South Africa: Asylum reopened after six years, stick-wielding militia blocks Durban center

The South African Department of Home Affairs announced on October 5, 2026, that all asylum seekers could once again file applications, ending six years of the system being closed to new requests. The very next day, October 6, about fifteen anti-immigrant activists confronted applicants in front of the Durban Refugee Reception Centre, according to the South African media outlet GroundUp.

Around 12:30 p.m., the group—some masked, most carrying sticks or knobkerries—walked past police officers stationed outside, entered the fenced parking lot, shoved people who were waiting, and ordered them to leave. Retreating to the other side of the street, they hurled insults, including the term "kwerekwere," telling them to go seek asylum in the country neighboring their own.

Hundreds of people had been waiting since early morning, some having slept on the street. Only twenty files were processed that day. The police only intervened after a few minutes to remove the group from the parking lot. Wandile Mhlongo, who leads the group, said he wanted to prevent people from seeking asylum in South Africa; the police allowed him to enter to observe the counters.

What the Constitutional Court ruled

The reopening is not a favor: it is the execution of a court decision. On July 7, 2026, the Constitutional Court upheld a ruling made in 2025 by the Western Cape High Court, which struck down the provisions that blocked access to asylum. According to GroundUp, the Court ruled that these rules could send people back into danger without anyone having examined whether they were refugees—contrary to international law.

In effect since January 2020, these amendments allowed for the dismissal of an applicant before any examination: those who had not entered through an official border post, or had not presented themselves within five days, were excluded unless there were "compelling reasons." Offices had also stopped registering applications from March 2020 to May 2022 due to COVID. Lawyers for Human Rights, which represented the Scalabrini Centre in Cape Town, spoke before the Court of "hundreds of thousands" of people affected.

A system already saturated

In Gqeberha, the office reopened following a circular on September 28 prohibiting the refusal of a file due to a lack of paperwork. Linton Harmse, from the Nelson Mandela University Refugee Rights Centre, expects hundreds of applicants per day there, while the three agents on duty can process about fifteen. The Refugee Appeal Authority acknowledged before Parliament in May that there was a backlog of approximately 161,000 files.

Among those waiting, Bihh Mutombo fled the DRC twelve years ago and found himself outside the system in 2020. These queues are mostly composed of Africans from other countries on the continent: solidarity between African peoples is also measured by how an African state treats its neighbors at its counters.