Africa: Explainer - International Migrants, Jobs and Crime in South Africa: What Do the Numbers Show?

EXPLAINER: International migrants, jobs and crime in South Africa: What do the numbers show? Amid rising hostility towards international migrants, anti-migrant protests have spread across South Africa in 2026. Some have involved intimidation, the denial of access to public services and fatal violence. False information has flourished in this climate, and Africa Check has been tracking it live. After more than a decade of fact-checking claims about migration, we've seen the same broad narratives return in different forms. They shape public debate, deepen social divisions and reduce South Africa's complex problems to simple explanations. Keep up with the latest headlines on WhatsApp | LinkedIn South Africa does face real migration challenges, including weak border management, asylum backlogs and poor enforcement of labour and business laws. But they do not prove the narratives examined in this explainer: that migrants are present in vastly greater numbers than official estimates show, dominate the economy or are chiefly responsible for crime and failing public services. | Narrative: Tens of millions of migrants live in South Africa but aren't counted in official statistics because they are undocumented.What the evidence shows: This narrative relies on uncertain or false information that inflates the number of migrants in South Africa, legally or otherwise. The figures may vary, but by international standards migrants do not make up an unusually large share of South Africa's population. This does not rule out higher migrant concentration in cities such as Johannesburg. | The 2022 census is the latest conducted by Statistics South Africa. It estimated that 2.4 million migrants lived in the country. That was about 3.9% of a population of 62 million, close to the global average of 3.7% estimated by the United Nations for 2024. Yet much higher figures continue to circulate. In 2020, then Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba falsely claimed that South Africa had 15 million "undocumented foreigners". He withdrew the figure days later, but it continued to spread under the hashtag "#15MillionIllegalMigrants". In July 2026, Mashaba said there were "3.1 million undocumented illegal foreign immigrants" in the country and attributed the figure to Stats SA. But the number he cited refers to people without "proof of legal identity", a category that includes many South African citizens. Africa Check has also debunked the claim that South Africa has 26 million migrants, which would mean that 43%, or more than two in every five people in the country, were migrants. Undocumented migrants are not automatically excluded In its surveys, StatsSA only asks whether a person has moved, not whether they complied with immigration laws in doing so. This means undocumented migrants are not excluded from the census by definition. Census workers visit every home in a set area and also count the homeless and mobile populations. This helps to ensure that people who are not in a home on the night of the census are not excluded. A "post-enumeration survey" is then used to adjust for people or households that may have been missed. "Because we do not collect information on migratory status, we cannot say what proportion of these are irregular migrants, but we can say that they are a subset of these total migrant stock numbers that have been referenced," Diego Itarrulde, Stats SA's chief director for demography and population statistics, told Africa Check. The 2022 census had limitations, partly because the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted data collection. But, Itarrulde said, migrants were not undercounted "to the extent of tens of millions". Other official data points in the same direction. Stats SA's 2022/23 income and expenditure survey estimated a migrant population of 3.1 million, or 5.1% of the country's population. All population estimates carry some uncertainty. But no credible evidence shows that several independent estimates have missed tens of millions of migrants. Figures of 15 million or more also do not reconcile with continental data. The United Nations estimated that 29 million international migrants lived in the whole of Africa in 2024. As Itarrulde put it, "to suggest that there are an additional half or more of this amount in South Africa", in addition to the migrants recorded by official statistics, "is not a credible claim". | Narrative: Migrants dominate parts of the economy and drive unemployment among South African citizens by "taking" jobs.What the evidence shows: National data does not support broad claims that migrants dominate the economy. Some claims may arise from visible concentrations of migrant workers or business owners in particular places and trades, but those patterns cannot be applied to the economy as a whole. And rather than hurting employment, evidence suggests migrants can improve prospects for local workers. | Sometimes this narrative involves claims that migrants make up the majority of workers in a particular sector. In 2020, then finance minister Tito Mboweni claimed that "almost 100%" of restaurant workers were "non-South African". Official data put the figure below 10%. The following year, member of parliament Vuyolwethu Zungula said that 70% of the informal economy was "in the hands of non-citizens". The figure appears to have taken evidence about a narrow part of informal retail and applied it to the entire economy. Similar incorrect claims have been made about the public sector. More broadly, migrants are often blamed for taking jobs that would otherwise have gone to locals and increasing South Africa's high unemployment rate, which stood at almost 33% in the first quarter of 2026. Using tax data, Dr Justin Visagie of Wits University's Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, estimated that in 2024 migrants held about 415,000 of South Africa's 11 million formal jobs, or 3.7%. In the June 2026 brief, Visagie admitted the informal economy was " much harder" to measure as it is, by "its nature, less visible". Using 2022 Stats SA data, he estimated that foreign-born workers made up about 18.3% of informal employment, or roughly 700,000 workers at the upper end. He said that while some policymakers may see this as high enough to create competition with locals, many informal jobs provide little more than "working poverty" and are "hardly a game-changer for unemployment and poverty." Migration is not a main driver of unemployment The available research does not support migration as a major cause of South Africa's unemployment. Its effects may differ across sectors and communities, but several studies find that migration can create jobs and increase economic activity. A 2020 review of 29 studies on migrant entrepreneurs in Africa, 21 of them conducted in South Africa, found that they contributed to employment, economic activity and poverty reduction. The authors described broad complaints about "job-taking by foreigners" in South Africa as "baseless", partly because migrant-owned businesses also often employed South Africans. A 2018 World Bank report reached a similar conclusion. Using data from 1996 to 2011, it estimated that each migrant worker was associated, on