Somali refugee loses High Court battle to keep status in South Africa

A Somali refugee who said he returned home to visit his dying father has lost a High Court challenge to the withdrawal of his refugee status in South Africa.

The Johannesburg High Court upheld the decision after examining two issues: a fraudulent certificate used in a permanent residence application and a trip to Somalia that breached his refugee travel conditions.

In a judgment delivered on 29 October 2026, Judge Mokate Victor Noko dismissed Ahmed Mohammed Ali’s application to overturn the decision.

How the refugee status dispute began

Ali arrived in South Africa in 2008 after fleeing what he described as persecution by the militant group Al-Shabaab. Authorities granted him refugee status on 7 October that year.

He later sought certification as an indefinite refugee, which would allow him to apply for permanent residence.

During the process, he enlisted a man who claimed to be an immigration agent and promised to speed things up.

However, Home Affairs discovered that the certificate he obtained was fraudulent. The department rejected his permanent residence application on 9 July 2018.

He maintained that he had believed the document was genuine.

A visit to his dying father

The dispute took another turn when immigration authorities discovered that he had travelled to Hargeisa, in the self-governing Somaliland region, in 2017.

He left South Africa on 2 March and returned on 15 May.

In court papers, the refugee said he had travelled to visit his terminally ill father, who died and was buried on 13 May.

However, the judge questioned why this explanation had not appeared in his earlier representations to refugee authorities.

He raised his father’s illness only in an affidavit submitted in February 2026, nearly a year after his written response to the authorities.

Noko described the belated explanation as an afterthought.

Why the court rejected his challenge

The court identified two grounds for upholding the withdrawal.

First, the refugee had failed to challenge the separate finding involving the fraudulent certificate. The judge ruled that this omission alone was sufficient for his application to fail.

Second, the court found that his return to Hargeisa breached the conditions of his refugee travel documents.

He argued that visiting Somaliland did not mean he had voluntarily sought protection from Somalia. He also maintained that returning him there could expose him to persecution.

The judge rejected both arguments.

The court noted that South Africa does not recognise Somaliland as an independent country. It also concluded that deportation to Hargeisa would not breach the legal prohibition against returning refugees to danger.

However, the judgment did not order his immediate deportation.

Can refugees return home for family emergencies?

South Africa’s Refugees Act allows refugee status to end when a person voluntarily seeks protection from their country of nationality again.

However, the court acknowledged that international refugee guidance distinguishes humanitarian visits from ordinary travel.

A journey to see a sick or elderly parent, for example, may carry different legal consequences from repeated holidays or business trips.

In this case, the judge found that the circumstances of the visit and the late explanation did not justify an exception.

The judgment comes amid wider legal disputes over South Africa’s asylum system.

Those proceedings concern access to the asylum process, while this case deals with the circumstances in which protection already granted may be withdrawn.