00:00Now to South Africa, because security personnel have been deployed across the country
00:05due to fears that anti-immigration protests could descend into widespread violence against foreigners.
00:11Now the planned demonstrations mark an unofficial deadline set by campaigners
00:16for all undocumented migrants to leave.
00:20This morning's newspapers from across the country reflect the tensions there.
00:25The Sowetans headline, Nation on a Knife Edge.
00:29And the headline in the Citizen newspaper, South Africa holds its breath.
00:34Well, we'll hear live from BBC correspondents in a moment.
00:37But first, Nomsa Maseko reports from Durban, where police say they are ready for any possible disruption.
00:43We are currently in Durban at the drive-in just opposite North Beach,
00:48where thousands of Malawians have been camping for the last two weeks.
00:53They were threatened with violence in their homes.
00:56That's what they have been telling us, and that is why they say they decided to come to this area,
01:02because for them it was safer and to ensure that they will not be attacked.
01:08The priority for all of these people who have gathered here is to leave South Africa by the 30th of
01:14June,
01:15because of that unofficial deadline by protest organisers.
01:20But it has been painstakingly slow and very frustrating for these people to be first verified, documented,
01:30be given, you know, a piece of paper that basically says that they were in South Africa illegally
01:36and that they are now being deported or repatriated out of South Africa.
01:42We want anything that will be happening to be peaceful, everything, in fact, to be happening peaceful,
01:49and we want law and order to be observed.
01:51This piece of paper here is these people's tickets to safety for them to be able to leave the country
02:01before the mass protests that are planned for Tuesday.
02:06The police, as well as city officials, have said that they will ensure that everyone who is here in this
02:14camp,
02:14and many others in this province and, of course, the country, are, you know, their safety is ensured, is secured,
02:23but also the protest organisers themselves have said that they have no interest in looting, in damaging property,
02:32but that they want for their message and the government to take illegal immigration serious in this country.
02:39They have promised that the protests on June 30th will be peaceful.
02:46This is one of the buses that will be making its way to the Limpopo province in Musina at the
02:53Bight Bridge border post
02:55that will be ensuring that the people here, the more than 70 Malawians on this bus, will be taken home
03:03to safety.
03:04How do you feel about this?
03:09I am relieved to be going back to my home country,
03:12even though I have never been attacked or intimidated while living here.
03:16But I am heartbroken because I am leaving my four young children behind.
03:27That demonstrates the high visibility of police officers that have been deployed here in Guazulu-Natal.
03:36This province has been identified as one of a possible hotspot where demonstrations can turn violent.
03:45But there are many other thousands of police officers who have been deployed to this province,
03:52as well as the Gauteng province, because it's also been identified as a hotspot.
03:58Well, that was Momser reporting on tensions in Durban.
04:02Let's go live now to Johannesburg and our correspondent, Pumzer Felani.
04:05Pumzer, just take us through the situation where you are, the president calling for peace.
04:14Yes, we are in the Johannesburg city centre at the starting point of one of the three main protests here
04:21in Gauteng province.
04:23Crowds are starting to gather.
04:25We've been here for about two hours and people are slowly trickling in.
04:28Some of them live within the city centre itself and are walking from their homes to meet at this gathering
04:34point.
04:34From here, they will be marching to Constitutional Hill, where their leaders will be handing over a memorandum of demands.
04:42Now, these demands are what they want the local police to do about what they say is illegal occupation of
04:49businesses,
04:50illegal occupations of buildings that they say have been taken over by an eye-documented migrants.
04:56And they want that to be investigated.
04:58But also, they want those buildings to be taken over and handed back either to the city or to South
05:04Africans.
05:05And Pumzer, just give us a sense of the atmosphere there.
05:08We've been hearing about tensions.
05:10Presumably, there's a large security operation going on where you are.
05:16There certainly is.
05:17On an ordinary day, it wouldn't be as quiet as it is in the city centre.
05:21A number of the main businesses where we are have been closed.
05:24And on virtually every street corner, you're seeing police, you're seeing also municipal police just monitoring the crowds as they
05:31begin to come in.
05:32One of the big directives that have been given to protesters is not to carry any weapons.
05:37And this includes what could be termed traditional weapons.
05:40So wooden clubs, sticks, that sort of thing.
05:44Police officers have been given authority to take those away from people where they deem necessary.
05:49And really, this broadly speaks to wanting to make sure that violence doesn't break out, that these protests, although they
05:57have been given authority to be out, they've been told expressly that this should not turn violent, no looting will
06:03be allowed, and arrests will be affected to people on whether they are illegal foreign nationals or South Africans.
06:12Anyone that's found to be committing a crime, the police have said, will be apprehended on the spot today.
06:16Okay, Pamsa Valani in Joburg, thank you for that update.
06:20Let's stick with this and let's speak to Ongarma Emchinka, the acting director of the Raymond Blaba Centre for Governance
06:26and Leadership at Nelson Mandela University, also a lecturer in the Department of History and Political Studies.
06:32Hello to you, thank you for talking to us on BBC News.
06:35Could you just explain the background, where the protests are coming from in this issue over undocumented migrants in South
06:43Africa?
06:44So, there has always been a reliance in South African industries on draws of foreign workers coming from the rural
06:57hinterland in South Africa and the wider region all the way to Malawi.
07:01In fact, the very basis of the South African economy has been a mass supply of cheap and vulnerable workers,
07:10mostly black from the wider continent.
07:12In the democratic period, these shifted from mining, which was the biggest culprit in the apartheid period, to sectors like
07:24agriculture, construction and others.
07:26I must say that even though anecdotal evidence, that is what people experience as they work in farms and live
07:35in communities where there are concentrations of illegal immigrants,
07:39the data from statistics of South Africa and other research agencies does not correspond with the deeply entrenched perceptions that
07:50the scale of illegal immigration and their consequences on people's jobs and public infrastructure are anything close to what the
08:00perceptions from anecdotal evidence suggest.
08:03Yeah, so just explain where there's clearly antagonism and particularly worries over this spreading onto the street today with these
08:13anti-immigration protests.
08:15Where is that antagonism between the two groups come from?
08:19The reality of the matter is that South Africa as an economy doesn't work for everybody.
08:24We've got 10 million strong young people who are neither in employment, education or training.
08:32And data from South Africa shows that poverty levels here reach about 40 million people who are in the different
08:43categories of the poverty lines, the three official poverty lines.
08:48And the people who experience the consequences of migration and undocumented foreign nationals are people who are operating in the
09:00informal economy through the labor market, informal labor markets,
09:04or those that are operating businesses such as retail outlets, informal retail outlets in townships.
09:12And they make it seem as though, you know, the informal traders are taking jobs from locals.
09:20That's why there's a disproportionate feeling in terms of, you know, the scale of illegal immigration and its consequences among
09:29people in the lower classes and in poverty stricken areas compared to their middle class counterparts.
09:36Yeah, OK, really interesting.
09:37So the perception doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of this situation.
09:40Really good to talk to you. Thank you for that contextualising what's happening in South Africa today.
09:45That's Ongama M. Chinca from the Nelson Mandela University. Thank you.
