No more rule by the crowds

On 4 November, the High Court in Johannesburg handed down a landmark judgment in Kopanang Africa against xenophobia and others versus Operation Dudula and others, drawing clear legal lines against private vigilantism and compelling government accountability for xenophobic hate speech and hate crimes.

- Claudia Pizzocri

Voluntary public-benefit organisations joined the case to protect everyday spaces - clinics, schools, homes and trading stalls - where xenophobic pressure often erupts.

Their aims were direct: stop private actors from usurping state functions, secure access to essential services and compel the state to implement its National Action Plan (NAP), especially around early-warning, rapid-response, and disaggregated data.

Operation Dudula did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the concentrated expression of years of street-level harassment, “ID raids”, clinic blockades and township purges marketed as community justice but functioning as privatised border control. By normalising crowds as immigration police, Dudula-style formations displaced constitutional order - placing mobs above law, slogans above evidence and repeatedly infringing on individual rights. This judgment meets that project head-on and places it back within the confines of legality.

Section 41 of the Immigration Act empowers “immigration and police officers” to request identification and ascertain lawful presence. The court clarified three binding standards: