Illegal Immigration in South Africa: Where Things Stand in 2026

Illegal immigration in South Africa has moved from talk radio and community WhatsApp groups into government policy, courtrooms and, in several tragic cases, the streets. Over the past year the country has seen sharply rising deportation numbers, a rewritten immigration White Paper, a citizen ultimatum to undocumented foreigners that triggered nationwide marches, and vigilante groups turning people away from clinics and, more recently, schools. Here is where things actually stand, based on government figures, court records and independent research.

How many undocumented people are actually here

Estimates of South Africa's undocumented population have long been a political football, and the gap between the numbers thrown around at rallies and the numbers Statistics South Africa can actually defend is enormous. Stats SA's most recent survey puts the country's total immigrant population, documented and undocumented combined, at roughly 3.1 million people, or about 5.1% of the population.^[1] That is far below the 15 to 30 million figure that some anti-immigration campaigners have circulated. It is, however, somewhat above the global average of about 3.7% of the world's population living outside their country of birth.^[2]

Refugees and asylum seekers make up a small slice of that. The country hosts around 75,000 recognised refugees and 165,000 asylum seekers, a number that peaked back in 2015 and has been declining since.^[1] None of this means undocumented migration is not a real issue for the country's institutions. It means the scale is smaller, and the picture more complicated, than the loudest voices on either side suggest.

Deportations are climbing fast

Whatever the true size of the undocumented population, government has made removing people who fall foul of immigration law a visible priority. Home Affairs confirmed in April that 109,344 people had been deported from inside the country since the current government took office, a cumulative 46% increase over two financial years: up 30% from 39,672 in 2023/24 to 51,560 in 2024/25, then a further 12% to 57,784 in 2025/26.^[3] The Democratic Alliance, a partner in the coalition government, has separately put the combined total, including people turned back at the border by the Border Management Authority, at over 600,000.^[4]

The Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration, chaired by Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, has been running its own parallel operations. By mid-June it reported more than 40,000 arrests of undocumented foreign nationals since the start of 2026, including 7,400 in a single month, plus targeted raids on workplaces in Newcastle and Tshwane where employers were arrested alongside undocumented staff.^[5] "This is a demonstration that government is not turning a blind eye to illegal immigration and we are intensifying our efforts to bring it under control," Kubayi said.^[5]

Home Affairs is also adding capacity behind the numbers. The department is recruiting around 300 new immigration officers, lifting frontline enforcement staff from 868 to 1,169, a 35% increase.^[6] Employers who hire foreign nationals without valid papers face prosecution, and the Electronic Travel Authorisation system, used to screen arrivals, is being expanded from July 2026 to capture biometric data from short-stay visitors so overstays can be traced.^[7]

The border itself is getting a rebuild

A lot of the political heat has focused on Beitbridge, the crossing into Zimbabwe that handles the bulk of South Africa's land traffic. The fence built there during Covid-19 lockdown has been cut in more than 100 places since construction. A parliamentary oversight visit in 2020 found the workmanship so poor it could be pulled apart by hand, worse than the 37-year-old fence it replaced, and MPs asked the Special Investigating Unit to recover the money the state had paid for it.^[8] It is still not fixed. On 28 April 2026, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber announced government's answer: a R12.5 billion public-private partnership to demolish and rebuild the country's six busiest land ports, Beitbridge, Lebombo, Oshoek, Kopfontein, Maseru Bridge and Ficksburg, which together handle more than 80% of cross-border trade and passenger traffic despite being just 11% of South Africa's 53 land ports of entry.^[9]

Ahead of the nationwide anti-immigration marches on 30 June, defence contractor Paramount supplied the Border Management Authority with six armoured Maatla vehicles, two apiece for Beitbridge, Lebombo and the Lesotho crossing at Ficksburg, to help patrol the border and respond to incidents.^[10] In January, the Authority intercepted more than 20 unaccompanied children aged between five and seventeen near Beitbridge, believed to be heading from South Africa into Zimbabwe, travelling with a group of adults only one of whom could be confirmed as a parent, a reminder that border enforcement here cuts both ways and is also a child protection problem.^[11]

The Zimbabwean Exemption Permit saga rolls on

No single policy question has generated more anxiety than the future of the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit, or ZEP, and its Lesotho equivalent, the LEP. These permits let citizens of the two neighbouring countries live and work in South Africa without a separate visa. The last widely published count put ZEP holders at around 178,000 Zimbabweans, though that figure dates to 2022 and the real number has likely shifted since.^[12] Government extended both permits to 28 May 2027 rather than letting them lapse.^[13] A public consultation on what happens after that closed in mid-2026, having drawn more than 21,000 written submissions and nearly 31,000 completed questionnaires from permit holders, and Home Affairs is due to give Cabinet its recommendation on the programme's long-term future by March 2027.^[13] Until then, hundreds of thousands of people are living permit renewal to permit renewal.

