Cape Town - What if there’s an emergency? What if the situation in Qatar changes drastically and the only option is to return to South Africa?
These are questions Shihaam Bawa asks herself frequently because new visa regulations and Home Affairs bungles have left her youngest child stranded in “no man’s land” as he cannot return to Cape Town.
Two years ago her son Yaqeen was born in the Middle East. The Cape Town family, who had relocated to Qatar for work, were overjoyed. But it was short-lived. While an application to obtain a passport from South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs was successful, they received the documents four months later. Moves to secure to an unabridged birth certificate were derailed when officials said they had lost the documents.
For the next 15 months Bawa said she was given the “run around” by officials at the embassy and at the department. She later resubmitted the application in August last year along with an application for the renewal of her own passport.
Three months later she had a new passport, but “frustratingly the unabridged birth certificate application had been lost again”.
This was after the Bawa family had e-mailed copies of the documents as well as tracking numbers for the mail bags containing the application.
“But they are still claiming it has not been received,” she wrote.
“My frustrations in dealing with them is that they can never give me a straight answer when I contact them for information,” she wrote in an e-mail to the Cape Argus. “I am given conflicting information all the time.”
When she phones she is kept on hold for hours, racking up a hefty phone bill.
“For months they have told (me) that the application is in process, then on my last contact with them regarding the status of the application, I was informed that it was not received.”
Before, an unabridged birth certificate was not a necessity, at least regarding to immigration. However, on June 1 the stakes will be raised as new regulations are set to come into effect requiring all children travelling to and within South Africa’s borders to have the certificate.
For Bawa, the date is looming over her family. “While life in Qatar is good and we are happy here, it is not home. It is very much a work assignment and we have no desire to make this home, nor would the laws here allow us to do so. SA is our home and will always be. Our house is there and our family too.”
The family travels to Cape Town frequently to visit relatives and allow their children to “experience home”. The change in the visa regulations regarding entry to the country threatens to squash any hopes of returning home. Bawa said if there was an emergency their youngest child, now 2 and half years old, will not be allowed to enter South Africa. His older siblings were able to obtain certificates in 2007 and 2010.
“Yaqeen will be stranded and not allowed to enter the country he considers home. Where should he go? What should he do? How are we expected to deal with this situation when we have been responsible and applied for an unabridged birth certificate when he was born in 2012, before the proposed law was even approved.
“The thought of physically being stranded in no man’s land is not a pleasant one and not a situation I would want to subject my family to,” she concluded.
Management at the Department of Home Affairs Western Cape offices were last week made aware of the Bawas’ struggles. Provincial manager Yusuf Simons and officials at the department said they would liaise with the Birth Centre.
By Friday, Bawa’s case was put on “High Priority”.
Cape Argus