South Africa’s government continues to resist any suggestion that a Ghanaian national’s death on 30 June was linked to xenophobic violence, a stance that has fuelled a growing diplomatic row and extended a pattern that rights groups say has defined Pretoria’s response to years of attacks on African migrants.
The diplomatic row between Accra and Pretoria has widened since Wednesday, when Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Bashiru Isak, a 40 year old tailor, was shot dead in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township during anti-migrant demonstrations. South Africa’s justice ministry called the claim false, and police said no matching case existed on their books.
Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Sam Okudzeto Ablakwa, posted the government’s condolences directly on social media on 1 July, writing that the pursuit of justice would be non-negotiable. The post, shared from his personal account, came with a photograph of the ministry’s official statement and framed the killing as part of a growing wave of xenophobia targeting African nationals. The development has intensified the diplomatic row between the two countries.
That framing is precisely what Pretoria disputes. Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi said it was concerning that Ghanaian authorities kept communicating false information about developments on irregular migration, and accused Accra of spreading a narrative designed to paint South Africa as xenophobic.
Yet the wider record from 30 June complicates that denial. Reuters reported that at least four people were killed nationwide as protests spread across South African cities that day, with businesses vandalised and thousands of foreign nationals driven from their homes. Police in several areas fired rubber bullets and deployed tactical vehicles after crowds turned violent, according to the Daily Maverick and SABC.
South African police nonetheless described Tuesday’s demonstrations as largely peaceful, a characterisation that sits awkwardly next to their own confirmed arrest figures of roughly 900 people, most held for immigration offences and looting.
This diplomatic row is not the first time Pretoria has separated a killing from the xenophobia driving it. Human Rights Watch documented in May that vigilante groups including March and March and Operation Dudula have organised demonstrations against foreign nationals since April, with violent and sometimes fatal results, while police response has been little or insufficient.
Nomathamsanqa Masiko-Mpaka, a South Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, said authorities should not allow vigilante groups to target foreign nationals violently and must instead protect them and prosecute those responsible. That warning came more than a month before Isak’s death and before the current diplomatic row erupted between Ghana and South Africa.
The pattern extends further back. South Africa has faced recurring waves of anti-migrant violence since 2008, when 62 people were killed nationwide. Further outbreaks followed in 2015 and 2019, the latter overwhelmingly targeting Nigerian nationals. In each case, government responses have tended to frame individual killings as isolated criminal acts rather than acknowledge a broader xenophobic pattern, a distinction that rights groups argue allows the underlying violence to continue unaddressed.
A similar dispute has already played out this year in Mossel Bay, where police confirmed two Mozambican men were killed and more than 50 shacks burned in an informal settlement in late May. Mozambique’s government described the deaths as xenophobic attacks. South African authorities have not adopted that language for the incident.
This diplomatic row, then, sits inside a wider credibility problem. Ghana has confirmed it lodged a formal protest with Pretoria’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation and filed a police complaint, while also renewing a standing petition before the African Union Commission over xenophobic attacks on African nationals. Accra wants this treated as a continental concern, not a bilateral disagreement it can resolve alone with South Africa.
Pretoria’s position leaves an unresolved gap. Police say they cannot open a case without further detail from Ghana, while Ghana says it has already provided an identity, a death and a request for autopsy. Both cannot be fully correct, and the diplomatic row shows no sign of narrowing that gap this week.
What is independently verified, separate from either government’s account, is the killing of a second Ghanaian, Kwabena Boagen, in Nyanga a day earlier, and the confirmed death toll of at least four people nationwide during protests that South African officials continue to describe as largely peaceful. Observers say the diplomatic row could deepen if both governments maintain conflicting accounts.
