JOHANNESBURG — At least 24 vehicles were burned and shops looted as protests over a court ruling easing access to asylum turned violent in two South African cities on Thursday.
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 facing unrest.
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, 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.
In the eastern coastal city of Durban, where looting of shops owned by foreign nationals was reported by the state broadcaster, SABC, riot police were deployed to the city center. Smoke billowed over parts of downtown Durban as firefighters battled blazes.
KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Col. Robert Netshiunda told 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.
“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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