of widespread anti-immigrant violence seem to have been avoided. President Cyril Ramaphosa, roused at last from the craven inertia of his government, appeared to have brokered a late-night deal with some of the nativist leaders who have hitherto been violent in word and deed. Since 2022, dozens of migrants have been killed and at least 25,000 have been forced to flee the country in recent weeks, with many more awaiting repatriation.
The deadline for all of these “illegal” Africans to go back where they came from was the culmination of years of periodic convulsions, in which many immigrants have been killed by xenophobic mobs.