Asylum chaos exposes GNU's deepening governance crisis

On the evening of Thursday, 8 October, scenes of anti-immigrant violence erupted across Soweto, Johannesburg, and several parts of Durban, leaving destruction and fear in their wake. Twenty-four vehicles were set ablaze, while foreign-owned businesses were looted and property destroyed.

The unrest exposed serious weaknesses in the management of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), raised questions about coordination across government and highlighted the state’s difficulties in maintaining public order and protecting the rights of everyone living in South Africa. 

The crisis stemmed from a DHA directive on 28 September to facilitate the intake of asylum applications, following a binding Constitutional Court judgement on 7 July in the matter of the Scalabrini Centre in Cape Town.

The judgment held that the state could not exclude foreign nationals from the asylum process simply because they entered the Republic irregularly or had not met certain prior administrative requirements.

Within days, refugee reception offices were overwhelmed, officials faced safety risks, and public order concerns grew. On 9 October, the department withdrew the directive, saying the director-general had issued it without the minister's or other political office-bearers' knowledge.

These developments raise serious doubts concerning administrative capacity, internal supervision, and preparedness. Even if the director-general issued the instruction without informing Schreiber, the minister remains responsible for the department's overall performance.

Political leadership must ensure that important administrative decisions are properly supervised and that officials have the resources and plans needed to carry them out. The DA must take responsibility for how it has managed Home Affairs and show that its governance goes beyond simply issuing political messages.

Directives are essential tools in public policy because they translate legal duties and court rulings into administrative action. Before issuing a directive on asylum applications, the department should have carried out a thorough impact assessment, considering staffing, reception-office capacity, technology, the expected number of applications, and security risks.

The DHA also required a contingency plan and a definite public communications strategy. The fact that the directive was withdrawn so quickly indicates that sufficient preparations for operation had not been made prior to its implementation. The disruption that has resulted is therefore a valid cause for doubt as to the quality of the department's planning and decision-making.

Schreiber’s relative inexperience in managing a department with such complex legal, administrative and security responsibilities may have contributed to weaknesses in oversight and coordination.

A minister’s effectiveness is measured partly by whether the systems under his authority can anticipate foreseeable challenges and respond coherently to major policy changes. Schreiber should have ensured that established inter-ministerial structures considered implementation arrangements and involved the relevant migration, policing and intelligence authorities.

The crisis exposes a failure of institutional coordination, and the political leadership must answer for it.

The episode also raises broader issues about the DA's preparedness to deal with national government.

A party that positions itself as committed to competence must show that its ministers can manage institutions, carry out effective oversight and coordinate decisions with colleagues in other parts of government.

The Home Affairs crisis has greatly weakened that assertion. The controversy recalls earlier questions about coordination between Schreiber and the executive, such as the 2024 dispute over the proposal for visa-free access for holders of Ukrainian passports.

The matter has been made even more complicated by comments made by various ministers in regarding certain points of the Constitutional Court’s asylum ruling. Although Ministers may speak about the practical consequences of judicial decisions, they have to respect the judiciary’s independence and comply with binding judgements.

A Minister's duty is to uphold the constitutional framework, not to place the blame on the courts for faults in the way the executive has carried out the law. It is particularly worrying when such public criticism is directed at undermining confidence in the judiciary, since the government itself must demonstrate that it respects constitutional limits.

No political party, group, or self-appointed community representative has the right to decide who can use public services, to intimidate foreign nationals, to loot businesses, or to destroy property. Such violent actions often follow organised political campaigns that aim to exploit changes in government policy.

The group called “March on March” has organised past demonstrations focused on undocumented migrants. Its political programme should be thoroughly examined.

Although the right to hold public protests is legally guaranteed, organisations that incite people around sensitive, emotionally charged socio-economic issues tend to worsen social divisions rather than help with the lawful, orderly management of migration.

The scale of the violence in Soweto and Durban raises serious questions about intelligence gathering, risk assessment and police preparedness.

Authorities must establish what warnings were available, whether intelligence was shared effectively and whether police deployments were adequate. The police response should be scrutinised wherever officers failed to intervene despite having a reasonable opportunity and a legal duty to protect people and property.

Any misconduct should be investigated, and those responsible for arson, looting and intimidation should be prosecuted where evidence supports criminal charges.

The institutional malfunction continues even though there have been a number of independent investigations into security flaws, especially in relation to large-scale civil unrest.

The Sydney Mufamadi and Sandy Africa reports each made detailed suggestions for reforming the national intelligence system, for improving early-warning mechanisms, and for enhancing communication between departments.

Yet the current week's developments prove that no substantial lessons have been learned, even though there have been a number of recent legislative, structural, and institutional measures taken. The state is still unable to turn over security recommendations into actual protection when domestic tensions arise.

This crisis cannot be attributed solely to one directive or one official. It encompasses departmental administration, ministerial oversight, government coordination, political communication and policing.

If confirmed, Schreiber’s lack of knowledge of the directive would raise questions about the effectiveness of his oversight arrangements. The DA must explain why the systems under its minister’s leadership failed to manage such a consequential policy change adequately.

The immediate priorities are to restore an effective asylum-processing system, protect people and property, prosecute those responsible for violence and comply with the Constitutional Court’s judgement.

Longer-term reforms must strengthen departmental capacity, improve inter-ministerial coordination and ensure that intelligence reaches decision-makers in time to address foreseeable threats.

The crisis has exposed weaknesses in planning, oversight and coordination at the heart of the DA’s Home Affairs portfolio. It does not, by itself, prove the party could not govern the country, but it provides a substantive basis to question whether its claims of competence match the administrative experience and institutional discipline required for national leadership. 

* Fourie is a policy analyst specialising in governance, development and security.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Media Group.