South Africa’s Anti-Immigrant Violence Slows SDG Goals, Rips Apart Africans’ Free Movement Call

Some of the over 56,000 returnees the Malawian government brought back home are assisted upon arrival. Credit: Thomas Kachere/IPSby Charles Mpaka (blantyre, malawi)Tuesday, August 25, 2026Inter Press Service BLANTYRE, Malawi, August 25 (IPS) - When the Malawian government announced the conclusion of the repatriation of its citizens trapped in anti-immigrant violence against foreign Africans in South Africa on August 12, 2026, it had brought home 56,723 nationals, according to data from the Department of Disaster Management Affairs. It marked the conclusion of what had been four months of unusual traffic into Malawi, as almost 900 buses ferried home thousands of people, some returning decades after they left for South Africa in search of a better life.Rahim Ali, from the Dowa district in central Malawi, travelled on one of the buses late in July.“It’s a relief, and I’m grateful to the government for bringing me safely home,” he said in a phone interview with IPS from his village on August 2. “Things were terrible in South Africa, and many of us had no way out of that violence.”Rahim, 33, left for South Africa in June 2019, two years after the death of his father and almost four year...