The Malawian Consulate in Johannesburg occupies a thatched building in Woodmead, a prosperous suburb in the city’s far north. It is usually a quiet, even sleepy place. All that changed on June 30.
That was the day the ‘ultimatum’ expired. March and March, a nationalist vigilante group, had told all undocumented foreign nationals to leave South Africa by then—or else.
On the day itself, huge marches in several cities across the country underscored this threat, with protesters using vicious language to make their message clear. Abahambe—“They must go” in isiZulu—was the rallying cry.
Fearing for their livelihoods and even their lives, hundreds of Malawian citizens living in South Africa decided enough was enough.
Seeking a place of safety, they made their way to Woodmead, to the consulate.
And every day since, more and more have come, turning the grassy embankment outside the consulate’s walls into a temporary staging post for thousands of ordinary people who just want to go home.
“It is time,” said Grant from Mulanje District, who had been working as a bricklayer in Boksburg. “The people of this country have chased us away.”
Every few days, some buses arrive to transport the waiting people somewhere else.
At first the buses went to Lindela, an immigration detention facility outside of Johannesburg where inmates are reported to receive little food and held in filthy cells without adequate heating or bedding.
Later buses went straight to an immigration processing facility at Musina, near the Zimbabwean border; or were designated to make the complete trip to Malawi over several days.
When the first people arrived, the site was not in any way equipped to handle them. There was no sanitation, no accommodation, no food, no electricity, no Wi-Fi and very little information about what was happening.
And at night, temperatures plunge to nearly freezing, forcing people to sleep close together for warmth.
A handful of humanitarian organisations, including Ashraful Aid and Doctors Without Borders, have scrambled to meet some of these needs, providing portable sanitation, a daily feeding programme and a mobile clinic.
The Malawian consulate itself has been conspicuously absent in this response. When we visited the site on Thursday, a lone junior security guard, from a South African private security company, had been delegated the difficult task of organising and communicating with the long line of people wanting information. Consular officials kept themselves behind their high walls. Several humanitarian workers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the consulate’s response had been almost non-existent. “They’ve been totally MIA [Missing in Action],” said one. “Everything you see here, civil society has had to do.”
“Nobody from the embassy has come to talk to us,” said Cassim Ishmael, a 25-year-old originally from Mangochi District.
He had been in South Africa for over three years, working piece jobs in Vereeniging. He was hoping to get on a bus soon—although he had no idea where the bus was going to take him.
Ishmael’s sentiments were echoed by others in the crowd of at least 370 Malawians, mostly men, waiting outside the consulate.
The Malawi High Commission to South Africa acknowledged, but did not respond to a request for comment.
On Friday evening, three buses arranged by the Malawian government did arrive to transport people all the way to Blantyre.
By the next morning, several dozen more Malawians had arrived at the consulate—with plenty more expected in the coming days and weeks amid continued threats of violence and brutality against foreigners.
Doctors Without Borders fears the general situation for foreign nationals in South Africa “is escalating into a humanitarian crisis”.
Stanley Onjezani Kenani, the poet and writer, who has raised R900 000 (about K95 million) in the past couple of weeks to support Malawians in South Africa, says what is unfolding in the Rainbow Nation is heart-breaking.
“We’re supporting fellow Malawians because the images coming out of South Africa are harrowing. Women giving birth in camps, little children freezing out in the cold, some have even been slaughtered. We cannot afford to stand by and watch without doing anything about it.”
Kenani says he has been in constant communication with the High Commission, Malawi’s Department of Disaster Management Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who have been generally supportive. “The government says it has managed to bring 30 000 home by Monday this week. I am not sure of the statistics, but thousands more remain trapped behind the frontier.”
