Home Affairs withdraws asylum directive after 24 cars torched in Durban and Soweto

The Department of Home Affairs has withdrawn a directive governing how asylum applications are processed, after a court judgment, a wave of applications and days of unrest that left 24 vehicles destroyed in Durban and Soweto.

As Deutsche Welle reported on 9 October, the department pulled the directive after protests in the two cities turned violent. The Enquirer sets out below what the ruling said, what the department’s own reasoning was, and what the police have confirmed about the damage.

The directive was issued in response to a court judgment. That judgment found that asylum seekers could not be denied access to South Africa’s asylum system purely on procedural grounds, including entering the country without authorisation. The department has said the effect was immediate and unmanageable. Its asylum offices were quickly overwhelmed, and officers were placed at serious risk.

The unrest began in Durban, where a group protested outside a refugee centre and demanded that it stop processing asylum applications. Vehicles were overturned and set alight. Foreign-owned shops were looted. The protest spread to Soweto on Thursday, where residents clashed with foreign shop owners and gunshots were heard, according to the broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.

Fourteen cars were torched in Durban and ten in Soweto. Shops were looted in both locations.

Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Superintendent Xolani Fihla told SABC television that clashes had taken place between foreign nationals and South African nationals in the area. He confirmed that no injuries had been reported at that stage.

The court ruling at the centre of the dispute held that certain provisions of the government’s refugee policy were unconstitutional. In the days that followed, hundreds of people, reportedly including some who do not qualify for asylum, went to government refugee centres. On Wednesday the government emphasised that the judgment does not grant refugee status or permanent residence automatically to anyone who enters South Africa.

That clarification matters to how the last week is read. The ruling changed how claims must be accepted and processed. It did not change who qualifies for protection, and it did not change the requirements a person must meet to remain in the country lawfully.

South Africa has seen months of anti-illegal-immigration protest this year. Populist and anti-illegal-immigration groups demanded that undocumented foreign nationals leave by 30 June. Amid international criticism, tens of thousands of people have left the country, and some were repatriated by their own governments.

The economic backdrop is not in dispute. South Africa has an unemployment rate of about a third. It remains the largest economy on the continent and continues to attract migrants from across the region. Migrants are frequently blamed for taking jobs, driving crime and straining public services. Social scientists have said those accusations are not supported by the evidence.

No group, movement or individual may enforce immigration law in South Africa. That authority belongs to the state. A self-declared deadline has no standing in law, and a blockade that stops a refugee centre from processing claims, or that denies a person access to a service, is unlawful. Intimidation, public violence, arson and the unlawful deprivation of liberty are criminal offences, and the people who committed them are the people who answer for them.

The police response is part of the record. The Johannesburg Metro Police Department confirmed the clashes and the absence of reported injuries at the time of Superintendent Fihla’s interview. The SAPS and metro police were deployed in both cities as the unrest spread.

What happens next turns on two things the department has not yet set out in detail. The first is how asylum processing will run while the directive is withdrawn, given that the court judgment it responded to remains in force. The second is what support and security arrangements are put in place at the refugee centres that were overwhelmed. The Enquirer will report both when they are confirmed.

Source: Deutsche Welle, South Africa pulls asylum directive after violent protests in Johannesburg, Durban.