Home Affairs withdraws asylum directive after cars torched in Durban and Soweto
The department says its offices were overwhelmed and staff put at serious risk after a court ruling opened the system to people who had entered the country illegally.
Home Affairs has withdrawn a directive governing how asylum applications are processed, after days of unrest in Durban spread to Soweto and left 24 vehicles burnt out across the two cities.
The directive was issued to give effect to a court judgment. That judgment held that asylum seekers could not be shut out of South Africa’s asylum system on procedural grounds alone, including having entered the country without authorisation. Once it took effect, the department said, its refugee reception offices were overwhelmed and officers were placed at serious risk.
As Deutsche Welle reported on 8 October, the withdrawal followed violent protests in Johannesburg and Durban. Rioters torched 14 cars in Durban and 10 in Soweto. Shops were looted in both places.
The unrest in Durban began with a protest by a group demanding that a refugee centre stop processing asylum applications. Vehicles were overturned and set alight, and foreign-owned shops were looted. In Soweto, residents clashed with foreign shop owners and gunshots were heard, according to the broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.
Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Superintendent Xolani Fihla told SABC television that no injuries had been reported at that stage. “It’s reported that there were clashes between foreign nationals in the area and South African nationals,” he said.
The court ruling at the centre of this deemed certain provisions of the government’s refugee policy unconstitutional. In the weeks after it was handed down, hundreds of people, reportedly including some who do not qualify for asylum, went to government refugee centres.
On Wednesday the government stressed that the judgment “does not grant refugee status or permanent residence automatically to anyone who enters South Africa.” That clarification matters to every applicant already in the queue, because it means the ruling changed how claims must be assessed, not who qualifies.
Behind the unrest lies a longer build-up. 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 left the country, and some were repatriated by their own governments.
South Africa has roughly a third of its population unemployed and remains the largest economy in Africa, which continues to draw migrants. Migrants are often blamed for taking jobs, driving crime and straining public services. Social scientists have said those accusations are not supported by evidence.
The withdrawal of the directive leaves the court’s requirements in place and the processing question unresolved. For people with claims already lodged, the practical effect is a system that must still absorb the judgment while its reception offices recover from the week’s damage. For the department, the question now is how to comply with the court without exposing staff and applicants to a repeat of what happened in Durban and Soweto.
Source: Deutsche Welle, South Africa pulls asylum directive after violent protests
