Gansbaai (South Africa) (AFP) – Hundreds of foreigners fearing for their lives have taken shelter in community halls on South Africa's south coast, saying mobs of locals were going door-to-door telling them to leave the country.
Issued on: 03/06/2026 - 10:48
4 min Reading time
Mostly nationals of Malawi and Mozambique, many told AFP they had fled their homes at the weekend and spent nights in the mountains and bush, before making their way to the small-town community centres."They said 'you are a foreigner, you don't belong in South Africa, so you must go'," Mozambican Thomas Vincent Baloyi told AFP in Gansbaai, around 110 kilometres (70 miles) southeast of Cape Town."I said, 'no, I got documents to be here in South Africa'. They didn't want to know," said Baloyi, who has been in the country for nearly 16 years working in construction and gardening. "They just chased us away like dogs... that is unfair because, actually, I'm a human being," the 32-year-old said. "We just stayed in the bush until six in the morning."Weeks of mostly small protests across South Africa against illegal foreign nationals exploded into violence at the weekend in the town of Mossel Bay, 250 kilometres up the coast, where 55 shacks were torched.
