Kenyans fearing for their lives have joined other African nationals who are fleeing South Africa to escape xenophobic attacks that have gone out of control.
According to Diaspora Affairs Permanent Secretary Roseline Njogu, the government has repatriated 26 Kenyans with another 64 Kenyans expected to land home on June 30th.
This came as vigilante groups in South Africa protesting against the presence of other Africans in the country took to the streets on June 30.
The vigilante operations were previously conducted by members of the Dudula gang led by one of its founders who is known as Zandile Dabula. This gang went door to door, hospital to hospital kicking out black people who are not South African citizens from their houses, businesses, and even from their hospital beds.
However, this gang appears to have grown with various groups such as March & March of black South Africans now targeting any black person who does not hold South African citizenship, regardless of whether they are in the country legally or illegally.
In videos that have gone viral on social media, black South Africans have been recorded attacking businesses and demanding to be hired regardless of whether they qualify for the jobs or not, and regardless of whether they have relevant education or not.
According to a report that appeared on the BBC, Nigeria flew out 269 of its citizens on June 29th, bringing to around 600 the number evacuated by the country.
In May, Ghana evacuated close to 400 people over xenophobic attacks that were being perpetuated on its citizens. Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe also repatriating their citizens by plane or bus. Malawi is reported to have repatriated close to 7,000 nationals from South Africa.
According to the BBC, anti-migrant marches were authorized by the South African government in Durban, Johannesburg and other major cities.
READ MORE: SA deports Kenyans processing white South Africans’ refugee applications for US
The protestors claim that black people from other African countries are finishing up their medicines, and using their health facilities for free, taking up their jobs, and even marrying their girlfriends.
They also claim that other Africans who are in the country are the reasons why their children have become addicted to drugs such as cocaine and crystal meth.
“To tell you the truth, I hate [African] foreigners. How I wish they could just pack and go and leave our country,” a woman known as Dimakatso Makoena told the BBC in a previous interview. She blames Africans who moved to the country from Sub-Saharan countries for her son’s addiction to crystal meth.
“He started smoking drugs when he was 14 years old,” she says, explaining how her son often goes out to steal things to feed his habit. One day he had tried to take some power cables to sell when he got electrocuted and burned.”
In an interview with the BBC, Dudula’s leader Dabula had first claimed that she and her gang are chasing illegal Africans from their country. But when she was challenged that many of her gang’s victims were legal immigrants, she claimed that regardless, ‘original’ South Africans needed to be prioritized over other black people in the country.
The xenophobic protests against migrants have seen black people being attacked and killed in broad daylight. In late May, for instance, two Mozambican men were killed in Mossel Bay, a coastal town in the Western Cape.
A Malawian man was also killed by black locals at an informal settlement in the city of Pietermaritzburg, near Durban city. In 2008, 62 people were brutally murdered in the country for being black and from other African countries.
