DEFENDING DEMOCRACY IN EXILE Policy Responses to Transnational Repression A system not up to the task The recent affronts to refugee rights come against a backdrop of administrative burdens and failures in South Africa’s refugee system. The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is responsible for refugee management, with refugee reception offices (RROs) and its staff of refugee status determination officers serving as the primary points of contact for asylum seekers. The asylum process is arduous and riddled with unrealistically tight deadlines.32 After submitting their applications for asylum, applicants are granted an “asylum seekers permit,” which must be renewed every six months until a decision is reached.33 A mere four percent of applicants receive refugee status.34 The short timelines and repeated renewals required by South Africa’s immigration bureaucracy is particularly untenable given the extent to which the system is overburdened. At the end of 2018, the last year for which data was available, South Africa had 184,200 pending asylum applications, the highest number of any country on the continent; the second highest was Egypt, with 68,200 applications.35 A 2019 study of people from the Democratic Republic of Congo seeking asylum in South Africa found that over 60 percent of interviewees had been in the asylum process for at least 10 years, and almost 80 percent had renewed their asylum papers over 15 times.36 The multiyear backlog means asylum seekers are left in a vulnerable position, as they are forced to live for long periods without the rights and protections guaranteed by refugee status.37 Temporary status, long periods of limited legal protection, and xenophobia make people less likely to report acts of transnational repression or threats to police out of fear of mistreatment or deportation. Corruption and administrative incompetence among migration officials increases the risk of refoulement,38 including as an act of transnational repression. Exacerbating the immigration system’s capacity problems is the lack of political will to protect migrants. South Africa’s government has taken numerous steps that appear designed to make applying for asylum more difficult. In 2011 and 2012, the DHA ended or reduced the processing of new asylum applications at three of its six RROs. South African courts have repeatedly ruled against these closures, but the DHA has not complied with orders to reopen fully functional RROs.39 Seeking asylum became even more challenging during the COVID-19 6 @FreedomHouse pandemic. RROs closed as part of national lockdown that began in March 2020 and the government ceased accepted new asylum applications until setting up an online portal in April 2021.40 Despite the government extending the timeline to renew expiring permits, asylum seekers were left in limbo. Delayed access to protection and potential bureaucratic challenges, including worsening administrative backlogs and difficulties accessing the online application, create an even more precarious environment for asylum seekers that will likely exclude some people from the asylum process altogether. Those who are outside of the official refugee system have even less protection against transnational repression and other abuses. The number of unregistered refugees is unknown. Bureaucratic hurdles, extraordinarily long processes, and abusive practices are a strong disincentive for registered asylum seekers to remain in South Africa’s migration system. The DHA reported 946,314 inactive asylum seekers, or asylum seekers who had not renewed their permits, and 37,305 inactive refugees as of 2017.41 Though inactive asylum seekers and refugees are still protected by law, in practice they are at risk of deportation and are even less likely to report transnational repression to law enforcement.42 Despite these hurdles, parts of the South African government provide a more optimistic outlook for migration. Courts provide in important safeguard against refoulement and can help safeguard against further degradation of protections that could increase the legal precarity of people in the migration system. South Africa’s court system consistently upholds the right to seek asylum, as seen in the orders for the DHA to reopen RROs. Courts have also upheld asylum seekers’ right to work, confirmed that dependents of asylum seekers and refugees can receive legal status, and ruled against other government bodies, such as the DHA, for misapplying refugee law or applying it in a way that violated the law’s intent.43 In another positive step, in 2021, the UNHCR and the DHA agreed to a plan to solve South Africa’s backlog of asylum applications. The Asylum Decisions Backlog Elimination Project aims to process over 150,000 pending cases by 2024. The UNHCR will provide $7 million and technical support to achieve this goal and to “revamp the refugee management system.”44 #TransnationalRepression