Fired for being foreign as employers bow to March and March threats

“They used us and threw us away when they were done,” Raphike Bado, a Malawian immigrant who had worked in South Africa for many years, told GroundUp at the Casual Workers Advice Office (CWAO) in Germiston, Johannesburg.

The CWAO says it is dealing with a wave of cases targeting immigrant workers in Gauteng. Many have been unable to work since the run-up to the 30 June “deadline”. Many have now completely exhausted their savings and cannot afford the travel costs to leave SA.

Gugu Moyo, the CWAO’s immigrant liaison officer, said immigrant workers “are being treated as less than human” and are being exploited.

She worries that there “is no end in sight” as politicians and anti-immigration “activists” continue to scapegoat immigrants and spread hatred.

The workers are “ordinary people just trying to create a life here like all of us”, she said.

The CWAO said it has, since June, taken on over 100 cases of Gauteng workers being fired, suspended or shut out of their jobs. Many of them have valid papers.

None of the immigrant workers it has assisted has successfully claimed UIF, despite contributing to the fund, because their employers have refused to co-operate. CWAO is trying to assist with CCMA cases.

The workers CWAO is assisting described cases of exploitation, including low wages, unpaid overtime and unsafe working conditions.

CWAO said it had also helped hundreds of immigrants who wanted to contact embassies, sort out documents or arrange repatriation.

The workers

“We can no longer trust anybody. If you are a foreigner, whether you have documents or not, you fear for your life,” an emotional Rejoice Moyo told GroundUp.

Moyo’s is one of two dozen stories related to GroundUp by immigrant workers who had approached the CWAO Germiston office for assistance.

Originally from Zimbabwe, she has lived in SA for 17 years. But she was dismissed after the anti-immigrant group March and March turned up on 10 June at the shop where she worked as a sales consultant.

“These foreigners you are hiring must be gone,” a March and March supporter told her employer, and informed him of their 30 June “deadline” for undocumented immigrants to leave SA.

Moyo is documented and living and working legally in the country, but her employer “didn’t care” she said. He dismissed her and a colleague and tried to coerce them into writing a resignation letter stating they had resigned “because we were scared of March and March”.

She said she was only paid for the days she worked in June. She was not given notice pay or accrued annual leave.

Mbombo Nana and Sylvia (who preferred not to give her last name) fled war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and have lived in SA for more than a decade.

“Now I face violence here,” said Nana. “What do I do? I have nowhere else to go.”

Nana and Sylvia have refugee papers and are legally allowed to work. But they were both dismissed after people turned up at their workplaces demanding that “only South Africans” be hired.

“We are working very hard, but they treat us like nothing because we are foreigners,” said Sylvia. She said she was chased by a mob yelling “Abahambe!” (they must go, a Zulu catchphrase adopted by anti-immigrant groups).

Dismissed without payment

Monica Chifamba, who came from Zimbabwe in 2010, was also recently dismissed without payment. A single mother with two children, she is struggling to feed her family and pay rent and school fees.

She said she is often told to “go back to Zimbabwe”.

She said she had experienced xenophobia during previous election periods, “but 2026 is different”. She and her children are “living in fear”, too afraid to answer the phone or speak in public.

She was an orphan and had nothing to return to in Zimbabwe, she said.

Raphike Bado has worked in plastic manufacturing since he came from Malawi in 2013. He said that the company he worked for hired “many foreigners” as they were “cheaper” and “could work longer”.

On 15 June, he and fellow employees were told not to come to work the following day, “because March and March” were coming.

Bado was subsequently dismissed without compensation.

CWAO organiser Andile Nyembezi said that “xenophobic forces are mobilising based on ethnicity and tribalism which only divides” and does not create jobs or improve working conditions.

Out of fear, none of the workers we spoke to agreed to be photographed. DM

This article was first published in GroundUp.