average, with about two additional jobs for South Africans. The report gave two reasons for this. Migrants often bring different skills and are more likely to start their own businesses, so they may not compete directly with locals for the same jobs. Their employment and businesses can also have wider "multiplier effects", increasing productivity, wages and economic activity. However, the report used data collected between 1996 and 2011, and Africa Check could not find a newer study of similar scope. Unemployment has broader economic causes Migrants' relatively small national population share made it unlikely that migration could explain broad social failures on its own, according to independent economist and financial journalist Duma Gqubule. He told Africa Check that employment is more closely linked to broader economic conditions, such as GDP growth, than to migration. For example, a country can have a high migrant workforce and still have a low unemployment rate. Gqubule pointed to Malaysia, where, as of 2024, regular migrants with temporary work permits made up 7% of its total population and 14% of its workforce. By some estimates, if all migrants, regardless of immigration status, are counted, they may make up over 38% of the workforce. Despite this, Malaysia's unemployment rate was just 3% in late 2025. Migration may affect some occupations and communities more than others. But South Africa's unemployment crisis has much broader economic causes, Gqubule said. "We must blame the government for mismanaging the economy." | Narrative: Migrants drive crime and place an unfair burden on public services.What the evidence shows: The available evidence does not show that migrants commit crime at disproportionately higher rates. Nor does it support claims that they are a main cause of pressure on public resources. | Africa Check has debunked several claims blaming migrants for crimes ranging from the theft of traffic lights to the widely-reported deaths of teenagers in a South African tavern. Other claims portray migrants more broadly as dangerous or aggressive. In one example, Gayton McKenzie, leader of the Patriotic Alliance political party, shared an image of a heavily armed man in a conflict zone in Somalia and falsely claimed he was an immigrant threatening South Africans in Soweto. Reliable crime data is limited, as we found when we examined the claim that "illegal foreigners" contribute "massively" to crime statistics. We cited the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies, which said that although South African police record nationality when making arrests, this data has never been made publicly available. Conviction data offers some insight. From 2017 to November 2021, undocumented immigrants accounted for just over 2% of all people convicted of crimes in South Africa. More recent prison data presented to parliament by the minister of correctional services in February 2025 showed that international migrants made up 12.4% of sentenced inmates. That is 12,676 out of 102,444 people. More than 65% of them had been sentenced only for immigration offences. The data is incomplete, but it does not support the narrative that migrants commit crime at disproportionately higher rates. What the figures show about public services Claims that migrants place an excessive burden on public services are also common. In 2025, various public figures, including representatives of the Road Accident Fund (RAF), significantly overstated how much the fund had paid to migrants, claiming it was "being bled dry". In our investigation, we quoted Songezo Zibi, chairperson of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, who said just over 1% of RAF claims paid in 2024/5 went to non-citizens. Speaking about unprocessed claims, he said: "It can't be foreigners, because the volume is just too small. There are other problems in the RAF." A similar claim has been made about schools. In January 2026, the basic education department said non-citizens accounted for just 1.8% of pupils in public schools, challenging claims that migrants were taking places meant for South Africans. Healthcare has become another flashpoint. Anti-migrant groups in South Africa have tried to block migrants from using public clinics and other healthcare services, claiming they overwhelm the health system. In late 2025, Zandile Dabula, the former leader of anti-migrant group Operation Dudula, told the BBC: "We cannot cater for the whole globe. We don't have enough." International aid organisation Doctors Without Borders called these actions "highly distressing and unacceptable", warning that they put people's health and lives at risk. The evidence does not show that migrants use healthcare at disproportionate rates. In many cases they must pay for treatment, even at public facilities. Migrants may also be less likely to seek care. Research suggests that people who migrate are often healthier than those who do not. This is because moving, and benefiting economically from it, can be harder for people in poor health. This is known as the "healthy immigrant effect". The pattern also appears in South Africa, where migrants are more likely to report being in good health. Migrant welfare organisation the Scalabrini Centre said in 2019 that migrant and refugee use of South Africa's health system was probably broadly in line with their share of the general population, which it gave as 3%. National averages can hide pressure in particular municipalities or facilities. But poor planning, staffing shortages and unequal resource allocation also shape demand. The available evidence does not support blaming migrants for the wider failure of public services. False claims and collective blame can lead to harm False claims about migration are often amplified by public figures, deepening hostility and increasing the risk of harm to migrants. Ahead of South Africa's 2024 election, Human Rights Watch warned that politicians were using migrants as "pawns" to "score votes" and that scapegoating could "all too easily spark violence". Sasha Stevenson, executive director of the South African human rights organisation Section 27, told Africa Check: "Blaming migrants for the problems in South Africa's service delivery provides an easy scapegoat that hides the reality: the systematic disinvestment in social services including health and education, and widespread corruption and theft." She added that false claims not only put people at risk but also shift blame away from those responsible for fixing these failures. With local government elections due in November 2026, everyone should verify claims before sharing them. Public figures and others with large audiences carry an even greater responsibility. Note: For a fuller explanation of the terms used here, see Africa Check's factsheet on how to talk about migration. But here are some important terms, in brief: A migrant is someone who has moved away from where they usually live. This explainer focuses on international migrants, who move from one country to another. Irregular migration refers to movement that does not comply with a country's migration laws or regulations. People who migrate in this way are considered "irregular" or "undocumented" migrants. Terms like "illegal" immigrant are discouraged because they are inaccurate and can be harmful.