Durban protesters set Sept 30 deadline for undocumented migrants to leave

Protesters in South Africa have handed immigrants living in the country without legal status until Sept. 30 to leave, warning of much larger demonstrations if their demands are not met.

Weekly protests have continued in Durban, where the movement gathered momentum earlier this year. March and March leader Sphelele Shinga said activists expected as many as 1.5 million people to join the next major demonstration.

"You should know that all the communities are gathering up again," Shinga said. "They are waking up, they're standing up for their home, standing up for their country."

Shinga said protesters would "write another history" on Sept. 30 by pressing for undocumented migrants to leave South Africa, and pointed to the scale of an earlier march on June 30 as a sign of what was to come.

At the same demonstration, Princess Adjei, a Ghanaian refugee, described the precarious position of those camped on the streets. She said the group could not keep sleeping outdoors indefinitely and that people had died there, adding that they were waiting for buses while their documentation was verified.

Peace activists, including former lawmaker Ela Gandhi, stood alongside the refugees during the march. Gandhi, a former member of Parliament and granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, rejected the language used by the protesters.

"The rhetoric that these people are using is completely untrue," she said. "It's not the migrants that are causing the problems that they talk about."

The Sept. 30 deadline has raised the prospect of renewed large-scale demonstrations in Durban.