Glenda Banda crossed back into Zambia with her baby strapped to her back, carrying little more than the clothes she was wearing after a decade of building her life in South Africa.
Banda told DW that within days, everything she had worked for was gone, after the local mayor sent young men to her home to pressure her landlord into evicting her family.
“I came with only the clothes on my body. I had no clothes to change into,” Banda said, describing how the family was forced to abandon all their possessions overnight.
“The landlord was forced to put all our belongings outside and lock the house,” Banda told DW. “We had to flee and leave everything behind.”
Banda is among more than 100 Zambians who returned to their homeland after anti-migrant protests, some of which turned violent, demanding that foreigners be expelled from the country.
Bernadette Mwelwa tells a strikingly similar story, having returned to Zambia after more than 20 years in South Africa, losing both her livelihood and the life she had carefully constructed there.
“Even if you were a refugee or an asylum seeker, as long as you were a foreigner they didn’t want us there,” Mwelwa said, reflecting on the hostility she experienced before fleeing.
“The mayor took the keys to my salon,” Mwelwa told DW, adding that her husband, a Congolese national, stayed behind to manage their supermarket, which was subsequently looted and destroyed.
Nigeria, Mozambique, and Ghana have all raised formal concerns about attacks on their citizens living in South Africa, with the situation drawing mounting international attention.
Nigeria denounced the deaths of two of its citizens on a Sunday, warning that foreign nationals are being “unduly targeted,” while South Africa’s main police watchdog confirmed it had opened an investigation.
Mozambique’s government said five of its citizens were killed “as a direct consequence of the xenophobic attacks” that followed a march against undocumented migrants in the South African town of Mossel Bay at the end of May.
South African police disputed that account, saying only two Mozambicans died after being assaulted following the march, and declined to confirm any link to anti-migrant sentiment.
Ghana said one of its citizens was fatally wounded in a shooting during the demonstrations, though South Africa denied the killing was protest-related and accused Ghana of spreading misinformation.
Several African governments, including Nigeria, Malawi, Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, have since organized voluntary repatriation flights and buses to bring their citizens home.
South Africa has experienced recurring outbreaks of anti-foreigner violence since 2008, typically coinciding with periods of high unemployment, poverty, and public frustration over deteriorating government services.
Loren Landau, a senior migration researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand’s African Centre for Migration and Society in Johannesburg, argues that migrants are frequently scapegoated for broader economic and governance failures rather than being genuine sources of the problems attributed to them.
Zambia’s Vice President Mutale Nalumango told journalists in Lusaka that authorities would assess individual cases to determine what assistance could be provided, stressing that the priority was the safety of returning citizens.
“The most important thing for the Zambians is to stay safe and come back home. Home is home,” Nalumango said, acknowledging the difficult circumstances facing those who had left behind years of work and investment.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa rejected characterizations of South Africans as inherently xenophobic, framing the crisis as a complex governance challenge requiring political rather than social solutions.
“South Africans are not xenophobic. South Africans are Africans, and they want to live with other Africans peacefully,” Ramaphosa said in a national address, calling on leaders to address the underlying challenges posed by migration.
The International Organization for Migration’s Chief of Mission for South Africa, Yitna Getachew, warned at a symposium at Wits University in Johannesburg that the risk of further escalation remains urgent and immediate.
“We are deeply worried about the situation, and we are fully committed to supporting the government,” Getachew said, adding that the United Nations is calling for de-escalation and calm as tensions continue to simmer.
Psychologist Lisa Thompson-Smeddle, based in Stellenbosch, cautioned that physical departure from South Africa does not resolve the deeper psychological wounds suffered by those who experienced xenophobic violence.
“Returning home after experiencing xenophobic violence does not automatically bring healing, safety or health,” Thompson-Smeddle told DW, noting that many survivors continue to struggle with grief, anxiety, and trauma long after displacement.
For Banda and Mwelwa, the broader policy debates over migration and governance feel far removed from their immediate reality of rebuilding shattered lives from scratch in Zambia.
