South Africa’s Refugees Act guarantees the right to work, study and access basic healthcare backed by a constitutional framework and its position as a regional economic hub. This has made its major cities a key destination for people fleeing conflict and political instability from countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, South Sudan, Burundi, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

Within this setting, our case study follows how digital identity and data infrastructures organise everyday life for refugees and asylum seekers—from the Department of Home Affairs’ (DHA) asylum and civil‑registration systems, through banking and SIM registration, to community‑run WhatsApp groups and other forms of resilience. The central problem is not that refugees lack documents or devices, but that the systems they enter, treat their documentation as permanently conditional and their presence as inherently risky.

The downstream harm is a form of digital limbo, where people on the move must constantly re‑perform their legitimacy to keep access to banking, connectivity and basic protection. Across the report, we show how data flows centralised around DHA make refugees highly legible to enforcement and compliance systems, while avenues for correction or redress remain narrow.