Migrants struggle after forced exodus from South Africa, some vow return

More than a month has passed since thousands of foreign nationals were forced to leave South Africa, and the aftermath is still unfolding across three countries and three lives that tell the story of what that exodus actually costs.

Enock Msiska, twenty-four, had built a quiet routine in Pretoria over nearly three years. He worked without papers—gardening, washing cars, the kind of work that doesn't appear on any official ledger but keeps a family fed. Every Sunday, he would send three hundred rand home to Malawi, money that converted into something substantial in kwacha, enough to matter. His wife and two-year-old daughter depended on it. He depended on the independence it gave him. Then came June 30, and the protests that turned violent. His parents called daily, begging him to come home. He listened. In July, he boarded a repatriation flight organized by his government and returned to his village of Mzuzu with nothing to show for the years he'd spent building something. Now he sits without work, without income, dependent again on his parents. He says he would return to South Africa if he could get the right documents and find employment. "If there will be peace, quiet, I'll come back," he told the Sunday Times. But the peace he's asking for hasn't arrived.

Armando Mazivila's story is one of slow erosion. He had been in Tembisa since 2004, more than two decades of installing tiles, of knowing the city, of having built a home in Mozambique that he'd grown accustomed to leaving behind each work week. But the police stops accumulated. They would see him carrying his equipment and demand his passport, his permit. His passport was fine. The work permit was the problem—he didn't have one, and he wasn't sure how to get one when the work itself was part-time and self-employed, existing in the gaps between formal employment. The tension between foreigners and locals kept rising. One day, the calculation changed. He made the decision to take his family back to Mozambique, to start over. His children—one in grade nine, another in matric—had to leave their South African schools mid-year. "It was a hard decision," he said, "but I had to do it so I can fix all of our documents." Now he's in Mozal with no connections, no job prospects, relying on relatives to help feed his family. He misses the work. He misses having something to do. He plans to return once his documents are in order, but he's waiting in a place where waiting is harder.

Malvern Pedzisai's account is different in kind. He was twenty-five, living in Mamelodi since 2018, working as a gardener. He was in South Africa on June 30 when the anti-immigration protests turned violent. Locals attacked foreigners. He was set on fire. He made his own way back to Zimbabwe and has been in treatment at Beitbridge District Hospital since July 7. He is recovering, he says, with his family and his child nearby. But he will not return to South Africa. Not for work, not for anything. "Returning to South Africa for work will not be an option ever," he said. He doesn't miss the country. He doesn't think he will come back.

These three men carry different weights. For Msiska, the loss is financial independence and the dignity of providing. For Mazivila, it's the disruption of a life built over two decades, the severing of his children's education, the need to rebuild from nothing in a place where he has no footing. For Pedzisai, it's trauma that has closed a door he once walked through freely. What binds them is that they are all trying to rebuild on the other side of a forced departure, in countries that are not the ones where they'd learned to work.

Meanwhile, the political pressure in South Africa continues to mount. Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, leader of March and March, has called for the deportation of all undocumented foreign nationals by September 30. She made the announcement while protesting outside the SADC summit in Durban this week. The machinery of expulsion is still running. Some of the men who left say they will return if conditions change and documents can be obtained. Others say they will never come back. What happens to them in the months ahead depends on decisions being made in places they no longer inhabit.