Dear Dr Schreiber

I trust you are well.

I hope you will take 2 minutes of your time to read this till the end as this is my last resort.

I'm a South African woman married to a Congolese national, we did everything right, applied for spousal visa since January 2022 and been pushed from pillar to post by home affairs. We are told the backlog was cleared and still the visa is not out. We been together for 11 years and have 3 children and married since 2021.

I just think it's incredibly unfair that we applied in January 2022 and 3 years later we are told it's still in process while some don't even wait that long and at the same time we are told that the backlog is cleared.

This inconvenience has a huge negative ripple effect for my entire family. VFS say they can't assist , home affairs says the backlog is cleared and have no answers and they not offering any turnaround times. We can't travel as a family, can't renew a simple licence disc, can't open a bank account as the VFS slip is no longer accepted. We can't even go re-apply, and appeal the application.

I have since even changed my number and moved somewhere else because there are police who were threatening deportation and requested we pay 3000 a month which is unlawful but we are vulnerable. And nobody is helping I am not sure what needs to be done because this system is failing us. I have asked to go personally to home affairs head office in Pretoria and I was told I would not get help.

Can you please let me know who I can speak to at this point? This is beyond frustrating and I really don't believe it should have taken this long. And there are no concrete answers coming from home affairs, so I am appealing to you again what can I actually do at this point because this has been extremely stressful.

Is there any way you can assist us please,
My ID number is 9007 3005 21081,
my number is 073 063 3083.

I do understand that you are still settling in office and I hope you can help. This is my last resort as the officials who are meant to sort this out are not helping

Kind Regards
Zanele Katende