More than 45,000 Malawians have been repatriated from South Africa in just over two weeks, as an exodus of foreign nationals from the country accelerates. Hundreds of people are arriving every day at a temporary repatriation camp set up on South Africa's border with Zimbabwe, where their departures are being organised and managed.
At the camp, immigrants are processed for their departure. Some wait for hours and others for days before they can finally board a bus. One coach was shown leaving for Malawi, with its passengers preparing for another long day of arduous travel before their journey home is finally complete.
Entire families have been squeezed into the coaches, many of them with babies in tow. Among the travellers heading home are people described as survivors of attacks carried out by mobs against foreign nationals in different parts of the country, who are now leaving South Africa behind.
According to reporting from the border, authorities cleared a large area of barren borderland to build the temporary camp and manage the exodus of immigrants from key cities such as Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. The facility has become the main point through which departing migrants are being processed.
An official involved in the operation said that close to 90 percent of the people processed through the repatriation process are undocumented. In many cases, they were found to have overstayed, while others did not have any documents at all, according to the official overseeing the departures.
The mass departures come against a backdrop of rising tension in South Africa. Thousands of people have taken to the streets in cities and towns across the country, calling for African foreign nationals to leave and blaming them for high unemployment and strained public services, in scenes that have pushed many migrants to return home.