The morning air in Cape Town was cold and damp, the kind of sea mist that clings to the skin and makes everything feel heavier. By seven o’clock, a crowd had already begun to form on the pavement outside the Department of Home Affairs. They came with folded arms, angry voices, and a quiet desperation that could not be hidden behind the cardboard signs they carried. “WE ARE NOT ILLEGAL,” one read. “THE COURT SAID THE TRUTH,” said another. Another simply said in faded black marker: “HUMAN.”
These were protesters, but not the faceless kind that often appears in news photographs. They were mothers holding children by the hand, young men in clean shirts, elderly women who had travelled by taxi from the townships. They were refugees and asylum seekers, and they had gathered because a viral disinformation campaign had turned their lives upside down. Last week, a long-awaited ruling from the Constitutional Court on asylum reform had finally been delivered. But within hours of the judgment, social media was flooded with lies: the court had supposedly ended refugee status, opened the borders to anyone, or, in an even crueller version, given the government permission to deport all asylum seekers. None of it was true. Yet the lies travelled faster than the judgment itself, and now here they were, standing outside the building, trying to protect a life they had worked so hard to build.
One woman, who gave her name as Nomsa, had left Zimbabwe in 2017. She had fled political violence and arrived in South Africa with nothing but a small bag and a deep belief that she would one day be safe. She had raised three children in Cape Town, worked as a cleaner, and spent countless nights in Home Affairs queues. When she heard the rumour that asylum seekers were about to be rounded up, she could not sleep. “I have done nothing wrong,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “My children are South African in every way except a piece of paper. Why are they trying to make us afraid?”
Her story was not unique. Around her, other protesters shifted from foot to foot, checking phones, listening to rumours, trying to understand what the ruling actually meant. The truth, as always, was more complicated than a headline. And in that complexity, fear had found a way to grow.
To understand why so many people were outside the Department of Home Affairs, one must understand what the Constitutional Court ruling actually said. After years of litigation, the court had issued a decision that, in its simplest terms, reaffirmed the rights of asylum seekers to be treated fairly under South African law. The ruling was technical and carefully reasoned, filled with legal jargon about permits, appeals, and the obligations of the state. But beneath the legal language was a simple and powerful idea: the protections offered to asylum seekers matter, and the government cannot erode them in silence. It was, in the eyes of refugee advocates, a victory—though a fragile one.
But in the hands of disinformation, the victory was distorted beyond recognition. Within hours of the ruling being made public, a campaign began to flood WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages, and Twitter threads with false claims. One viral message said the court had ruled that all asylum permits were invalid, which meant refugees would be arrested immediately. Another claimed that the ruling opened the border to millions of migrants, and that South African citizens would no longer have access to hospitals or schools. A third, perhaps the most damaging, said that the Constitutional Court had ordered the deportation of every person without a South African ID card, including asylum seekers who had lived legally in the country for years.
These messages were designed to provoke. They used the language of betrayal and scarcity, tapping into the anxieties of ordinary South Africans who felt forgotten by the state. They were shared by strangers, unknowing relatives, and even public figures who had not read the judgment. In the absence of accurate information, the lies became the only narrative. Asylum seekers woke up to threats from neighbours. Employers called refugee employees into their offices and asked if they were about to be deported. Children came home from school crying because their classmates had told them they would be sent “back to Africa”—a cruel misunderstanding that ignored the fact that South Africa itself is part of Africa.
The result was a city in a state of nervous confusion. The Department of Home Affairs, slow to respond, issued a terse statement saying that the ruling was being reviewed, but offered no clear explanation. The silence gave the rumours oxygen. By the time the protest began, the damage had already been done. The court had not betrayed refugees, but the disinformation campaign had created a different kind of violence, one that attacked people’s sense of safety and belonging. And for those who had already survived war, poverty, and years of waiting, that was almost unbearable.
For many asylum seekers, the protest outside Home Affairs was not only about the ruling. It was about the daily torture of a system that asks them to wait, endlessly, for a life that may never come. Consider Farah, a woman in her late twenties from the Democratic Republic of Congo. In another life, she had been a teacher. Now she lived in a small room in a crowded suburb and worked as a seamstress for a clothing factory, paid under the table because her legal permit was still pending. She had fled after armed men attacked her village and killed her brother. She arrived in South Africa with scars on her body and hope in her heart, but the hope had slowly worn thin.
Her days had a rhythm that was difficult to explain to anyone who had not lived it. She would wake before dawn, prepare food for her two children, and then stand in line at the Home Affairs office, sometimes for hours, only to be told that she needed another piece of paper, another stamp, another photograph. She had learned to recognise the faces of the officials, the way their eyes glazed over as they repeated: “Come back tomorrow.” She had missed work to queue, paid bribe money to men who promised to “help” her, and watched other asylum seekers collapse from exhaustion in the heat. And yet, she had never imagined that a court ruling—an honest attempt to improve the system—would turn her neighbours against her.
When the disinformation campaign spread, Farah’s landlord knocked on her door and told her he had heard the government was “raiding” refugee homes. He asked her to leave. Her children’s school called to say that they would need to provide proof of residency within a week. A man in the street yelled at her in a language she did not understand, pointing at her phone as if she had personally caused the ruling. She had not seen the judgment. She had not read a single paragraph. She only knew that her life, already so fragile, had become unbearably small.
As she stood outside Home Affairs that morning, holding a sign that read “I AM A PERSON,” she did not feel strong. She felt tired. But she also felt something else: the warmth of other bodies, the sound of other voices, the strange comfort of standing together in fear. In that crowd, she was not alone. And for the first time in days, that mattered more than any court ruling.
