By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Violent protest has erupted in two South African cities after a court ruling on Thursday, which eases access to asylum, with at least 24 vehicles set ablaze and shops looted.
Acting national police commissioner Lt. Gen. Puleng Dimpane said 10 vehicles were torched in Johannesburg’s Soweto township and 14 in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal province, where three people were arrested.
“The right to raise concerns and to protest does not give anyone the right to commit crime,” she said, adding that public-order police deployments had been reinforced in areas where the unrest has erupted.
In Soweto and Durban, demonstrators challenged the Constitutional Court’s decision to remove procedural barriers to seeking asylum.
The development follows months of anti-immigrant tensions, where demonstrators have been demanding the deportation of foreigners living in South Africa with incomplete documentation.
The Soweto violence, which left several burned-out cars lining the streets, erupted near a Home Affairs office in Orlando West, according to metro police spokesperson Xolani Fihla. No injuries were reported, and officers were checking whether additional vehicles had been burned.
Fihla said police received reports of shots fired toward protesters, which triggered retaliatory vehicle burnings. He did not identify who allegedly fired or who owned the vehicles.
“The situation is a bit tense, but it has died down from the earlier violence that we did see during the day,” he said.
Community leader Tshepo Mposula said the demonstration began peacefully outside Home Affairs before residents moved to shut foreign-owned convenience stores. He alleged that foreign nationals fired shots, angering protesters who then set vehicles alight.
“It was not supposed to escalate to this level. This was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration,” he said.
Fihla said the violence had subsided, although tensions remained high.
Officers were still deployed, and roads remained closed. He acknowledged that officers initially monitoring the march lacked specialized public-order training and equipment. “We couldn’t predict that this type of situation would happen,” he said.
KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Col. Robert Netshiunda told public broadcaster SABC that three foreign nationals were arrested on suspicion of attacking a protester and breaking the protester’s neck an incident he said may have sparked the violence.
Earlier Thursday, the government’s Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration held an urgent briefing to address overcrowding at asylum offices after implementing a July Constitutional Court ruling.
The court struck down procedural barriers that prevented some people from seeking asylum, including those who entered South Africa irregularly, lacked asylum transit visas or missed reporting deadlines, the committee said.
Home Affairs later directed refugee reception offices to accept those applications, but officials acknowledged they were unprepared for the number of people who came forward.
