South African police secured two convictions and six-year-plus-three-month prison sentences late Friday for undocumented foreign nationals found guilty of tampering with and damaging essential infrastructure at Three Sisters. Upon completing their sentences, both individuals will be transferred to the Department of Home Affairs, Immigration Services, for deportation to their countries of citizenship. The case moves through a clear operational pipeline: criminal prosecution first, administrative removal second.
That infrastructure case is one strand of a wider enforcement push. In a separate action, authorities arrested four foreign nationals in connection with illicit clothing commerce. Three of them, two Ethiopian nationals and one Senegalese national, face charges under the Counterfeit Goods Act 37 of 1997 for possession and dealing in counterfeit merchandise. All three were remanded in police custody for further investigation and bail applications after appearing before the Magistrate Court on Thursday, 20 August 2026. A fourth Ethiopian national, arrested on suspicion of attempting to bribe police officers, was granted bail, with proceedings set to continue on Monday, 24 August 2026. Officers seized counterfeit goods valued at thousands of rands alongside a substantial cash amount allegedly tied to the bribery attempt.
Meanwhile, Operation Basadi extended enforcement to the N4 Road near the Nkomazi Toll Plaza on the same Thursday. The roadblock combined immigration checks, tracing of wanted suspects, and raids on shops suspected of trading in counterfeit and illicit goods. Thirteen undocumented foreign nationals were arrested. Officers seized approximately 438 items of illicit and counterfeit merchandise, a haul spanning cosmetics, cell phone accessories, watches, toys, and cigarettes.
The scale of recent operations is considerable. During July 2026, South African police announced the arrest of over 1,200 suspects, including 159 undocumented foreign nationals charged with immigration law violations. Many of those arrests came through Operation Shanela in Gauteng province, signaling that the current enforcement tempo is not a one-off response but a sustained operational posture.
These actions are unfolding alongside intensifying pressure from civil society. The March and March movement, which has led protests since early April, announced a fresh deadline of 30 September for undocumented foreigners to leave the country. An earlier 30 June deadline passed without the outcome the group sought. During the June demonstrations, movement members and associated vigilante groups marched through streets, demanded that foreigners vacate occupied buildings, and threatened to continue weekly Thursday protests until the government acted. Organizers have framed the issue around claims that undocumented migrants have taken jobs, displaced business opportunities, and affected social stability. The movement plans to repeat its nationwide protest format on 30 September, with organizers calling on African country leaders to “fetch their people,” a direct appeal to neighboring governments to manage emigration from their territories.
Police have characterized their enforcement approach as a response to both criminal activity and immigration law violations. The coordination between law enforcement and the Department of Home Affairs on deportation procedures points to an integrated processing model: cases move through the criminal justice system before administrative removal is initiated. Whether that pipeline can absorb the volume of cases generated by sustained operations like Basadi and Shanela, without creating backlogs in either the courts or the deportation process, remains the practical question hanging over the entire effort.