Backwards migrations are really only designed for quick testing in development - you really shouldn't be running them in production unless you just made a major

Backwards migrations are really only designed for quick testing in development - you really shouldn't be running them in production unless you just made a major screwup. It's entirely possible to shoot yourself in the foot, but that's also what makes South versatile enough. Hell, there's a good reason that I recommend raw SQL in migrations as a solution sometimes - you'll still get the record-keeping and dependency stuff, so it's not like you're throwing it all away.