South Africa braces for anti-migrant deadline as Ramaphosa warns vigilante groups
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa warned anti-immigration activists against taking the law into their own hands as a self-imposed June 30 deadline for undocumented foreigners to leave the country drew near.
The deadline was set by anti-migrant campaigners, not the state. Groups including Operation Dudula — whose name roughly means “force out” in Zulu — and the movement March and March have spent months blocking foreign nationals from public hospitals, stopping people in the street to demand documents, and targeting foreign-owned businesses. The pressure has already prompted migrants, many of them Malawian, Zimbabwean and Mozambican, to leave.
Ramaphosa has repeatedly condemned the attacks as the work of “opportunists who are exploiting the legitimate grievances, particularly those of the poor,” and his government has stressed that June 30 is an ordinary working day with no official ultimatum behind it. The gap between that reassurance and the campaigners’ threats is the immediate risk: an unofficial deadline amplified on social media can drive real displacement and street confrontations regardless of what the law says, leaving the state to manage consequences it did not authorize.