How to Apply for Asylum in South Africa: Office, Interview, Outcomes

To apply for asylum in South Africa, you must go in person to one of the country’s five Refugee Reception Offices, give your fingerprints and photograph, complete an eligibility form describing why you fled, and then sit for an interview with a Status Determination Officer who decides your claim. While that decision is pending, the Department of Home Affairs issues you a Section 22 asylum seeker visa that legalizes your stay. The process is governed by the Refugees Act 130 of 1998, and it has changed in important ways since amendments took effect in January 2020.¹

Where to Go

Applications can only be lodged in person, at a Refugee Reception Office. There are five:²

Cape Town
Durban
Desmond Tutu Refugee Reception Office (Pretoria)
Musina
Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth)

Go to the office nearest you. If you entered South Africa without a passport or visa, go anyway. The government’s own guidance directs undocumented arrivals to present themselves at an office to start the application.³ Delay hurts your claim, so move quickly.

What to Bring

Bring any personal identification you managed to leave with: passport, national ID, birth certificate. If you have none of those, bring whatever secondary evidence of your identity or nationality you can gather. Anything showing when and where you entered South Africa also helps.

At the office you will fill in an eligibility form that includes a written account of why you are seeking protection. It should cover the specific events that forced you to leave, the threats you would face if returned, the names of any family members you are including in the claim, and whether you sought asylum in any other country before arriving here. Be specific. Generic descriptions of danger in your country are far less persuasive than concrete accounts of what happened to you personally.

What Happens at the Office

Officials take your digital fingerprints and photographs, which creates a permanent record tied to your case file and prevents duplicate applications.² An intake officer checks your paperwork and opens the file that will hold all documents, interview notes, and decisions on your case. Nothing is decided on the merits at this visit. Your legal status does change immediately, though: you move from undocumented to an active applicant in the system, and the Department issues you a Section 22 asylum seeker visa (still sometimes called a Section 22 permit) that protects you from deportation while the claim runs.⁴ Each family member on your application should get their own visa.

Work and Study Are Not Automatic

Under the amended Refugees Act, the right to work or study is not built into the visa. It must be specifically endorsed on it. The Department assesses whether you can support yourself and your dependants for at least four months. If you cannot, you may instead be offered shelter and basic necessities through UNHCR or charitable organizations, and the right to work can be withheld where an applicant is already receiving that support or is otherwise able to sustain themselves.¹

If the endorsement is granted, your employer or educational institution must send the Department a letter of employment or enrollment within 14 days of you starting.¹ This detail catches many applicants and their employers off guard, so make sure whoever hires or enrolls you knows about the deadline.

Renewing the Section 22 Visa

The Section 22 visa is typically valid for up to six months, and you must return to the Refugee Reception Office to renew it before it expires.⁴ Letting it lapse leaves you undocumented and at risk of detention.

The 2020 amendments treated failure to renew within one month of expiry as an “abandonment” of your claim that could trigger deportation. In December 2023, the Constitutional Court confirmed that those abandonment provisions were unconstitutional and ordered the Department to keep processing renewals for applicants who had been forced to overstay. Renewing on time still matters, because administrative complications at the office can be significant.

The Status Determination Interview

The interview with the Refugee Status Determination Officer is where your claim is actually decided. The officer will probe your written account, test its consistency, and weigh your credibility against known conditions in your country of origin. Expect detailed follow-up questions about specific events, dates, and people.

If you don’t speak or understand the language used in the interview, you have the right to an interpreter, and the interview must be recorded.² One thing to know going in: legal representation is not provided at this stage. You can bring a lawyer at appeal, but during the first interview you are essentially on your own.⁵ That makes your written narrative and preparation before the interview all the more important.

The Three Possible Outcomes

After the interview the officer issues a formal decision:

Approved. You receive recognized refugee status and are issued a Section 24 permit. UNHCR guidance for South Africa indicates it is valid for four years and is renewable.²
Rejected as unfounded. Your claim was considered on the merits but did not meet the legal definition of a refugee.
Rejected as manifestly unfounded. The officer determined the claim was clearly without basis, abusive, or fraudulent.

If You Are Rejected

An unfounded rejection can be appealed to the Refugee Appeals Authority. The deadline is 10 working days from receipt of your rejection letter. The appeal has to be lodged in person at the Refugee Reception Office that gave you the decision, and it must include a written statement setting out your grounds.⁶ At this stage, you can request legal representation under Section 24B(4) of the Refugees Act, which is a real change from the initial interview.⁵ A late appeal may be accepted where you can show good cause for the delay, but it is not something to plan around.

Who Qualifies

Before applying, it helps to know the categories the Act protects. The first covers anyone outside their home country who faces a genuine risk of persecution because of race, tribe, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. The persecution can come from a government or from private actors the government cannot or will not control.¹

The second is broader and covers people who left because of external aggression, foreign occupation, or events seriously disrupting public order in part or all of their country. This is the provision that protects people displaced by civil war or large-scale violence without needing to show individual targeting.¹ Dependants of anyone who qualifies under either category can be included in the claim. Section 2 of the Act codifies non-refoulement, meaning no one can be turned back to a country where they face persecution or threats to their life.

After Ten Years: Permanent Residence

Recognized refugees are not locked into permit renewals indefinitely. Under Section 27(c) of the Refugees Act, a refugee can apply for permanent residence after ten years of continuous residence in South Africa counted from the date asylum was granted. There is one additional requirement: the Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs has to certify that you will remain a refugee indefinitely, taking into account any efforts to restore peace in your country of origin.¹ Ten years is a long time to maintain valid documentation, so consistent engagement with Home Affairs across that period is part of the picture from the day you first walk into a Refugee Reception Office.

1
South African Legal Information Institute. Refugees Act 130 of 1998
2
UNHCR. Asylum and Refugee Status Determination
3
South African Government. Asylum Seeker and Refugee Permits
4
UNHCR. Asylum-Seeker Rights and Responsibilities in South Africa
5
AfricanLII. South Africa Refugee Law Reader – Refugee Determination Procedures
6
South African Government. Refugees Appeals Board Rules