South Africa: Tears of joy after court rules against Home Affairs

There were tears of joy as the High Court in Cape Town set aside a decision by the Department of Home Affairs to refuse a stateless family’s application for citizenship.

The Mulowayi family of Kensington‚ Johannesburg‚ finally found relief on Tuesday after a protracted battle with the department which had refused their application for citizenship on what has now been determined to be wrongful grounds.

The Mulowayi family had been in the country since the early 2000s. Florette Mulowayi has lived and worked in South Africa since 2002‚ when she left her home country as a refugee.

Her husband‚ Nsongoni‚ joined her in 2004.

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Florette and Nsongoni were granted permanent resident permits in 2011 and waited five years before applying for citizenship. Even after renouncing their DRC citizenship‚ their applications for naturalisation were denied.

At the heart of the department’s decision to deny their citizenship application were regulations that‚ according to department’s legal counsel‚ stipulated a period of 10 years of being an ordinary resident before a citizenship application could be processed.

“However‚ as we argued in court‚ the Citizenship Act clearly stipulates that citizenship may be awarded if the applicant ‘is ordinarily resident in the Republic … for a continuous period of not less than five years preceding the date of his or her application’.

“The high court agreed and effectively set aside not only the (department’s) refusal to grant citizenship‚ but also the regulation that led to this wrongful decision‚” De Saude-Darbandi said.

She said the department had two months to decide on the family’s application.

Read full article: https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-06-07-tears-of-joy-after-court-rules-against-home-affairs/