Dear Minister of Home Affairs Dr. Schreiber,

My name is Olga, and I was banned from entering South Africa for 5 years due to overstaying my spouse's visa. This occurred six months ago, in March 2024. My husband and our children, aged 12 and 10, are still in South Africa, while I am currently overseas. Whatever the reason Home Affairs had for issuing this ban, I want to stress that I have never committed any crimes in South Africa. I am married to a South African citizen (who is also a taxpayer) and had been living there since 2009. My children were born in South Africa.

At the airport, a Home Affairs official told me the ban could be lifted within a month if we followed the official procedure, which we did. However, since then, we have not received a single response from Home Affairs—neither formal nor informal.
We tried calling provided official number, where we were always either redirected to other numbers that just ring, or there was no answer at all.
Our immigration specialist has tried reaching out to Home Affairs, I have messaged Home Affairs on Instagram, my husband has tried to reach for assistance on Twitter, we’ve contacted the local DA ward CLLR, and we even emailed your personal assistant.

Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to get a response through any avenue. It feels as if the Ministry is not functioning at all.

I fully understand that the Minister has many other responsibilities, but the rest of the department seems to be entirely unresponsive.

Please help me resolve this situation.

Kind regards,
Olga Vishkareva