As the first images and news reports about the outbreak of violence against migrants broke, it was striking how many migrants fled to police stations for shelter and protection. After all they were seeking sanctuary there despite their overwhelming experience of the police officer as the taunter of migrants, the one who habitually exploited migrants’ informal, often legally compromised and vulnerable status, through deportation, extortion and exploitation. But there they were, knocking at the gates of Alex police station, huddling together and demanding entrance at Cleveland police station, squatting in the courtyard, halls and barracks of Jeppe police station. It couldn't have been more incongruous.

In trying to understand what happened in this moment in which migrants sought and were granted refuge at the police stations, I argue that the usual kind of complicity in the xenophobic sentiments which underpin and are being reproduced through everyday police practice was suspended in favour of a policing of what could be read as a more cosmopolitan and inclusive order.

Surely, one could simply see it as further testimony of the migrants’ terrible fate and desperation: having to seek protection from those who abuse them, facing a terrible choice between two evils. Yet I would argue that by arriving on the doorsteps of the police station the migrants were also appealing to a different kind of police, a police which would at least protect their right to life.

And the amazing thing was that the police took up the challenge. They opened their gates and let the refugees in and let them stay. They even promised them that nobody would be deported, a cunning move that police had previously used when a similar but far less publicised incident took place in January at the Laudium police station. This was a momentary inclusive act by the police. Somehow, in this moment, a practice of human rights had been invoked and enacted; some form of a just state had come to the fore.

Why did this happen? Was it the sheer numbers of desperate people? Was it that their desperation appealed to a very basic, if not always apparent, sense of duty of police officers, namely the duty to protect the lives of innocent people, whoever they may be?