Anti-immigrant protests in two South African cities have turned violent, while the government blames misinformation about a court ruling involving asylum seekers.
According to police, violence broke out on Thursday in the Soweto area of Johannesburg and in the eastern coastal port city of Durban, leaving dozens of vehicles burned and many foreign-owned businesses forced to shut.
The unrest followed protests demanding that refugee centers stop accepting asylum applications.
Acting National Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane said 10 vehicles were torched in Johannesburg on Thursday and 14 in Durban, where three people were arrested.
In Soweto, a Reuters reporter saw residents carrying groceries out of a shop they believed was owned by a Somali man and driving the owner away. They fled when police arrived.
In Durban, a Reuters reporter also saw several burned-out vehicles in the central urban area, where foreign-owned shops were also looted. AFP reporters in the city said police fired rubber bullets to disperse protesters who were reported to have set fire to a foreign-owned business.
Protesters are demonstrating against a July Constitutional Court ruling that removed procedural barriers to seeking asylum, including for people who entered South Africa irregularly, lacked a transit asylum visa or missed a declaration deadline.
On Thursday, the government's Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration held an emergency meeting to address overcrowding at refugee offices after the ruling took effect. A day earlier, the committee said all of its offices were overwhelmed by a surge in asylum applications.
Government spokesperson William Baloyi said the violence was incited by people deliberately spreading false information about the constitutional court ruling.
Baloyi said the court's ruling has been widely distorted, and that it does not automatically grant asylum status, permanent residency rights or other legal rights to undocumented immigrants.
"We are extremely concerned about what is happening now," he added.
Months of protests by populist, anti-immigrant groups targeting undocumented foreigners and demanding they leave South Africa have driven tens of thousands to flee, with some repatriated by their home governments.
Three decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa remains deeply unequal and about a third of the population is unemployed. Immigrants are often blamed for taking jobs, driving crime and straining public services, though these accusations are not supported by evidence.
