Evening Honourable Khanyile,
My wife and I have been married since 23/06/2014. We entered into civil marriage at Akasia DHA. It has been 9 years that she has been with me in SA, and we are struggling to have any success with any application at DHA. As an example, we waited 2 years for her temporary residence visa to be issued, and only after we appointed an attorney to assist.
This was not our only woes, she applied for a permanent resident permit in June 2019 after being eligible to apply. Once again, we waited until middle of 2022 with no response from DHA. And again we had to appoint an attorney to assist and refer the matter to court. We subsequently received the outcome in October 2022, and my wife’s application was declined due to not having a translated copy of her birth certificate. I wish to point out that all documentation was received by VFS, so why did they accept it if it was not in order?
With the extension of temporary visas due to COVID in 2021 whereby visas was extended to October 2021, both myself and my wife were seriously ill with COVID, and we could not renew within the required timeframe. She had to do a Form 20 letter of good cause. This was done and submitted together with her temporary visa renewal application on 16/11/2021. We received the outcome today, 06/02/2023, more than 14 months after submission. An to our surprise the application was rejected due to Form 20 not being valid, needless to say, it would have been valid if the application was processed within the prescribed 90 days! She is now required to submit another appeal which will cost maybe R1300, excluding legal fees because we cannot deal with DHA without legal representation because there is no more trust left. This is an absolute disgrace and a total disregard of human dignity. I cannot believe that people are treated in this manner. I am sick in the pit of my stomach just thinking of how dysfunctional this department is, and the impact it has on ordinary people, it’s really sickening.