Zimbabweans are leaving South Africa by the tens of thousands

Many are not waiting to find out what happens to the ZEP. Zimbabwe's government says an inter-ministerial repatriation effort, working with development partners, brought 99,418 of its citizens home between 28 May and 10 July 2026, more than 70% of them women and children, processed mostly through the Beitbridge border post. "The Inter-Ministerial Committee and Development Partners facilitated the return of 99,418 citizens between 28 May and 10 July, 2026," Zimbabwe's Minister Soda Zhemu said.^[14] Officials estimate roughly two million Zimbabweans live in South Africa in total, and expect more than half of them to eventually leave.^[15] The exodus picked up sharply in the run-up to March and March's 30 June deadline, covered further down, and has continued since.^[15]

A new immigration White Paper, and a points system

Alongside the enforcement drive, Cabinet approved a revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection in April 2026, after a public comment window that closed in February.^[16] The document tries to hold two ideas together at once: tighter enforcement against undocumented migration, and an easier path in for the migrants government wants, mainly skilled professionals and investors. Central to that second half is a proposed points-based economic migration system, modelled loosely on countries like Canada and Australia, plus new visa categories and more of the application process moved online. Legislation to give effect to the White Paper is still being drafted, so most of this remains policy direction rather than law on the ground.

What is Operation Dudula?

Frustration with the pace of official enforcement fed a wave of citizen-led movements, most visibly Operation Dudula, founded in Soweto in 2021,^[29] and a newer group called March and March, founded in 2025 by Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma. Both argue that undocumented migrants are crowding out South Africans in hospitals, schools, housing and jobs, and both moved from marches to direct action.

Operation Dudula spent much of 2025 stationing members outside public clinics in Johannesburg, demanding South African identity documents before letting patients through, a tactic that kept immigrant mothers from having their children vaccinated and, according to Doctors Without Borders, turned people away from more than half the health facilities it assessed in Gauteng.^[17] A group of civil society organisations won a landmark interdict against the group in the Gauteng High Court on 4 November 2025, barring it from blocking access to clinics or schools, checking IDs, or using hate speech.^[18] Reporting in the weeks afterwards found clinics still being blockaded regardless, prompting Médecins Sans Frontières and the Treatment Action Campaign to go back to court to force the state itself to enforce its own order.^[17] Operation Dudula pressed on with its schools campaign anyway, gathering again in Diepkloof, Soweto, on 5 January 2026 with parents whose children had not been placed for the new academic year, even though the November interdict already covered school gates as much as clinic doors.^[19]

March and March and the 30 June deadline

March and March took a different approach, setting undocumented migrants a deadline, 30 June 2026, to leave the country voluntarily. Around 120 marches were held that day nationwide, and more than 900 people were arrested, though most protests stayed peaceful.^[20] In the weeks before the deadline, tens of thousands of foreign nationals left their homes or the country outright, among them Nigeria and Ghana flying home nearly 2,000 citizens on government-sponsored flights and Malawi busing out more than 8,000.^[21] Zimbabwe's own repatriation numbers, covered above, dwarfed those. Human Rights Watch documented violent incidents in the run-up, including a Cameroonian shopkeeper beaten with golf clubs and sjamboks in Durban on 17 April.^[22] In Mossel Bay, in the Western Cape, SAPS confirmed three deaths, two Mozambican nationals and one South African, in violence in the Asla Park informal settlement over the weekend of 29 to 31 May, with 55 shacks burned.^[23] Mozambique's government put its own toll higher: seven citizens dead in total, five of them, it said, a direct consequence of xenophobic attacks, and two more in an unrelated road accident as families fled home.^[24] Human Rights Watch said police response to the violence had been inconsistent at best. "South Africa's constitution and international human rights law protects the right to protest, but that does not include permission to commit violence," the organisation's Nomathamsanqa Masiko-Mpaka said.^[22]

March and March did not stand down after 30 June. It announced weekly protests would continue, with its leader saying government now had six months to remove all undocumented immigrants from the country.^[20] President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the country on migration on 7 June, acknowledging the underlying frustration as legitimate while rejecting the violence. "These concerns are real. They deserve to be heard. They deserve to be addressed," he said, adding that South Africans "are not xenophobic" and that government would act against those "using it to destabilise our country through inciting lawlessness and violence."^[25] A parliamentary committee had earlier called Operation Dudula's tactics "objectionable" and "an unnecessary distraction to the work government is doing," while acknowledging migration itself as "a challenge everyone accepts as massive."^[26]

