Members of the Zulu regiment known as the ‘Amabutho’ chant slogans as they march during a demonstration marking an unofficial deadline set by citizen-led groups for undocumented foreign nationals to leave South Africa, in Durban, on June 30, 2026. [AFP]

South Africa is experiencing a replication of the 1992 film Sarafina, in which hordes of armed police officers constantly tailed relentless protesters, running roughshod over innocents and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Only this time, brutality on civilians is not being meted out by bloodthirsty, trigger-happy officers, but rather by thousands of natives who are calling for the departure of African immigrants in a not-so-rare case of Afrophobia.

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