The Government of Ghana will resume evacuating Ghanaian nationals from South Africa this week, with the first flights carrying returnees due to land in Accra on Sunday and Monday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The operation, which the ministry described as the “next phase” of an ongoing evacuation programme, is expected to bring home about 1,000 Ghanaians in stages, prioritising women, children, the elderly, people with medical conditions and students, according to the statement.
The exercise responds to renewed xenophobic violence against migrants in South Africa. It will begin with Ghanaians already registered with the Ghana High Commission in Pretoria for government-assisted voluntary return, the ministry said.
Scale of the crisis
The new phase adds to evacuation flights already under way. Ghana’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Benjamin Quashie, said this week that nearly 926 Ghanaians had already been repatriated under earlier stages of the programme, with a further batch of roughly 900 registered nationals cleared for evacuation as of 25 July — an operation Quashie characterised as the “final phase” of the crisis response, according to reports carried by GBC and The Ghana Report.
It is not clear from the ministry’s Saturday statement how this newly announced 1,000-person operation relates to the batch Quashie described days earlier, or whether the two figures overlap. The ministry has not publicly reconciled the numbers, and this newspaper has sought clarification.
Support and appeals
The ministry singled out the Ghanaian leadership of the Church of Pentecost in Pretoria and Johannesburg, and Global Kingdom Investment Pty Ltd, for providing free shelter to displaced Ghanaians “for many weeks” while awaiting processing.
It said the High Commission in Pretoria had reactivated its emergency consular response, and urged Ghanaians still in South Africa to remain calm, avoid areas of unrest, ignore provocations and cooperate with High Commission officials. Distressed nationals were directed to a High Commission hotline, 0723681010.
The government said it would “leave no Ghanaian behind in harm’s way.”
The evacuations follow months of anti-migrant violence in parts of South Africa that has displaced foreign nationals from several countries. Ghana has previously operated evacuation flights in May and June, according to Pulse Ghana.
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