By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The South African Police Service (SAPS) has rejected claims that link the recent in-custody death of a Nigerian man in Tshwane to anti-migrant protests.
The West Africa nation accused the South African police – specifically officers from the Tshwane Metro Police – of killing a Nigerian national on 28 June in Pretoria “using gruesome interrogation techniques,” according to the statement from the Nigerian foreign ministry on Sunday.
According to SAPS, the man collapsed while being handcuffed during an intelligence-driven drug bust at his apartment on June 28.
Paramedics declared him dead at the scene.
“The South African Police Service strongly rejects attempts to link this incident to anti-illegal immigrant protests,” a police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said in a statement.
Mathe said a police drugs team had arrested the Nigerian at his apartment in an intelligence-driven operation. Drugs were found at the scene, and the man collapsed while being taken into custody in a Pretoria police station, Mathe added.
Paramedics were called and declared him dead, a police watchdog was notified and will investigate the incident, she said.
The Department on International Relations said Nigeria’s government should send in any evidence it has about the man’s death but has not commented on the specific allegations made by its Nigerian counterpart.
The anti-migrant protests over the past few months have been mostly peaceful but at times turned violent, with attacks on foreign nationals and looting of foreign-owned shops.
Nigeria has already evacuated hundreds of citizens due to the protests and some Nigerian lawmakers have called on the government to consider nationalising South African businesses operating in the country in retaliation against the attacks on its citizens.
Nigeria warned that protest leaders who incite violence against fellow Africans “will also be held to account,” while warning that all options remain on the table to retaliate if the “apartheid-style behaviour of South Africa against foreigners is not addressed”.
Meanwhile police arrested 217 illegal miners at the Losberg Kloof Mine in Westonaria during Operation Prosper on Tuesday, 07 July 2026.
Gauteng Deputy Police Commissioner Major General Fred Kekana was at the Losberg Kloof Mine on Tuesday afternoon.
“We managed to arrest over 198 people, all of them for illegal mining. Over 107 of them are Lesotho nationals, over 56 of them are Mozambican nationals, about 4 are Zimbabwean nationals and over 21 are South Africans.”
Illegal miners, called zama zamas, can earn between $15 000 and $22 000 annually while legal mining jobs pay around $2 700, The mathematics of desperation makes the choice brutally simple.
The country’s 6 000 abandoned mines create physical opportunities for this trade. Mining companies closed these sites over decades, but shafts were illegally reopened by zama zamas exploiting the remaining resources.