Police logged 874 anti-illegal-immigration marches in six months, KwaZulu-Natal leads with 271

Police recorded 874 marches linked to irregular migration across South Africa between January and June 2026, with KwaZulu-Natal accounting for 271 of them, the highest of any province.

As IOL reported on 18 September, Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia gave the figures to Parliament in a written reply to EFF MP Chumai Matiwane, who had asked about events involving the March and March movement in the first half of the year. The numbers come from the Incident Registration Information System, the police’s own record of public gatherings.

The provincial spread

KwaZulu-Natal’s 271 marches were followed by Gauteng with 173, the Eastern Cape with 122, the Western Cape with 88, Limpopo with 71, Mpumalanga with 59, the Free State with 53, North West with 24 and the Northern Cape with 13.

The figures describe a national phenomenon with a sharply uneven footprint, and the ordering is not simply a function of population. KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng together account for just over half of all recorded incidents, while the Northern Cape recorded 13 in six months.

What the police did

Cachalia told Parliament that the Public Order Policing unit was sent to assist local police stations at 433 of the gatherings, where the situation had the potential to affect public order and safety. That support, he said, covered community unrest, tensions relating to foreign nationals, and activities at repatriation centres.

Members operated within the unit’s legislative mandate, operational directives and applicable legal requirements, he said.

The breakdown of how the gatherings went is the part of the reply that matters most for anyone living near one. At least 368 of the recorded protests were peaceful, and 49 involved crowd unrest. The Eastern Cape recorded the most unrest, with 17 incidents, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 10 and the Western Cape with seven.

KwaZulu-Natal recorded 113 peaceful protests, Gauteng 70, the Eastern Cape 65, the Western Cape 42 and Mpumalanga 36.

The arrests

Twenty-one people have been arrested for offences associated with unrest during protest events organised by the March and March movement, Cachalia said.

Separately, 426 people were arrested for offences linked to protests against illegal immigrants up to the end of July 2026. Cachalia stressed that those arrests were not associated with the March and March movement. The charges include aiding and abetting illegal foreigners, assault, attempted arson, attempted murder, attempted robbery, burglary at business premises, business robbery, offences under the Cyber Crime Act, employment of illegal foreigners, and extortion.

In the build-up to the July protests, 170 suspects were arrested after multiple cases were opened relating to allegations linked to the treatment of immigrants. Those charges range from murder to assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, robbery, public violence, incitement to commit public violence, intimidation and firearm-related offences.

The law, and who enforces it

The authority to enforce immigration law belongs to the state and not to any group, movement or individual. A self-declared deadline has no standing in law, and a blockade that denies anyone access to a clinic, a school or a place of business is a crime, not a protest tactic.

Cachalia said the police are responsible for preventing, combating and investigating crime and for upholding the law under their constitutional mandate. Any allegation that an individual or community is threatened is viewed in a serious light, he said, and the SAPS will not hesitate to act to maintain order and stability and to protect the inhabitants of the country.

He urged victims of crime to report incidents to the SAPS so that investigations can be conducted and perpetrators brought to justice, saying the service will not tolerate lawlessness and will assert its authority to enforce the law.

The record shows a police service that has been present at these gatherings in force and has made arrests across a wide range of charges. That is the work the Public Order Policing unit exists to do, and the figures Cachalia gave Parliament show it was done at hundreds of events without unrest.

What it means for people living here

For a resident in a province where marches have become a weekly occurrence, the practical question is not the national total but whether the next one passes their street peacefully. The reply answers that in part: most did. The arrests answer the other part, which is that where the law was broken, charges followed.

The figures also give Parliament, for the first time in this cycle, a documented count of a movement that until now has been discussed largely through individual incidents. That record now sits in the parliamentary reply of 18 September, and it is the number any future claim about the scale of these marches will have to be measured against.

Source: IOL, Police record 874 protests linked to irregular migration in six months