A foreign national was beaten to death by a mob of about 50 people on Thursday morning in the centre of Durban, South Africa’s third-largest city, police said, as months of violent anti-migrant unrest in the country reached another deadly point.
The killing happened on Dr Pixley kaSeme Street in the Durban central business district. Provincial police spokesperson Colonel Robert Netshiunda said a group of people was marching toward Maud Mfusi Street when two men broke away from the march, approached a man in his late 30s or early 40s who was standing on the roadside, and he was then assaulted by a crowd of roughly 50 people. He was declared dead at the scene. Police have opened a murder investigation.
“Police are following several leads and using all investigative aids to identify possible suspects. The motive of the killing is unknown at this stage and community members are urged not to spread unverified information,” Netshiunda said.
Police did not disclose the victim’s nationality, and Netshiunda cautioned that the motive remained unclear. The Reuters news agency, which reported the killing from a South African Police Service statement on X, said the victim appeared to have been attacked on the sidelines of the march, though police did not immediately say what the demonstration was about.
This is not the first fatal attack during such protests in the province of KwaZulu-Natal this year. In June, a group broke away from a large march organised by the anti-immigrant movement March and March in Pietermaritzburg and entered the nearby Jika Joe informal settlement, where they allegedly stoned a 29-year-old Malawian to death.
The killing followed a motorcade through Durban on Wednesday by March and March, the movement that has organised months of protests demanding action against undocumented migrants. E-hailing drivers, vehicle owners and supporters took part in the motorcade, which set off from Berea Centre, an area where many foreign nationals live. Addressing supporters on Wednesday night, the movement’s leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma threatened a shutdown on November 10 over the government’s handling of asylum applications.
Durban has become a flashpoint for the tensions. Earlier this month, anti-migrant protests in the city and in Soweto, near Johannesburg, turned violent, with foreign-owned businesses looted and vehicles set alight after demonstrations against the processing of asylum applications at a refugee reception centre. Two weeks ago soldiers were deployed to central Durban as police battled two days of rioting aimed at foreign nationals.
The violence has begun to reshape the country’s demographics. Tens of thousands of migrants from other African nations have left South Africa in recent months, one of the biggest mass exoduses in years. Many cite the threat of violence from angry locals. Nigeria, Mozambique and Malawi have said some of their citizens were killed in xenophobic attacks tied to the protests, though South African authorities have disputed some of those claims, saying some deaths were linked to ordinary criminal activity rather than the marches.
Why this matters beyond South Africa: South Africa is the continent’s most advanced economy and a magnet for migrants from across Africa, but its extremely high unemployment and overburdened public services have turned migration into a volatile domestic flashpoint. What began as street protests is now a regional crisis — neighbouring governments are demanding protection for their citizens, international criticism is mounting, and the movement’s threat of a national shutdown next month could disrupt the economy that much of southern Africa depends on. If the authorities cannot keep the protests from turning lethal, the exodus of tens of thousands may only be the beginning.
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