A foreign national had just opened his tuckshop for the day when a group aligned with the anti-foreigner marches arrived at his door and demanded to know why he dared to trade. He told them plainly that he was closing. It made no difference. As he moved to shut his own shop, they raised sjamboks and began to strike him — not to warn him, but to humiliate him into submission.

He turned his back to protect himself, and they struck him again from behind. “Close this place,” they kept shouting, even as he repeated that he was already closing. His compliance changed nothing. The beating continued regardless of what he said or did.

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This account is drawn from documented firsthand accounts gathered directly through Makumbirofa Farms’ advocacy network.

Is this still a peaceful march, or has it become something else entirely — the open abuse of foreign nationals on South African soil, carried out in broad daylight, with no one stepping in to stop it?

No one is arresting these men. No South African leader has called for the arrest of those instigating this violence.

The human cost of this unrest has been severe. Multiple fatalities among foreign nationals have now been confirmed across several provinces, alongside South African citizens who were mistaken for foreigners, attacked, and had their homes looted. In Mossel Bay alone, dozens of foreign nationals have been injured and tuckshops stripped bare in a single wave of violence. Tens of thousands of foreign nationals are reported to have fled the country altogether.

What Is Actually Happening

Multiple provinces — including the Western Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and Limpopo — have recorded confirmed deaths, arson attacks, and mass displacement connected to anti-foreigner unrest in recent months.

Foreign-owned tuckshops and informal traders have been repeatedly targeted, looted, and shut down by force.

Note: the full cumulative national death toll and displacement figures cited by advocacy groups and community sources have not been independently confirmed by a single official body, and estimates vary between government, foreign missions, and civil society. What is confirmed is that fatalities, injuries, and mass displacement have occurred in multiple separate incidents across the country.

There is no law and order where this is allowed to continue unanswered. There is no leader ordering the arrest of those breaking the law in plain sight.

No investor will build a factory, and no tourist will spend a single rand, in a country that cannot guarantee the basic safety of the people within its borders. A nation that cannot protect the vulnerable — foreign or local — has nothing left to sell the world but its reputation, and that reputation is being destroyed in real time.

“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.”

Exodus 23:9

South Africa is fast becoming Cry, the Beloved Country once again. The question that remains unanswered is simple: is there a single leader, a single minister, willing to say that this must stop — and mean it enough to act?