Ghana’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Benjamin Kofi Quashie, says the Ghana mission is engaging diplomatic channels to ensure that rising tensions and reported attacks on foreign nationals are brought under control.
Speaking in an interview on Adom FM’s Dwaso Nsem, he said some individuals in South Africa were taking the law into their own hands, a situation the mission is working to reverse.
“We are doing what we can diplomatically to ensure that the tensions and happenings will be resolved. Some South Africans have taken the law into their own hands, and we are trying to reverse that unfortunate development,” he said.
Mr. Quashie noted that many Ghanaians in affected areas are unable to open their shops due to fear and insecurity.
He also revealed that some parents are currently keeping their children out of school because of safety concerns.
“Most of the Ghanaians are unable to open their shops. Most of them can’t take their kids to school because of what happens to them in some of the schools. We have advised them not to take their children to school until the situation is under control,” he stated.
On the number of Ghanaians in South Africa, the High Commissioner said the mission has been conducting registration exercises to obtain accurate data.
“When I took over, we did registration of Ghanaians in South Africa. So far, we have close to 16,000 to 17,000, but we are still updating the database,” he explained.
He added that the commonly circulated figure of about 500,000 Ghanaians in South Africa is inaccurate.
“I can confirm that the Ghanaian population here is a little over 15,000 who have registered. It is not true that we are 500,000. Even the South African authorities have their records, and we have compared data,” he said.
Mr. Quashie further disclosed that outreach programmes were carried out in rural and interior communities to register Ghanaians living in hard-to-reach areas.
“We went to interior places and villages ourselves to register Ghanaian residents there,” he noted.
His comments come amid growing concerns over the safety of foreign nationals in South Africa following renewed reports of tensions in some communities.
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