In South African, even children ask foreigners when they are going ‘beck’ to their country- Ghanaian returnee laments

For Emmanuel Akuoko, the moment he realised he no longer belonged in South Africa was not during a pr0test or a confr+ntation. It was when children began asking him when he was going back to Ghana.

“More and more often, when you walked around, a little child could simply ask you, ‘When are you going back to your country?'” he recalled.

After more than a decade in South Africa, Akuoko said such encounters showed how anti-foreigner sentiment had become part of everyday life. He said the experience, together with growing hostility toward African migrants, convinced him to leave.

Last Monday, he returned to Ghana on a repatriation flight organised by the Ghanaian government, bringing an end to a life he had built since relocating in 2014 after graduating from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

Akuoko initially moved to South Africa to teach mathematics but later opened a hair salon after, he said, difficulties renewing his residency documents prevented him from continuing in the education sector.

He said the daily h+stility, combined with videos circulating among migrant communities showing foreigners being ass+ulted and calls for them to leave the country, ultimately influenced his decision to return home.