ANC Youth League president Collen Malatji has vowed to physically “clean out” foreign nationals illegally in South Africa, saying this could mean taking up arms to ensure their removal.
Malatji made the remarks in an interview with the Mail & Guardian following his re-election at a conference in Limpopo, where his slate was uncontested.
“If the police are not doing their job, we will mobilise the youth to use their own hands to clean all the buildings, to clean all our towns and make sure that there is no building hijacked by illegal foreigners at the expense of our people,” he said.
“We have seen people being killed for that; we are not scared and we are ready to die for South Africa to come first.”
He added that, after ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the party’s January 8 anniversary statement, it would be the youth league’s mission to ensure that all illegal foreign nationals were ejected from the country.
The ANC is set to hold its 114th anniversary January 8 celebrations at Moruleng Stadium in the North West province.
Malatji said black people, as the majority, must be the drivers of the economy in their own country and should not be bystanders or end up in prisons. Many South Africans have accused foreign nationals who are in the country illegally of committing heinous crimes, taking jobs which should be for locals and causing instability.
Organisations such as March on March and Operation Dudula, as well as political parties including ActionSA, the Patriotic Alliance and uMkhonto weSizwe, have been among those actively calling for the mass deportation of illegal foreign nationals.
Last year, Operation Dudula went as far as blocking foreign nationals from entering public clinics, while March on March demonstrated around Durban calling for foreigners to leave the country. In many cases, the forceful removal of foreigners has turned violent, with some people losing their lives.
Malatji said the country’s youth were already dying because of drugs and poverty and, therefore, taking up arms should not be something they feared.
“They are being shot at every day. Illegal foreigners are taking minerals in this country. We are saying we are dead already and we are not going to surrender our country to illegal foreigners. We are going to take up everything we have; even if it means we must take up arms, we will do it,” he said.
“We are going to take our country from people who are hijacking it. Our kids are not going to be born in a country that is hijacked.”
He added that Ramaphosa should consider declaring a state of disaster over youth unemployment and take action against incompetent ministers.
According to Statistics South Africa’s latest quarterly labour force survey in November, the percentage of young people aged 15–34 years who were not in employment, education or training was at 42.7% in the third quarter of 2025. This compared with an overall national unemployment rate of 31.9% for the period.
“We think there are resources, but there is no political will. The president must declare youth unemployment a disaster and force all ministers and CEOs of entities who are not doing their jobs to be disciplined or removed,” Malatji said.
“Companies that are maximising profit at the expense of our people must also be held accountable, so that we are left with people who put South Africa first.”
