Bishop Raphael Bahebwa has lived in South Africa for 26 years. He arrived as a refugee from the DRC, built a life, and is now hiding because people have threatened to kill him for advocating foreign nationals' rights. His story is the story of South Africa's migration politics in 2025: documented or not, the paperwork doesn't matter when the anger is aimed at being foreign. March and March, an anti-immigration movement that has led protests across South Africa this year, set September 30 as a deadline for undocumented foreign nationals to leave the country. The deadline has no legal authority — the government has said explicitly that private citizens cannot deport anyone. But deadlines don't need legal force to generate violence. On September 3, March and March members confronted refugees outside the Durban Refugee Reception Centre; at least four people were injured. Earlier this year, six refugees working in salons near Durban's Warwick Street Market were beaten by men carrying sticks, two hospitalized. The state's response is a study in misdirection. Between June 14 and August 20, authorities processed 86,596 foreign nationals for deportation and repatriation, with Malawians the largest group, followed by Zimbabweans and Mozambicans. The government says 90 percent had entered illegally and 95 percent crossed outside official ports of entry. Officials warn private groups against vigilante enforcement while simultaneously signaling that the immigration crackdown is intensifying — giving March and March's narrative legitimacy even while rejecting its methods. For months, hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers slept on the pavement outside the Durban Refugee Reception Centre on Che Guevara Road — men, women, children from the DRC, Burundi, Uganda, Mozambique, and Tanzania. They had fled their own communities fearing antiforeigner attacks and came to a government office seeking safety. Instead, the pavement became their home for roughly four months, dependent on civil society for food. One man with tuberculosis reportedly died at the camp. In mid-September, the government cleared the makeshift camp by offering a choice that was barely a choice: return to the communities you fled, or accept transport to Lindela, a government-run immigration detention facility in Gauteng, hundreds of kilometres away, historically associated with deportation. Of those at the camp, 274 were bused to Lindela. About 150 stayed behind in Durban, looking for somewhere to live in the same neighbourhoods they had escaped. The pattern is not new. Xenophobic violence swept South Africa in 2008, killing dozens and displacing thousands. Further waves followed in 2015. What is new is the electoral context: local government elections are set for November 4, and migration has become a central campaign issue. Bahebwa himself connects the dots plainly — 'It is not going to end on September 30. It has to do with the elections.' Kafuti Muyumba, a DRC business owner and refugee community representative, says many Congolese cannot return home: 'There is still war there.' The structural dynamic is clear. Politicians benefit from anti-immigration rhetoric during an election cycle. Vigilante groups like March and March provide the threat that makes government crackdowns look moderate by comparison. Refugees bear the cost — losing businesses, homes, physical safety, and access to police protection. Muyumba alleges police told migrants they could not open cases because they were foreigners. The documented-undocumented distinction the state and March and March both invoke collapses on the street, where hostility targets anyone perceived as foreign. South Africa is running an extraction cycle where political capital is manufactured from the vulnerability of people who have nowhere else to go.
