Homeward bound: The first group of 300 Ghanaians departing from OR Tambo International Airport, east of Johannesburg, to Ghana on Wednesday. Photo: Ghana High Commission, South Africa
The voluntary repatriation of nearly 300 Ghanaian nationals from South Africa on Wednesday represents what migration scholar Loren Landau describes as an unprecedented moment in post-apartheid South Africa.
This is not simply because of the scale of the operation but because another African government has stepped in to remove its citizens from a democratic African state amid rising anti-immigrant tensions.
“This is a sort of unprecedented political rebuke,” said Landau, a professor of migration and development at the University of Oxford and research professor at the African Centre for Migration & Society at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“Clearly, the Ghanaian government is concerned about the safety of their citizens, although I think the main motivation for this is probably a way of sending a highly visible message to the South African government and to other countries about their dissatisfaction with the way South Africa is addressing these issues.”
The Ghanaian citizens boarded a flight from Johannesburg to Accra on Wednesday as part of what Ghanaian authorities described as a voluntary repatriation programme for citizens who no longer felt safe in South Africa after weeks of anti-immigrant protests and growing hostility toward foreigners.
South African and Ghanaian authorities are reportedly working from a list of about 800 people who have indicated they wish to leave.
The move has drawn attention across the continent because it is unusual for another African government to organise a large-scale evacuation or repatriation of its citizens from democratic post-apartheid South Africa.
The episode has reignited debate around xenophobia, migration policy and South Africa’s worsening social and economic crisis. Undocumented foreigners are increasingly blamed for unemployment, crime and pressure on public services.
Landau said that while deportations between states were common, the kind of state-assisted “self-deportation” was different.
“Obviously there have been widespread deportations, which have to be done in collaboration or with agreement of the receiving country but never where it’s been sponsored by another country, to the best of my knowledge,” he said.
Landau noted that the language around “voluntary repatriation” echoed debates unfolding elsewhere globally, particularly in the US under increasingly hardline anti-immigration politics.
“In some ways, there’s resonance with the United States, which has started using this language of self-deportation,” he said.
“My sense is that at least for many South Africans, that is how they will see this — that we’ve finally got people to get out of the country.”
The repatriation comes amid mounting pressure on the government over undocumented migration, with groups such as March and March staging demonstrations in parts of Durban and Johannesburg demanding tougher immigration enforcement and the removal of undocumented foreigners.
Scenes outside processing centres and at OR Tambo International Airport this week reflected the polarised nature of the debate.
Home Affairs officials confirmed that only 10 of the 300 Ghanaians processed for Wednesday’s flight were legally in the country. The remainder were undocumented, overstayers or in violation of immigration laws.
The department of home affairs’ head of immigration and law enforcement, Stephen van Neel, told the SABC that some of those departing had previously been detained at the Lindela Repatriation Centre and that sanctions could follow for immigration violations.
But Ghana’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Benjamin Quashie, pushed back against suggestions that undocumented foreigners alone were to blame, arguing that the department’s backlogs had left many people trapped for years in legal limbo.
“It has taken three to four years. Is it their fault that they are undocumented?” Quashie told Eyewitness News. “It is a matter that has to do with state institutions; we wouldn’t be where we are today if state institutions were doing their jobs.”
Quashie said all those leaving had done so voluntarily and that Ghana would assist returnees with reintegration support, jobs databases and financial assistance on arrival.
For Landau, however, the significance of the repatriation lies less in the numbers than in what the moment symbolises politically.
“If you look at Durban, when they’re loading all those people onto the bus and this sort of almost farcical thing, where they took them off to verify their documents and almost all had documents in order but you look at the almost joyful dancing of the March and March supporters — it’s this symbol of purification, of getting these people out of our community,” he said.
“It’s a sugar high. It’s going to make people feel good but in the long term not do anything for them.”
He argued that migration has increasingly become a convenient political distraction in South Africa — one that channels public anger away from failures in governance, unemployment, healthcare and education.
“It certainly reflects, in my mind, a failure to manage the debate around immigration,” Landau said.
“I think for many in government, this reflects a success because the intention is to distract and create a furore around migration, which stops people from asking other questions about why they have no jobs, schools, healthcare and so on.
“In that sense, these highly visible debates about migration are very useful. The deportations, repatriations or just people leaving are a symbol of success within the framework that the government has developed over the last 10 years.
“This allows them to say they are protecting borders, that they are doing something for the South African people, when in fact, they obviously are not.”
Landau said the repatriation alone might not represent a definitive turning point but rather a visible marker in what he sees as South Africa’s broader drift toward inward nationalism and continental isolationism.
“There’s always been a tension in South Africa between its Pan-Africanism and nationalist transformation,” he said.