I was pleased to read Jonny Steinberg and Peter Bruce highlighting the tragedy that is home affairs, its incompetence and lack of accountability concerning immigration visas and permanent residence permits. My wife is a development economist, sent to SA on a treaty visa to work for the Flemish/Belgium government in September 2002. She was placed on pension in 2007 after a car accident while on a project and after spending almost a year in hospital. We married in April 2009. After we had been married for five years we applied for a permanent residence permit, which she is constitutionally entitled to being married to a South African. After two years, no decision had been made and her visa expired, and because of a misinterpretation of the “Gigaba” law amendment (2014) she was declared “undesirable”. To regularise her status she needed to obtain a “document 20”, for which she had to go through a real ordeal, including being maltreated by a home affairs official in Cape Town, being loc...
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