South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has authorised 510 soldiers to deploy in KwaZulu-Natal province, after weeks of attacks on foreign-owned shops and vehicles that began with false claims about a court ruling.
The people targeted are mostly African migrants who run small convenience stores, known as spaza shops, in townships and city centres. South Africa has seen waves of xenophobic violence against migrants from neighbouring countries for nearly two decades, including a particularly deadly outbreak in 2008. This one has the same victims and a new trigger.
The trigger was a Constitutional Court judgment on July 7 in the case Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town v Minister of Home Affairs. The court held that asylum seekers cannot be denied access to the asylum system “solely on procedural grounds, such as having entered the country illegally or not having the correct documents.” It said nothing about citizenship or voting. Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said the ruling “certainly did not grant citizenship or the right to vote to a single foreign national.”
That is not how it spread online. Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said the soldiers will assist police “especially in light of recent violent actions arising from a campaign of misinformation about the Constitutional Court judgment on the Refugee Act.”
On Oct. 9, 24 vehicles were torched, 14 in Durban and 10 in Soweto, and foreign-owned shops were looted, according to reports from the region. In Durban, violence erupted after an allegation that a foreign national had assaulted a protester. Police have since arrested 30 people over the violence, 25 in KwaZulu-Natal and five in Gauteng. No deaths were reported in the early accounts.
The deployment, called Operation Prosper, runs from Oct. 9 to Nov. 30 and is budgeted at R34,082,720 (about 34 million rand), the Mail & Guardian reported.
The ruling also pushed the asylum system toward overload. Home Affairs said its refugee reception offices were overwhelmed and that “serious threats to public safety and order had emerged.” Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi has said offices were swamped by applicants, and the department reversed a policy, citing “unintended consequences.” The backlog is estimated at 120,000 applications.
Schreiber has said a new online asylum system with biometric checks will launch Nov. 10, with one appeal allowed for rejected applicants before deportation.
Protests are expected to intensify before local government elections on Nov. 4, the Mail & Guardian reported. For Black migrants living in South Africa, that puts the next week and a half in the shadow of the same pattern: a rumor, a crowd, and shops that belong to people with no vote and little protection.
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