When a rock hurled by anti-migrant protesters shattered the window of Babatunde Ramoni’s Durban home one bright afternoon, he knew his time in South Africa was up. The Nigerian national, who came to the ‘rainbow nation’ 15 years ago, quickly sent an urgent message to the Nigerian consulate in Johannesburg asking to be airlifted back home.
Since March, a resurgence of anti-migrant violence has swept across South Africa. The anger has been particularly aimed at Black migrants from elsewhere on the continent who have been blamed for unemployment, crime and drug abuse. Migrants from South Asian countries have also been targeted. In April two Nigerian migrants, Amaramiro Emmanuel and Ekpenyong Andrew, died in separate incidents involving South African security forces.
According to the thinktank Xenowatch, these kinds of attacks resulted in 669 deaths, 5,310 looted shops, and 127,572 displaced people between 1994, when apartheid ended, and 2024. During the same time period, many of South Africa’s majority Black population have not seen a fundamental improvement in their living standards.
