Anti-migrant protests turn violent in Johannesburg and Durban

Anti-migrant protests turned violent in Johannesburg’s Soweto township and Durban on Thursday, with cars set alight and foreign-run businesses forced to close or looted, according to police and witnesses.

The demonstrations called for refugee centres to stop processing asylum applications. Acting National Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane said 10 vehicles were torched in Johannesburg and 14 in Durban. Three people were arrested in Durban, he said.

In Soweto, a Reuters reporter witnessed residents carrying groceries from a shop they said was owned by a person from Somalia before chasing that person away. The shop’s ownership and the person’s nationality were not independently established.

In Durban, a Reuters reporter witnessed cars being set on fire and foreign-owned shops being looted. AFP reporters said police used rubber bullets to disperse protesters who reportedly set fire to a business run by foreigners.

Government blames false information

Government spokesperson William Baloyi said the unrest had been triggered by deliberately false information about a Constitutional Court ruling concerning asylum seekers.

“We are deeply concerned by what is going on now,” Baloyi said.

He said the ruling had been widely misrepresented. According to Baloyi, the decision did not automatically grant refugee status, permanent residence or other legal rights to undocumented migrants.

The July ruling removed procedural barriers to seeking asylum for people who entered South Africa irregularly, did not have asylum transit visas or missed reporting deadlines.

Asylum offices overwhelmed

The Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration held an urgent briefing after the ruling’s implementation. The committee said, one day before the briefing, that all of its offices had been overwhelmed by incoming applications.

The unrest comes after months of protests by populist, anti-immigrant groups targeting undocumented foreign nationals and demanding that they leave South Africa. Some people who fled those protests were repatriated by their governments.

Migrants are frequently blamed for taking jobs, fuelling crime and placing pressure on public services, although the supplied account says those claims are not supported by evidence. South Africa remains deeply unequal, while about a third of its people are out of work, more than three decades after the end of apartheid.