KUGOMPO CITY - South Africa is Africa's leading economy and most industrialised country.
This attracts millions of people from across the continent, searching for a better life.
And some, in acts of desperation, arrive undocumented, and others once in the country, then resort to illegal businesses for survival.
It's no different in KuGompo City, where tensions have been at a boiling point.
Burundi nationals, who run businesses in the infamous California, in KuGompo City,
say Nigerians here are giving migrants in the Buffalo City Metro a bad name.
“We are fixing cars on the same streets as these Nigerian guys. The thing that affects us is these Nigerians with these drug issues; it has been happening for a long time. They are always running away from the police. They are just using our passage as a place to run, and the police know because they always interfere in the matter when we are fighting against them. They even come to hide their stuff here," Burundi national, Rajabu Juma.
Local residents fighting crime in these communities complain about widespread drug dealing and prostitution across the metro.
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Community activist Anele Mkangelwa said: "It is not only in California, California and Quigney, I would also say they are the same ward, and these people know each other, and East London is their territory."
In the Eastern Cape, the recent tensions between South Africans and migrants have been sparked by the alleged coronation of a Nigerian national, declared the so-called king of KuGompo City.
The anger behind this act has had a ripple effect and unintended consequences.
Foreign nationals from different countries now bear the brunt.
They're being told to leave the country.
At small business level, it's a problem that concerns national government, said Small Business Development Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams.
"You only obtain a business VISA when you invest about five-million Rand. Now the mischief that we have discovered is that one would club into 10 or 20 to invest the five million, so this license that is Stella, it trades everywhere. Foreign nationals in South Africa have different visas.
"They are here on a work permit, they are studying here, but they do not have the right to trade. But South Africans enable them to trade. How do they enable them? They rent out spaces for them; they buy from them and hire them to work at restaurants and everywhere.”
It's government policy that foreign nationals wishing to acquire a business visa,
are required to invest five million rand.
But largely, this law is not followed, and if it is, migrant groups club together and operate under one permit.
Something the Minister said government is looking to address.