The Blind Spot: in South Africa the government withdraws the asylum seekers directive after anti-migrant violence

Anti-immigrant violence in Johannesburg and Durban continued for a second consecutive day on October 9, 2026. In the same timeframe, South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs withdrew its directive on asylum seekers, after a court ruling found it non-compliant, and is preparing a new one. This is reported by The Rio Times in its Africa bulletin, originating from the same South African department.

The relevance criterion of this story for readers here concerns the way in which a judicial power forced a government to withdraw an administrative act on asylum management, in a context of open social tension toward migrants. It is a case of judicial oversight over a migration policy contested in the streets, a theme that runs — in different forms — through multiple institutional systems around the world, including the Italian one, where the relationship between administrative decisions on immigration and judicial review is the subject of public debate.

At the time of publication, none of the major Italian outlets appears to have covered the news.

The topic is not new for this column: it was covered in August, with sources different from today’s, reporting on anti-migrant patrols in South Africa. Today’s development is different and more specific: it does not concern the street violence itself, already known, but its institutional consequence — a department withdrawing its own act following a court ruling and announcing that it must write a new one in compliance with the court’s decision.

The available sources do not specify the content of the withdrawn directive, nor the exact terms of the ruling that found it non-compliant, nor the expected timeframe for the publication of the new text. What remains, however, is the institutional fact itself: a government that, under the combined pressure of street violence and a judicial decision, changes its administrative line on asylum seekers within the span of two days.

It is precisely this combination — street and court acting at the same moment on the same public policy — that makes the South African case a useful one to observe, beyond the borders of the country in which it is unfolding.