Vehicles torched in South Africa as protests over asylum ruling rage on

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Nine vehicles were set alight during clashes between South Africans and foreign nationals in Soweto, Johannesburg on Thursday, police said, amid protests over a court ruling that has brought crowds of applicants to asylum offices.

Protests in Soweto and Durban opposed the Constitutional Court’s decision to remove procedural barriers to seeking asylum. They followed months of anti-immigrant tensions, with demonstrators demanding the deportation of foreigners living in South Africa illegally.

The Soweto violence 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.

Officers initially monitoring the march lacked specialized public-order training and equipment, Fihla said. “We couldn’t predict that this type of situation would happen.”

Police remained deployed, and roads in the area were closed.

In the eastern coastal city Durban, where looting of shops owned by foreign nationals was reported by the state broadcaster, riot police were deployed to the city center.

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.

“We confirm that all refugee offices were overwhelmed by the numbers of those coming for applications,” the committee said after meeting Wednesday night.

Authorities pledged to expand processing capacity, speed up decisions and strengthen identity checks. They stressed that the ruling allowed people to have their claims assessed but did not automatically grant refugee status or permanent residence.

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