South African court ruling on asylum seekers marked by unrest and disinformation

The posts began circulating after a September 28, 2026, directive from South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs, implementing a Constitutional Court order requiring the government to resume processing asylum applications, regardless of immigration status (archived here and here).

The court ruling in July found that certain procedural barriers to asylum seekers were unconstitutional, a situation that had effectively shut down the country’s refugee offices during and after the Covid-19 pandemic (archived here).

The directive from Home Affairs saw hundreds of people flock to refugee reception offices, reigniting local tensions against illegal migrants that led tens of thousands of Africans to flee the country in the preceding weeks.

Violence erupted on October 8 in Soweto, Johannesburg, and in the east coast port city of Durban. Buildings and cars were torched, and small foreign-run stores looted (archived here).

Along with the violence came a steady stream of false claims on social media.

Asylum seekers voting eligibility

“Registering ‘asylum seekers’ so you can rig the elections is nasty work,” reads an X post published on October 6, 2026. “Leaders of this country are good at planning dirty work.”

Municipal elections are scheduled for November 4.

“Those asylum seekers are being registered so elections can be manipulated,” claimed a similar X post, which has since been deleted.

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) responded to the post before it was removed, calling the information “incorrect” (archived here).

“Asylum seeker status does not give a person the right to vote in South African elections. Only South African citizens who are 18 years or older & on the voters’ roll are eligible to vote,” the IEC said in a statement.

Two days later, the government clarified that the ruling “simply requires that individuals claiming asylum be allowed access to the asylum determination process so that their claims can be properly assessed in terms of the law” (archived here).

“Also very important to emphasise is that the decision of the Constitutional Court does not confer new rights to asylum seekers, as many in the social media circles falsely claim.”

Furthermore, voter registrations for the local government elections on November 4 closed more than two months ago (archived here and here).

Fake party poster

Some posts also targeted the country’s second-largest party, the Democratic Alliance, with a poster claiming that it “welcomes all asylum seekers from all over the world”.

An X post published with the poster on October 5 reads: “The DA welcomes ALL asylum seekers from Africa,” attributing the claim to the DA’s Leon Schreiber, who serves as Minister of Home Affairs.

The party’s federal chair, Helen Zille, replied to the post calling it a “TOTAL FAKE” and labelling the graphic “fake news” in a post of her own on October 6 (archived here and here).

Google’s SynthID detector, which identifies AI-generated content from models by Google, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Kakao found that the graphic was created or edited with OpenAI tools.

OpenAI's own verification tool corroborated the findings.

Home Affairs operations

Another graphic was shared on Facebook on October 6, with claims that the Home Affairs offices nationwide had been “shut down”.

“NO SERVICE. NO ACCESS. ALL HOME AFFAIRS OFFICES CLOSED,” reads the graphic that bears the national Coat of Arms.

The poster circulated both as an injunction from anti-immigrant groups to close asylum offices and as a way to mislead people into thinking all departments were closed.

On October 7, Home Affairs labelled it “fake news” via its official X account (archived here).

"Steer clear of false and unverified information circulating on social media," reads the post, urging the public to follow its "official platforms for accurate and verified information."

Similarly, OpenAI's and SythID's detector tools identified AI watermarks in the graphic.

On October 9, South Africa withdrew the asylum directive, saying that “the attempt to practically implement the judgement immediately led to serious consequences that could not have been foreseen in the court order” (archived here).

Home Affairs also said it would digitise the asylum application process to address the backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases (archived here).

“The ConCourt did not remove our right as Home Affairs to adjudicate a refugee application,” Schreiber said on October 10. “If someone doesn't qualify, it is our job to say you don't qualify and you must be deported.”

On October 19, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said "there's just no way" his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party "would go and mobilise asylum seekers to vote for it".

"It's a rubbish story", he added, saying it shows "the dangers of these social media platforms, where a story is planted by an individual who is not accountable to anyone and it starts spreading".