South Africa’s Refugee Reception Offices are once again accepting new asylum applications, three months after the Constitutional Court struck down the legal provisions that had kept most would-be applicants out of the system since 2020. A Home Affairs circular dated 28 September now instructs offices to accept applications from every new applicant, including people who entered the country unlawfully or hold no visa.
The reopening follows a 7 July Constitutional Court judgment confirming a 2025 Western Cape High Court ruling that invalidated amendments to the Refugees Act. Those amendments, in force since January 2020, allowed Home Affairs to turn people away before anyone examined their claims. Applicants who had not entered through an official port of entry, or who failed to report to a refugee office within five days, were excluded unless they could show “compelling reasons”. Those without an asylum transit visa had to demonstrate “good cause” for entering unlawfully. In practice, the gate was nearly shut: only 91 transit visas were issued between April 2022 and March 2024.
The court found the amendments could see people returned to danger without any determination of whether they were refugees, contrary to international law. The Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town, represented by Lawyers for Human Rights, had challenged the provisions, telling the court that “hundreds of thousands of people” were affected. (Reporting on the judgment and the reopening appeared at https://groundup.org.za/article/asylum-system-reopens-after-concourt-judgment/.)
Delivery on the ground is now the test. GroundUp visited the Gqeberha Refugee Reception Office on Monday morning, where a Bangladeshi national living in Jeffreys Bay had been given an appointment to return on 24 November. About 50 applicants were inside. A Home Affairs official, speaking anonymously, advised applicants to arrive early and bring proof of identification showing their origins, or a letter from human rights lawyers. That guidance sits at odds with the circular, which bars officials from refusing an application because of “the absence of documentation”.
Capacity is the central concern for those watching whether the system actually functions. Linton Harmse, director of the Nelson Mandela University Refugee Rights Centre and an organiser of a 9 September protest by about 400 asylum seekers outside the Gqeberha office, welcomed the reopening but warned of serious capacity problems. The Gqeberha office has only three refugee reception officers, he noted, making it unlikely they can process more than 15 new applications per day, meaning appointment dates will soon extend months into the future. He anticipated that hundreds of asylum seekers would flock to the offices daily, since impediments dating from before covid had precluded thousands of bona fide refugees from lodging claims. A written appointment date, he added, would give asylum seekers some protection against arrest and detention as illegal immigrants.
Meanwhile, the operational backlog extends beyond first applications. In May, the Refugee Appeals Authority told Parliament it had a backlog of about 161,000 cases. The department’s own record on status determination is also under scrutiny: in 2017, only 479 applicants without family links in South Africa were granted refugee status at their first interview, while 25,713 were rejected, according to figures analysed by the Helen Suzman Foundation.
James Chapman of Scalabrini said the organisation was pleased the department had finally acted on the judgment. “We’re hopeful there will be a smooth processing of new applicants. I’m optimistic that the offices will not be overwhelmed. I’d hope the department has put systems in place to manage the numbers, but we have to wait and see.” If the offices cannot cope, Scalabrini will engage the department, he said. He also hoped the refugee status determination process had improved, though he remained “worried and wary” that people from very clear refugee situations might still be rejected.
Tibebu Solomon, leader of the Ethiopian and Eritrean community in the Eastern Cape, who led the 9 September protest, said it was not yet time to celebrate. “It is promising to see the department has responded and that our concerns have been acknowledged. For us, however, the response is not yet a victory.” He warned that applications could be processed too quickly, without a proper opportunity for applicants to explain their circumstances.
Sharon Ekambaram of Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia said the judgment demonstrated the independence of the judiciary, and that the state had deliberately misapplied law and policy, amounting to refoulement. Home Affairs did not respond to a request for comment. Whether three reception officers in Gqeberha can absorb a daily queue of hundreds, and whether the department scales up before appointment dates stretch deep into next year, is the question the coming weeks will answer.