Woman with baby says it feels like leaving with one leg as crowds from North West and Mpumalanga seek refuge.
Crowd gathers outside the Malawian Consulate General in Johannesburg, 28 June 2026. Picture for illustration: Nigel Sibanda/The Citizen
Hundreds of Malawians have been sleeping at the Malawi high commission in Pretoria since the beginning of the week while waiting for buses to take them home.
The Malawians waited at the entrance of the embassy for their names to be read before running to the bus parked in the street with their belongings.
About 500 stranded Malawians slept at Pretoria embassy
A Malawian woman, with her baby on her back, was waiting to board the bus and said she can’t wait to get home.
She was one of hundreds of stranded Malawians who arrived at the embassy of Malawi on Monday and slept inside the embassy grounds for two nights.
“I’m excited because finally I can go home. At the same time, I am not excited because every time a bus arrives, it’s full before we get in.
“We are too many people here. Then we are left behind while others get to go home. It’s like we are leaving, but with one leg.
“It would have been better if they could have taken all of us in one go,” she added.
The woman, who didn’t want to reveal her identity or whether she was in South Africa illegally, said she arrived in the country on a bus at the beginning of the year.
Woman with baby says it feels like leaving with one leg
“I can’t say I will miss it, because I wasn’t here that long before the protests started. So it is better that we go,” she said.
“We were not in any danger, we lived in Arcadia, but we were told to go back.”
Yusuf Mustafa, from the Institute for Islamic Services, who has been feeding foreigners for the past three weeks at the embassies of Malawi, Mozambique and Nigeria, said yesterday was a bad day.
“There were more people here today than any other day,” he said.
“The saddest part was seeing the children and pregnant women. I hope they get medical attention. It’s also sad to see their reaction when they don’t make it onto that one bus.”
Mustafa said there were about 500 people yesterday morning at the Malawi embassy.
200 go hungry when buses depart full
“We give them food, water and fruit and we use these containers to count how many people we serve. We only managed to serve 300 people this morning, the other 200 people had to go without.
“We normally feed about 200 people per morning at each embassy, but this morning we didn’t have enough.”
DA ward councillor Shimmy Mashamaite said Malawians came from different provinces to the embassy seeking refuge.
“There were babies as young as six weeks and two months old and women with children who lost everything from as far as North West and Mpumalanga,” said Mashamaite.
“Their landlords instructed them to leave. Others were given 30 minutes to evacuate.”
