Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
There is a particular kind of uncertainty that settles over a person who no longer
knows which side of a border they belong to. In recent weeks, that uncertainty has
become the daily reality for tens of thousands of people across Southern Africa: men
and women who built lives, businesses, and families in the country over the years,
now being forced to migrate.
During webinar hosted by the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference
(SACBC), in partnership with the Interregional Meeting of Bishops of Southern
Africa (IMBISA), participants revealed that more than 53,000 undocumented
migrants have been deported or have voluntarily left South Africa since a wave of
anti-migrant protests intensified around an unofficial deadline of 30 June 2026.
The Wednesday, July 29, online session brought together bishops, diocesan
coordinators, social workers and journalists, among others, to take stock of a crisis
that has disrupted thousands of lives across the country from Durban and Cape Town
to the border town of Musina, and also to coordinate the Church’s pastoral and
humanitarian response.
According to the moderator of the session, Ms. Sheila Pires, the Communications
Officer of SACBC, “Besides the situation disrupting many livelihoods, the most
affected migrants have limited access to essential services, a hardship that has
pushed growing numbers toward returning to their countries of origin.”
Ms. Pires revealed further that the webinar “aimed to provide an update on the
impact of anti-undocumented migrant protests and the return of migrants from
South Africa.
“We are also seeking to strengthen collaboration among church institutions and
partners here in South Africa to coordinate pastoral and humanitarian responses,
share experiences, and identify practical ways to uphold the dignity, rights, and
protection of migrants and refugees,” she added, and stressed that the webinar acts
as a platform “to discuss challenges, coordinate responses, and identify practical
actions to support migrants who have returned to their home countries as well as
those who remain in South Africa.”
Opening the session on Wednesday, Bishop Joseph Mary Kizito, the Liaison person
of the SACBC’s Migrants, Refugees and Human Trafficking Office, grounded the
discussion in Catholic social teaching. Reflecting on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Dilexi
Te, he reminded participants that human dignity is not earned through wealth, status
or even one’s choices, but it is “a gift from God that no circumstance can strip away.”
Bishop Kizito of Aliwal Diocese, South Africa, acknowledged that the Church may
never fully know why migrants chose to stay in South Africa, but insisted that
uncertainty is no basis for judgment or mistreatment.
He echoed the teachings of Pope Francis that people have the right to choose
whether to migrate or not and pointed out that the Church’s mission is to
accompany, welcome, protect and integrate the migrants.
As the country continues to grapple with the aftermath of the protests, Bishop Kizito
stresses that “The dignity of migrants and refugees as human beings, as “sons and
daughters searching for peace, searching for new life is not conditional.”
Reflecting further on Pope Leo XIV’s first Encyclical Letter Magnifica Humanitas,
the Bishop quoted paragraph 50 of the Encyclical when the Pontiff said that, “At the
heart of the Christian understanding of the human person lies the great biblical
affirmation that men and women are created in the image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26-
27) of the Triune God. In this way, the Holy Father affirmed that, “every human
person is planned and willed by God to enter into communion with him, with others
and with creation.”
“Human dignity does not depend on one’s personal endowed abilities, wealth, or
position in life, nor on the right or wrong choices made. Instead, it is a gift that
precedes and transcends each person endowed by God as an expression of his
unfailing love,” Bishop Kizito emphasized in his message to over 60 online
participants, adding that the Pope’s encyclical elaborates that, “human person always
remains the way for the church and the heart of every authentic path of integral
human development.”
According to the Bishop, people may make wrong choices in life, but it does not
mean their dignity ends with that. And in the case of South Africa, he said, “We don’t
know the reasons why these men and women chose to come to South Africa, and
despite the choice they made, we cannot judge them. We cannot mistreat them….
What we need is to look at human dignity, that gift of God, because they are a person.
They are human beings. They have the freedom to choose to move or not to migrate,
and so our work is to accompany them, welcome them, protect them, integrate them,
and promote their dignity.”
Dr. Hupenyu Makusha shared the situation of Durban city located on the eastern
coast of the country and described a community increasingly displaced from the
informal trade that had sustained many migrant families. He warned of a looming
wave of evictions even among documented migrants.
The more pressing concern, Dr. Makusha said, is a group of migrants who were taken
to a Refugee Reception Centre for document verification months ago and have since
resisted reintegration.
In Cape Town, a Caritas representative during the online session described how the
crisis erupted in mid-June when hundreds of migrants, many women and children,
gathered outside the Zimbabwean Embassy with no food or shelter. What began as
an appeal from the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town grew into a full disaster-relief
operation, drawing in Anglican and Methodist partners and, later, Gift of the Givers.
When the government relocated the group to a processing centre never designed to
house the numbers involved, roughly a thousand sleeping inside and another
thousand outside, sanitation collapsed, triggering a diarrhoea outbreak. Caritas Cape
Town supported the funding of food, sanitisers and supplies for hundreds of babies,
while parishes across the diocese opened as donation points.
Additionally, Caritas reported distributing 200 food parcels to Somali and Malawian
refugees in the past week, alongside ongoing efforts with a bus network to help
people who wish to return home.
Across every diocese represented: Durban and Cape Town it is clear that the
emergency phase of feeding and sheltering displaced migrants is giving way to a
longer, harder struggle over housing, income and reintegration.