With tens of thousands thought to be arriving each year, the ‘southern route’ is becoming more perilous and extortionary
On the evening of 5 January, residents driving through the suburb of Mulbarton in south Johannesburg saw five young men in the street dressed only in underwear.
They were later picked up along with seven other young men by South African police. Police said two were in a car involved in a high-speed chase. A 47-year-old Ethiopian man was arrested and charged with kidnapping and failing to stop when police instructed him to. The 12 men, originally thought to be teenagers but said by police to be 22 to 33, were charged with being in South Africa illegally.
The incident was just the latest involving young Ethiopian men and boys escaping from suburban houses in Johannesburg, where they were allegedly locked up in dire conditions while people smugglers demanded money from their relatives to free them.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration estimated in 2024 that as many as 200,000 Ethiopians live in South Africa. Yordanos Estifanos, who has researched the “southern route” from Ethiopia to South Africa, said his “educated guess” was that tens of thousands arrived each year.
