Home Affairs in court after official tears up child’s passport

Source: The Citizen, 31/10/2018

Tinashe Bello has been separated from his mother simply because he
wanted to represent his school in a German soccer tournament.
Home Affairs is once more embroiled in a legal battle. On 21 September
court papers were filed against the minister and director-general for
declaring a visa application by a Zimbabwean child fraudulent and
banning him for five years from returning to South Africa.
As a result of the department’s action, Wadzanai Bello has been
separated from her 16-year-old son, Tinashe Bello, since March. He has
missed a year of schooling. She says it has caused her much pain. Her
only contact with her son is by telephone twice a week.
Bello is being represented by the Legal Resources Centre. In her
founding affidavit in the court case Bello states that Tinashe has
been at Zonnebloem Nest High School since 2015. Then in February he
was selected to go to Germany to represent his school in a soccer
tournament. But for Tinashe to leave and re-enter South Africa the
German embassy insisted he get a study visa, not the visitor’s visa
for which Bello had initially applied at the Visa Facilitation Centre
(VFS) in Cape Town.
On the advice of VFS, Bello sent Tinashe to Zimbabwe to apply for the
study visa as an application can only be made outside of South Africa.
Since she could not accompany her son because she was working in Cape
Town, she relied on the assistance of her extended family in Zimbabwe
and a South African family that assisted with supporting documents and
money to enable Tinashe to apply for the visa.
In May, at the last of several frustrating appointments that Tinashe
and his family attended at the South African Embassy in Harare, at
which each time a different document was rejected, he was suddenly
informed that his application was “a scam”. In her affidavit, Bello
says the South African Home Affairs official then tore up Tinashe’s
passport and threw it away. Tinashe was informed he was banned from
returning to South Africa for a period of five years.
Bello’s affidavit says the action by the director-general (DG) to
dismiss the visa application as fraudulent was substantively and
procedurally unfair. Tinashe was not given an opportunity to make
representations nor was he given an opportunity to exercise his right
of review or appeal in terms of the Immigration Act.
According to Bello there were no reasonable grounds to conclude the
application was fraudulent. She argues that irrelevant considerations
were taken into account and relevant considerations were not
considered, resulting in the decision being taken arbitrarily.
Also, although it is still unclear whether Tinashe was in fact
declared a prohibited person, Bello’s affidavit says a fraudulent
application is not a listed ground in terms of section 29 of the
Immigration Act to make such a declaration, and the DG exceeded his
powers as he does not have the necessary standing to declare a person
a prohibited foreigner outside the ambit of the Act.
Tinashe was in possession of a valid passport and the information that
was provided was correct, according to Bello’s affidavit. If there is
any suspicion about the authenticity of the documents, there are other
means available to the DG to verify the information.
GroundUp has been trying to get comment from Home Affairs for a week.