What the evidence actually says about the economic argument

The case anti-immigration groups make rests heavily on the idea that foreign nationals are taking jobs, healthcare and school places that would otherwise go to South Africans, against a backdrop of official unemployment that hit 32.7% in the first quarter of 2026, or 43.7% on the broader expanded definition that includes discouraged work-seekers.^[27] Public opinion has moved sharply in that direction: a 2025 Human Sciences Research Council survey found only 15% of South Africans said they would welcome all foreign nationals, while 42% said they would welcome none, and an Afrobarometer poll found 69% believed immigrants have a negative economic impact.^[1]

Researchers who study the numbers tell a more mixed story. The Institute for Security Studies cites World Bank research finding that each immigrant worker in South Africa is associated with roughly two additional jobs for citizens on average.^[1] The same commentary points to weak institutions, rather than migrants, as a bigger driver of service delivery failures, citing a Special Investigating Unit probe that found parts of the immigration permit system had effectively become "a marketplace" for officials selling documents.^[1] None of that will settle the argument on the ground, where a family waiting months for a clinic appointment or a job interview experiences the frustration directly, regardless of its statistical cause. But it is worth knowing that the two pictures, the lived frustration and the aggregate data, do not fully agree.

Where it goes from here

Nothing about this is close to settled. The White Paper still needs implementing legislation. The ZEP's fate will not be decided until Cabinet gets a recommendation in 2027. Deportation numbers are almost certain to keep climbing as the newly recruited officers come online, and the border rebuild at Beitbridge and the other five ports will take years, not months. March and March has kept marching since its deadline passed, and Operation Dudula, even boxed in by the November interdict, was still pressing its schools campaign as recently as January.

For now, South Africa is trying to run two policies at the same time: tightening the door on undocumented entry while trying to hold it open for the skills and investment the economy needs, and doing both against a backdrop of street-level anger that the courts and Parliament have so far struggled to fully contain.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Anti-migrant myths that have been allowed to fester in South Africa, ISS Africa
2. International Migrant Stock 2024: Key Facts and Figures, UN DESA Population Division
3. Home Affairs on deporting illegal immigrants, South African Government
4. Deportation of over 600,000 illegal immigrants shows Home Affairs at full steam under Min Schreiber, DA
5. Over 40,000 illegal foreign nationals have been arrested, IMC on Migration, SAnews
6. Home Affairs ramps up crackdown with 301 new immigration officers, IOL
7. Home Affairs outlines new immigration crackdown and fast-tracking of deportations, EWN
8. Porous Beitbridge Border Fence Despite Massive Investment, Parliament of South Africa
9. Minister Leon Schreiber: Announcement of PPP bidders for redevelopment of South Africa's six busiest land ports of entry, South African Government
10. Paramount provides Maatla vehicles to BMA for 30 June protests, DefenceWeb
11. Border Management Authority intercepts unsupervised minors near Beitbridge, South African Government
12. Government defends its decision to end Zimbabwean permits, GroundUp
13. South Africa announces extension of Zimbabwean Exemption Permits (ZEPs) and Lesotho Exemption Permits (LEPs), EY
14. Nearly 100,000 Zimbabweans Repatriated From South Africa Since May, Government Says, AllAfrica
15. Zimbabwe says nearly 100,000 of its citizens have left South Africa, Africanews
16. South Africa, Cabinet Approves Revised White Paper on Citizenship and Migration Reforms, KPMG
17. Operation Dudula blocks access to clinics, violating court order, AllAfrica
18. High court bans Dudula from blocking access to hospitals, clinics and schools, Daily Maverick
19. "Children still unplaced": Operation Dudula vows to tackle school overcrowding, Briefly
20. More than 900 arrested during South Africa's antimigrant protests, Al Jazeera
21. After the June 30 Deadline: What Did South Africa's Anti-Immigration Marches Actually Achieve?, AllAfrica
22. South Africa: New Waves of Xenophobic Attacks, Human Rights Watch
23. SAPS says two Mozambican nationals, one South African killed in Mossel Bay, eNCA
24. Mozambique says 5 citizens killed in xenophobic attacks in South Africa, Al Jazeera
25. Address by President Cyril Ramaphosa on migration, Union Buildings, Tshwane, The Presidency
26. Media Statement: Operation Dudula Is a Distraction From the Work of Government, Parliament of South Africa
27. South Africa's unemployment rate rises to 32.7% in 2026, IOL
28. Home Affairs clarifies policy position on Zimbabwe Exemption Permit holders, South African Government
29. What is Operation Dudula, South Africa's anti-migration vigilante?, Al Jazeera

Last updated: August 2026