Makumbirofa Farms (Pty) Ltd — Advocacy & Human RightsJohannesburg, South Africa  |  22 June 2026

⚠ Breaking Report — Xenophobic Violence | KwaZulu-Natal ⚠

Advocacy & Human Rights

South Africa Massacred Six Malawian Lives

Six innocent nationals are dead. Pietermaritzburg has become a killing field — and the state has chosen silence over justice.

By Collen Makumbirofa  |  Safe Pathways Coalition  |  Makumbirofa Farms (Pty) Ltd

6Malawians Massacred

~40Foreign Nationals Killed

0Arrests Reported

0Marches Suspended

Six Malawian nationals have been massacred in Pietermaritzburg in what analysts and human rights defenders are now calling one of the most egregious episodes of xenophobic butchery South Africa has yet produced. They were not combatants. They were not criminals. They were human beings — and they were slaughtered on South African soil while the state looked away.

Those who knew these victims are now asking the hardest of questions: will justice ever find those responsible? The answer, according to a growing chorus of observers, is almost certainly no. The perpetrators will likely walk free. The cases will likely gather dust. And the President — the man with the constitutional power and moral obligation to act — will likely continue performing the same double-sided political acrobatics that have defined his response to this crisis from the very beginning.

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These marches are not creating jobs. They are not lifting a single poor South African out of poverty. They are bloodthirsty processions — and they are being allowed to continue.

— Collen Makumbirofa, Makumbirofa Farms (Pty) Ltd

South Africa’s President has demonstrated, through persistent inaction, that he is not willing to suspend the so-called marches that have served as the staging grounds for looting, arson, and murder. These are not peaceful assemblies exercising a democratic right. They are organised violence with a body count. Close to forty foreign nationals have now been killed. Forty lives. Forty families shattered. Forty human beings who cannot be replaced.

What have these marches produced for the South African poor who participate in them? Not a single job. Not a repaired school or a working clinic. Not food on the table nor rent in the landlord’s hand. What they have produced is grief — grief that now stretches from Pietermaritzburg to Lilongwe, from Johannesburg to Blantyre, from Cape Town to the villages of Malawi where mothers are being told their children are never coming home.

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The Question That Cannot Be Answered

Close to forty foreign nationals have been murdered in this wave of violence. They are gone.

Where are we going to get them back?

We cannot. That is the unbearable truth South Africa must be made to confront.

A nation that allows its streets to run with the blood of African migrants while its head of state plays political chess is not a nation governed by law — it is a nation governed by impunity. South Africa, under this administration, has become a lawless terrain where the badge of citizenship from a neighbouring country is treated as a death sentence. The President knows what these marches lead to. He has been told. He has seen the bodies. He has received the reports. And still, the marches continue.

History will not be kind to those who chose political survival over the lives of the most vulnerable people on this continent. Justice may move slowly. But it moves. One day, accountability will catch up with those who stood aside and let this happen. One day, the record will be read in full — and the silence of leaders will be as damning as the violence of the mobs.

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Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.

Proverbs 31:8

🚨 Urgent Safety Warning — Foreign Nationals in Informal Settlements

If you are a foreign national currently living in an informal settlement in South Africa, your life may be at risk. Please act now.

We urge you to relocate away from informal settlement areas immediately, wherever it is safe to do so. Safe Pathways Coalition can assist in connecting you with your country’s embassy and relevant protective services.

Rescue missions are being planned. Pray for us as we prepare. You are not alone.

Contact: [email protected]  |  [email protected]

To the international community, to Malawi’s government, to every human rights body that draws a salary to defend human dignity: your silence in the face of this massacre is complicity. These six Malawian souls deserved protection. They deserved justice. They deserved to live. The very least they deserve now is your voice.

We will continue to speak. We will not be silenced by political convenience or the discomfort of powerful men. As long as African migrants are being hunted on South African soil, we will report it, we will name it, and we will demand that the world respond.

CM

Collen Makumbirofa

Founder & Director, Makumbirofa Farms (Pty) Ltd (Reg. 2024/367872/07)
Advocacy Journalist & Human Rights Defender | Johannesburg, South Africa
Coordinator, Safe Pathways Coalition
www.makumbirofafarms.co.za  |  [email protected]  |  [email protected]

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