While the Department of Home Affairs is overwhelmed and anti-migration groups plan mass marches on Tuesday, 30 June, traditional leaders, church groups and local committees are mobilising to protect foreign nationals and defuse a brewing crisis.

An increasing number of South Africans are rejecting the call for undocumented migrants to leave the country by 30 June and speaking out against xenophobia, Afrophobia and tribalism. Civil society organisations, academics, religious leaders, traditional leaders and grassroots organisations are calling for calm ahead of Tuesday, 30 June, when mass demonstrations are expected to take place across the country against illegal immigration.

At Constitutional Hill on Monday, 29 June, Siyafana Sonke, a coalition representing 160 organisations, including civil society organisations and trade unions, called on the government to recognise the growing tide of anti-migrant sentiment and violence as a humanitarian crisis. The coalition urged South Africans to direct their anger over the unemployment crisis, inequality and service delivery failures at the government rather than at migrants, and for community organisers to advocate for peace.

"We are saying that this cannot go on," said Mametlwe Sebei, the president of the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (Giwusa).

"We cannot have a situation where people are being assaulted, people are being killed. The state has a responsibility to make sure that every single person in this country -- migrant or South African, documented or not -- they are safeguarded."...