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

The Department of Home Affairs has withdrawn a directive setting out how asylum applications are processed, after two days of unrest in Durban and Soweto in which 24 vehicles were set alight and shops were looted.

The department said its asylum offices had been overwhelmed and that its officers were placed at serious risk. The directive was issued in response to a court judgment, and it is that judgment, not the directive, that now governs how the department must handle people who arrive to apply for asylum.

As Deutsche Welle reported on 9 October, the court ruled that asylum seekers cannot be denied access to South Africa’s asylum system on procedural grounds alone, including entering the country illegally. The department has stressed that the judgment does not grant refugee status or permanent residence automatically to anyone who enters South Africa.

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 on fire, and foreign-owned shops were looted. On Thursday the unrest spread to Soweto, where residents clashed with foreign shop owners.

Gunshots were heard in Soweto, according to the broadcaster Newzroom Afrika. 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, and that no injuries had been reported at that stage.

Fourteen cars were torched in Durban and ten in Soweto. The figure of 24 vehicles is the count carried in the reporting of the unrest, and it is the number attached to the two days of incidents rather than to any single location.

What the ruling changed, and what it did not

The court found certain provisions of the government’s refugee policy unconstitutional. The practical effect was narrow and procedural. It removed the ability of Home Affairs to turn an applicant away at the counter because of how they entered the country. It did not hand anyone refugee status, and it did not hand anyone permanent residence.

That distinction has been at the centre of the public argument this week. The department made the point itself on Wednesday, saying the judgment does not grant refugee status or permanent residence automatically to anyone who enters South Africa. The withdrawal of the directive does not change the judgment. It changes the administrative instructions the department had written to try to cope with it.

The pressure the department described is real and measurable in its own account. Hundreds of people, reportedly including people who do not qualify for asylum, went to government refugee centres in the days after the ruling. Home Affairs said its officers were placed at serious risk by the volume.

This is not the first time the asylum system has been the flashpoint. South Africa has seen months of anti-illegal-immigration protests this year, with populist and anti-illegal-immigration groups demanding 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 the one South Africans live with daily. About a third of the population is unemployed. South Africa 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 or individual may enforce immigration law in this country. That authority belongs to the state. Torching a vehicle, looting a shop and blocking a clinic or a refugee centre from serving people are crimes, whether or not the people doing them believe they are acting on a grievance that others share.

The police response is part of the record. The Johannesburg Metro Police Department confirmed it was on the ground in Soweto and that its spokesman was able to report the position on injuries to the public broadcaster. The unrest in Durban and Soweto did not continue into a third day.

What happens next turns on the department. It must now process applications under the court’s judgment, without the directive it wrote to manage the volume, and it has said plainly that the volume is the problem. Whether it rebuilds that capacity at the counter, or returns to court for clarity on what the judgment requires of it, is the question its own statement leaves open.

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