Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international rights organisation, has warned on the current outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa.

This comes after reports that a number of Mozambicans had been murdered in Mossel Bay over the weekend, as part of an anti-foreigner pogrom.

“The authorities should not allow vigilante groups to violently target foreign nationals and instead need to protect them and bring those who harm them to justice,” said HRW researcher Nomathamsanqa Masiko-Mpaka.

HRW said that South Africa had experienced a number of waves of anti-migrant violence in the past, and the risk for anti-foreigner unrest was rising as “since 2024, the country’s deteriorating socioeconomic conditions, including an unemployment rate of over 43 percent, coincided with the rise of anti-immigrant activism and the formation of newer vigilante groups like March and March”.

In April the secretary-general of the United Nations António Guterres had expressed concern over the rising tide of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, an African Union body, also expressed concern in April, saying that it “deplores the xenophobic attacks and vigilante conduct perpetrated on nationals of other African countries in the Republic of South Africa” and saying that it noted with “grave concern” what was happening in the country.

The Common Sense has said that widespread unrest in the 21st century in South Africa has had three triggers – rising food and transport inflation, colder temperatures, and rhetoric that encourages violence. All three of these triggers are now present in South Africa. Below can be seen how inflation and cold temperatures have coincided with incidents of violent unrest in South Africa.