Imagine answering your front door to find an angry mob telling you to leave the country. That’s the reality for Lado Amido and scores of other migrants in South Africa right now.

Four days ago, Mozambican immigrant Lado Amido heard a knock at his door in the small coastal town of Kleinmond, South Africa. Outside, an irate crowd told him foreigners like him had to pack up and go. They weren’t just at his house. They were going door-to-door with the same message, cbinews.tv reports .

Amido didn’t wait around. He fled into the mountains and spent two nights sleeping rough. Now he’s one of roughly 100 immigrants sheltering in the Kleinmond town hall, alongside others from Malawi and Mozambique who’ve been forced into hiding across South Africa’s Western Cape province.

Anti-immigrant mobs have been surfacing in several coastal towns, leaving migrants with nowhere safe to go.

South Africa has been hit by a fresh wave of anti-immigrant protests in recent weeks. Some have turned violent.

Mozambique says five of its citizens were killed in xenophobic attacks in Mossel Bay just this past weekend. That’s about 300 km from where Amido lives.

Inside Kleinmond town hall, many are hoping to get onto voluntary repatriation programmes run by their governments.

Xenophobic attacks aren’t new in South Africa. Immigrants often get blamed for the country’s economic troubles: high unemployment, crime, you name it. There’s no evidence to back up those claims, cbinews.tv reports.

Yet politicians from nearly every party have repeated them, trying to win populist votes ahead of local elections due at the end of the year.

Grant Cohen, a ward councillor for Kleinmond, told cbinews.tv that immigration authorities had been in town recently, checking restaurants and other businesses for undocumented workers. The catch is that many of those now sheltering in the town hall are actually in the country legally.

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