The protest was not an act of aggression, although the word “protest” often carries that image. It was an act of survival. At one point, the crowd fell silent as a young man in an orange hoodie raised a loudspeaker and began to read a statement. He spoke in English, then in French, then in Shona, apologising for his imperfect translations because, he said, “truth is important in every language.” The statement called on the government to clarify the Constitutional Court ruling, to defend the rights of asylum seekers, and to publicly condemn the disinformation that had put their lives at risk. The crowd cheered, not with anger, but with relief. Finally, someone was saying the words they knew to be true.
Behind the protest, a coalition of refugee advocacy groups, lawyers, and religious leaders had been working all week to fight the lies. They distributed leaflets at taxi ranks, held small workshops in community halls, and filled the WhatsApp groups that had spread the falsehoods with fact-checking messages. They explained that the Constitutional Court had not ordered mass deportations or opened the borders. They quoted the judgment in plain language. They did not tell people not to be afraid—that would have been dishonest. Instead, they told them to be informed, to ask questions, and to hold both the government and the rumour-mongers accountable.
One of the organisers, a middle-aged lawyer from Khayelitsha, stood at the edge of the crowd with a stack of papers. He was not interested in the cameras. “We are not here to make a scene,” he said. “We are here because there is a truth that has been buried under lies. This ruling is about due process. It is about the right to be heard. If we allow it to be twisted into something evil, we are all in danger.” His words echoed a larger concern: that disinformation was not just harming refugees, but democracy itself. If a technically narrow court ruling could become a tool of hatred, then no one was safe.
The protest also included South Africans who had never needed a permit. They were nurses, teachers, shopkeepers, students. They came because they saw their neighbours being terrorised by a rumour. A retired nurse stood with her arm around a young Congolese mother. “I don’t care where you’re from,” she said. “If you live next to me, you are my community. And this country has seen what happens when we turn on each other.”
That sense of solidarity was the quiet opposite of the disinformation campaign. The lies had tried to divide people, to make them suspicious and cruel. The protest, in its own small way, tried to bring them back together. It did not solve the problem. It did not reverse the fear. But it reminded everyone there that the story could be told differently.
The protest outside the Department of Home Affairs was not a new chapter in South Africa’s history; it was a painful echo of an older story. This is a country built on the promise of refuge. It has welcomed millions of people fleeing oppression, from those who came to escape apartheid to those who have arrived, more recently, fleeing wars and economic collapse in other parts of the continent. The Constitution itself was written with the word “human dignity” at its centre. Asylum seekers are not outsiders in that vision; they are a test of it.
But there is another history, too. In 2008 and again in 2015 and in the years since, South Africa has seen waves of xenophobic violence, when communities turned on foreign nationals with a brutality that shocked the world. In those moments, the same lies circulated: that immigrants steal jobs, that immigrants are criminals, that immigrants are part of a conspiracy to erase local culture. The disinformation after the Constitutional Court ruling was not a new invention. It was an old poison, dressed in new clothes. The language was more sophisticated and the platforms were faster, but the fear was the same.
What made this moment different was the context. The Constitutional Court is the highest court in the land, an institution that many South Africans still trust. When its ruling was distorted, the lie struck at both refugees and the rule of law. It told vulnerable people that even the legal system—the final protectors—had turned against them. That is a deeply dangerous message. It doesn’t just create panic; it convinces people that justice is impossible, and that there is no point in demanding their rights.
The protesters knew this. They were not asking for special treatment. They were asking to be seen as human beings, not as threats. “We are not strangers,” read one sign, written in careful English. “You are not strangers to us. We have been neighbours for years.” This was the message that rarely made it into the viral posts. It could not fit into a screenshot or a soundbite. It required listening. And listening, perhaps more than any legal reform, is what disinformation cannot survive.
In this broader context, the ruling was not the end of the struggle. It was a reminder that the law can be a powerful shield, but it cannot replace the daily work of building community. A court document cannot make a landlord kind or a classmate compassionate. It cannot stop a WhatsApp message from being forwarded. It can only say what is right. The rest of the work belongs to ordinary people.
By the end of the day, the crowd outside the Department of Home Affairs had thinned. Some protesters had to go to work; others had to collect their children from school. The signs were folded and slipped into bags. The loudspeaker was packed away. The street returned to its normal rhythm, with commuters passing by and vendors selling cold drinks. But something remained in the air—not just the sea mist, but a feeling of unfinished business.
The Constitutional Court ruling had been delivered, but the disinformation had not been undone. The rumours would continue, mutating in group chats and private messages, impossible to fully control. The fear would not vanish overnight. The asylum seekers who had stood together would go back to rooms and lives filled with uncertainty. They would wait in queues again, watch their permits expire, and wonder if the country they called home would ever fully accept them.
And yet, the protest was not a failure. It had been a way of saying: we are still here. We will not be erased by a lie. We will not be silenced by fear. In a world where information can be weaponized in seconds, this kind of human presence matters. It cannot be fact-checked away. It cannot be shut down with a status update. It is messy, complicated, and inconvenient—just like democracy itself.
As the crowd dispersed, Nomsa, the woman from Zimbabwe with three children, lingered for a moment. She pressed her phone to her chest and looked at the building where she had spent so many hours of her life. She thought about the court ruling she had not read, the rumours she had heard, and the strangers who had stood beside her all morning. She did not know what would happen next. But she knew, with a quiet clarity, that she would keep going. She had not survived this long to give up when dignity was at stake.
In that small act of persistence, perhaps, there is a lesson for everyone. The fight against disinformation is not only about exposing falsehoods. It is about building a society where human beings are more than rumours, more than pictures forwarded to a neighbour, more than the fear that lives inside us. The protesters knew this. They stood in the cold to remind the country. And in their voices, on that ordinary street in Cape Town, the truth still carried the day—not because it always wins, but because people refused to let it go.