Pressure mounts to stop proposed online asylum-registration rollout

Opposition to an online asylum-registration system is growing in South Africa, with members of parliament and a political party petitioning the Department of Home Affairs to halt its rollout. Sphiwe Mbatha, a member of the Umkhonto weSizwe Party, launched an online petition that has already collected thousands of signatures in just four days.

The petition calls for more than one million signatures and demands answers to several questions about the system's verification process, handling of rejected applications, and consequences for system failures. Mbatha argues that the online process does not resolve the existing backlog and that the government must demonstrate operational readiness before implementing the system.

Mbatha also raises concerns about the protection offered by the registration receipt and the consequences for fraud or misuse. He urges the President, Home Affairs Minister, and Parliament to respond publicly to the petition's demands before the planned rollout on November 10, 2026. The petition's legal representatives, SA First Forum, have joined the opposition and have called for South Africans without identity documents to be prioritized.

They argue that the government's focus on foreign nationals while millions of South African citizens remain undocumented is unjustifiable, given the high levels of inequality and unemployment in the country. The organization has threatened legal action if it does not receive a written response to their demands by October 21, 2026.