Inside South Africa's Operation Dudula vigilantes: 'Why we hate foreigners'

Key Facts

According to a 2022 report by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), an independent research organisation based in the capital, Pretoria, there are about 3.95 million migrants in South Africa, making up 6.5% of the population, a figure in line with international norms.
Our country is a mess" Zandile Dabula, who was voted in as president of Operation Dudula in June 2023, is calm, charismatic and emphatic about the group's message: "foreigners" are the root cause of South Africa's economic hardship.
A Nigerian market trader, who was the target of a raid by Operation Dudula members in Johannesburg earlier in the year, tells the BBC that the two women who tasered him and destroyed his clothes by throwing them in the gutter did not stop to ask questions.
Operation Dudula maintains it is concern over the huge influx of drugs into South Africa's most deprived communities that is their most pressing complaint, but there is no data to back up the claim that people who sell drugs are not South African citizens.