Every September, South Africa celebrates the languages, traditions and histories that shape its national identity. Yet Heritage Month should also encourage us to look beyond national borders and remember that South Africa’s heritage has never developed in isolation. For centuries, African communities have moved across the continent to trade, work, study, form families and seek safety. Borders may divide states, but they cannot erase the cultural, economic and family ties connecting African...

South Africa’s Constitutional Court has reaffirmed that access to refugee protection cannot be denied merely because an asylum seeker failed to comply with procedural immigration requirements. In Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town and Another v Minister of Home Affairs and Others [2026] ZACC 30, the Court considered provisions of the Refugees Act that allowed asylum seekers to be excluded from the asylum system for entering South Africa irregularly, failing to report to a Refugee Reception Office...

The Constitutional Court Draws a Constitutional Line The Court confirmed the invalidity of sections 4(1)(f), 4(1)(h), 4(1)(i) and 21(1B) of the Refugees Act. These provisions could effectively prevent certain asylum seekers from obtaining a substantive determination of their claims because of matters such as irregular immigration status, the absence of an asylum transit visa or failures relating to the timing and manner in which they entered the asylum process. The difficulty, according to...