Police fail to stop vigilantes from targeting immigrants in Alexandra, Johannesburg

Alexandra is a township in Johannesburg, South Africa. Its population is primarily low income, Black and includes many immigrants from neighbouring countries.

This article documents a recent anti-immigration demonstration, if you can call it that, in which protestors went door-to-door demanding to see people's identification (South Africa issues ID cards for its citizens). Where South Africans rented out their property to migrants to run spaza shops (micro scale corner stores), the protestors "ordered" those South Africans to stop doing so. Where migrants owned businesses, the protestors told them to shut down those businesses.

The article includes comments by some South Africans in the community who are increasingly skeptical of the anti-immigration protestors. There are three things these protestors are doing which could cause a backlash even from citizens who don't care about immigrants much:

– they racially profile people from border area ethnicities, like Venda and Tsonga people, who sometimes look like people of the same ethnicity in neighbouring countries

– they demand to see people's identification documents, and in some cases even conduct "tests" like asking you to count to 3 in Zulu (which is only one of South Africa" official languages and which not everyone can speak); this is annoying, and given South Africa's history, has drawn comparison to the Apartheid era pass laws and pencil tests; it has never happened to me, but I personally know South African citizens from even larger ethnic groups who have been asked to prove their citizenship

– they come to people's homes and businesses as a mob, and issue "orders" about who people can rent to or work with etc; many people seem not to like the personal aspect of these actions

In addition to all of this, there have been some stories about extortion, crime and break-ins in the wake of the protests.

I call these people protestors, but that is not quite the right term. Vigilantes might be better, at least for those going door to door.

The article documents the conduct of the police, who failed to intervene in preventing bad behaviour by these people, and at one stage withdrew entirely from the scene.

The major anti-immigration march happened on June 30, but the groups behind it have promised that every Thursday is going to involve marches, presumably on a small scale, until all illegal immigrants have been removed.

The government has condemned people taking immigration law into their own hands, but they have been much more focused on condemning illegal immigration and ramping up deportations in order to hopefully show anti-immigration voices that they are serious about cracking down on illegal immigration and that radical action is therefore unnecessary.

The current Home Affairs Minister, Leon Schreiber (DA), has promised rapid digitisation of the Home Affairs system and has already introduced digital identity management. In addition the ministry has ramped up deportations.

There have been some reports that the deportation facilities are overcapacity and are not being properly supplied, raising fears that there could be a humanitarian crisis if Home Affairs does not properly manage those facilities.