For the people who queue each morning outside the Refugee Reception Office in Durban, Wednesday was another day of raised voices and uncertainty. Tensions stayed high outside the centre as March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma called on the Constitutional Court to reconsider and overturn its decision in the Scalabrini of Cape Town matter, a ruling handed down on 7 July 2026 that has become the focus of a fierce public dispute over what it actually means.
The department has moved to shut down one version of events. In a statement issued on Wednesday, Home Affairs described as false the claims that the judgment grants asylum seekers citizenship, or that it provides blanket legalisation of foreign nationals. The statement came from Ministerial Spokesperson Carli van Wyk, who said the department would refer the matter to the Independent Electoral Commission under the newly published Code of Conduct on Countering Disinformation.
At the heart of the department’s complaint is a campaign it says misrepresents both the ruling and the officials behind it. “Despite it being public knowledge that this case was vigorously opposed by the department and that it led to a binding ruling of the Constitutional Court, nefarious actors have launched a large-scale disinformation campaign targeting the Minister of Home Affairs and other officials,” the department said. It was disputing claims that the department had decided to suspend good cause interviews at the behest of the Minister, the Department, or political parties.
Meanwhile, the department voiced concern about the wider effects of false claims on communities already living with the consequences. It says it is worried by what it describes as the deliberate spreading of disinformation “designed to inflame tensions and violence” in the country.
For now, the two sides of the dispute are playing out in different places: in formal statements and referral processes on one hand, and on the pavement outside the Durban reception centre on the other, where Ngobese-Zuma and her supporters pressed their demand that the court revisit its ruling. What remains unchanged, according to the department, is the substance of the judgment itself, which it insists confers neither citizenship on asylum seekers nor any blanket legalisation of foreign nationals. Whether the referral to the Independent Electoral Commission will quiet the claims circulating outside the centre is the question that now hangs over the morning queues.