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The Home Affairs Department revealed that a little more than 400 asylum seekers made applications at five of its refugee offices in the days immediately after a directive was issued in September that they could submit applications.

In response to written parliamentary questions posed to Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber, he revealed that Ethiopian nationals submitted the bulk of the applications, while the Tshwane office received the most applications in the 12 days before the directive was withdrawn.

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The directive was intended to give effect to a Constitutional Court order that asylum seekers could not be excluded from applying on procedural grounds.

However, it was withdrawn after refugee reception centres struggled to handle the turnout.

Responding to the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party’s Mzwandile Manyi, Home Affairs revealed that 175 applications, the highest number during the window between 28 September and 8 October, were submitted to the Tshwane refugee centre, followed by 108 in Cape Town and 58 in Durban.

A total of 42 applications were received in Gqeberha and 38 in Musina.

These figures reveal a more than 315% increase in applications in Cape Town and more than 200% in Tshwane when compared to the preceding 12 days before the directive was issued.

To another question from the Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF) Chumani Matiwane, Minister Leon Schreiber revealed that 139 of the 421 applications came from Ethiopian nationals, followed by Somali (95) and Congolese (63) nationals.

In the 10 days after the directive was withdrawn, just more than a hundred applications were submitted.

This week, the department launched an electronic booking system for applicants to upload personal data and to allow refugee centres to schedule asylum applications.

Schreiber said the department is using existing digital technology infrastructure to minimise the costs of implementing this system.

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