South African tourist hotspot Jeffreys Bay has not been declared a refuge for tens of thousands of refugees but false information may stoke Islamophobia
IN SHORT: Popular South African tourist destinations Jeffreys Bay and the Garden Route have not been earmarked for refugee housing. Frantic warning messages have been reposted widely on social media not because there is any truth to their absurd claims, but because they play on prejudice and Islamophobia.
The claim that South African tourist hotspot Jeffreys Bay will soon host roughly 120,000 refugees has been widely shared on Facebook, X and WhatsApp. Multiple warning messages, sometimes with an accompanying video, were shared with Africa Check for verification.
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One version of the message reads: "The ANC government identified Jeffries Bay and surrounding areas as designated refugee camps for Muslim refugees fleeing from war torn countries. 120,000 Muslims have already set up camp along the Garden Route!"
Another version of the message, in Afrikaans, claims that "PLUS/MINUS 120,000 MOSLEM VLUGTELINGE", or "plus/minus 120,000 Muslim refugees", will be housed in Jeffreys Bay.
Jeffreys Bay is a small coastal town in the Eastern Cape province. The Garden Route, also a popular tourist destination, is a stretch of coastline approximately from Mossel Bay in the Western Cape province to Tsitsikamma in the Eastern Cape, not far from Jeffreys Bay.
These messages are false. Neither the South African government nor its largest political party, the African National Congress (ANC), has announced any plans to turn these areas into a "refugee camp". A video frequently shared along with the message includes no evidence to support its claims.
Many versions of the message are not simply false, but include Islamaphobic and white supremacist messaging, which may stoke prejudice and incite violence.
Missing evidence and impossible numbers
There is no evidence that any government entity or any representative of the ANC, the country's largest party by share of the national vote, has declared Jeffreys Bay a "refugee camp". No reliable news outlets, including government news agency SA News, have reported on what would be a major story if it were true.
Not only would it be unusual for a government to resettle refugees in an area primarily known for its surfing beaches and other tourist attractions, but the figures in the message stand out for another reason. They are impossibly large.
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN agency responsible for overseeing global refugees, collects data on how many refugees and other asylum seekers live in different countries. As the UNHCR explains on its website: "Refugees are people who have fled their countries to escape conflict, violence, or persecution and have sought safety in another country."
Not everyone seeking asylum in another country is officially considered a refugee, but the UNHCR tracks other categories of asylum seekers and "forcibly displaced people".
In 2025, there were an estimated 68,918 refugees in South Africa, including "People in a refugee-like situation", according to the UNHRC. There were a total of 167,576 forcibly displaced people of all categories. According to 2022 census data, just over 100,000 people lived in all of the Kouga local municipality, in which Jeffreys Bay is situated.
This would mean that, for the message to be true, the number of refugees living in all of South Africa would need to almost double. And, according to some versions of the message, the government would have decided to house them all in a small town in a sparsely populated municipality, more than doubling its entire population.
This is an obviously absurd claim, but the reason it has been shared as far as it has likely has nothing to do with how believable it is. The message is playing on prejudice and bias to stoke fear and hatred, and amplify its false claims.
Original video made to express theologian's excitement at new mosque
The messages seen by Africa Check included several examples of Islamophobic language. Islamophobia is a fear or hatred of Muslims. For example, one message claimed that a video "wys die koms van die eerste klomp Moslem Teroriste", or "shows the arrival of the first lot of Muslim Terrorists". The stereotype that all Muslims are terrorists is a common Islamophobic trope.
The video being referred to was originally uploaded by mufti Yusuf Moosagie, a theologian and host of Radio Islam. (A mufti is an Islamic legal expert.) Moosagie is not a refugee and told Africa Check he has lived in South Africa all his life.
Moosagie posted a short video to social media on 20 June 2025 about observing jum'ah, the Friday noon prayer service that all Muslim men are obliged to attend, in Jeffreys Bay. Moosagie told Africa Check that he delivers the Friday sermon at a different mosque near his home city of Gqeberha, formerly Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape, every week. He also films short videos about each place where he is invited to speak.
In his video about Jeffreys Bay, Moosagie does not make the false claim that the area has been designated a refugee camp, and nothing in the video supports the claims made in the false messages.
Moosagie told Africa Check that he had been excited to visit the mosque in Jeffreys Bay. He had lived in Gqeberha for 40 years and previously Jeffreys Bay, which is about 80 kilometres away, had not had a Muslim community or mosque. He said: "I made my video in that context: that there weren't Muslims here and now there are Muslims here, and this is a positive sign for Muslims - the feeling of excitement around having a mosque in a place where there was no mosque before."
Messages employ Islamophobic, white supremacist language
On social media, Moosagie's video has been deliberately misrepresented to fuel Islamophobic and white supremacist conspiracy theories like the "great replacement" conspiracy theory. This is a false narrative that claims that powerful groups, usually groups of Jewish people, are conspiring to replace white people and white European "culture". This "replacement" is supposedly carried out in part through "liberal" immigration policies.
This conspiracy theory has fuelled both Islamophobic sentiment and outbreaks of violence.
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Many of the messages about Jeffreys Bay becoming a "refugee camp" and comments related to Moosagie's video suggest that it would be dangerous to house Muslim refugees in South Africa. Several include instructions such as "We need to pray for 21days in January 2026" and attribute the country's "serious trouble" to "this corrupt ANC government". Some call on Christians to "Wake Up", comments which imply that Muslim refugees would be a threat to South Africans of other religions. Others also include phrases such as: "We looking at war here!"
Other versions of the message made less subtle allusions to white supremacist conspiracy theories. One post warns that Muslim refugees would "multiply overnight". The idea that comparatively lower birth rates among white people will cause them to be "replaced" is also an aspect of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory. Another post includes the sentence: "The white people who built and maintained South Africa desperately need your help to eradicate the ANC and these illegally imported Muslims into South Africa."
This call to "eradicate" Muslim immigrants is just one example of how the perceived threat of "replacement" has been used to encourage violent and hateful language and actions against Muslims.
False claims about Jeffreys Bay being converted from a tourist hotspot into a "refugee camp" for a ludicrously large number of refugees have not the smallest grain of truth to them. Instead, these messages play on prejudice and bias towards Muslims in order to convince people to share baseless scaremongering. If allowed to spread unchecked, they may contribute to further hatred and even physical violence.
