South Africa’s government has formally asked Malawi, Nigeria and Ethiopia to reimburse part of the roughly 292 million rand, about 18 million dollars, it spent repatriating tens of thousands of their citizens, as migration tensions continue to rise across southern Africa.
The Department of Home Affairs says the money covered bus transport to repatriation centres, temporary housing for people awaiting departure, and staff costs for running the operation. Officials describe the spending as unforeseen and unavoidable, brought on by a scale of repatriations the department says it never anticipated. Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber called the volume of the operation unprecedented. The request itself was submitted through the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, and none of the three countries has publicly responded yet, so it remains unclear whether any of them intend to pay.
Most of the deportations run through the Lindela Repatriation Centre. Between April and July 2026 alone, 16,078 foreign nationals passed through it, mostly Malawians, followed by Zimbabweans and Mozambicans. According to the department, the bulk of deportations go to neighbouring countries, where transport costs run higher because of cross border logistics.
As of August 6, roughly 82,875 people had been repatriated, either voluntarily or by force, since the migration crackdown intensified. That figure doesn’t include departures before June or cases handled separately by the Border Management Authority. Interestingly, the governments of the countries involved put the real number much higher, around 178,000 departures in total, a gap that points to an ongoing disagreement over how these numbers are being counted.
The current wave of deportations follows anti immigration protests in June 2026, when several organisations demanded undocumented migrants leave the country by June 30, a period that saw sporadic violence against foreign nationals. Public debate has increasingly tied undocumented migration to unemployment, crime and strain on public services. South African police have arrested nearly 60,000 people over immigration status violations so far this year, more than 16,000 of them in July alone. Several governments in the region have in turn accused Pretoria of failing to adequately protect their citizens while they’re in the country.
By asking fellow African states to cover the cost of deporting their own citizens, South Africa is taking an unusual step, one rarely seen at this scale on the continent. It’s likely to add friction to relationships that are already strained by the migration crisis, especially with Malawi, Nigeria and Ethiopia yet to say where they stand.