\n
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.<\/p>\n
The Mulowayi family of Kensington\u201a Johannesburg\u201a 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.<\/p>\n
The Mulowayi family had been in the country since the early 2000s. Florette Mulowayi has lived and worked in South Africa since 2002\u201a when she left her home country as a refugee.<\/p>\n
Her husband\u201a Nsongoni\u201a joined her in 2004.<\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n
Florette and Nsongoni were granted permanent resident permits in 2011 and waited five years before applying for citizenship. Even after renouncing their DRC citizenship\u201a their applications for naturalisation were denied.<\/p>\n
At the heart of the department\u2019s decision to deny their citizenship application were regulations that\u201a according to department\u2019s legal counsel\u201a stipulated a period of 10 years of being an ordinary resident before a citizenship application could be processed.<\/p>\n
“However\u201a as we argued in court\u201a the Citizenship Act clearly stipulates that citizenship may be awarded if the applicant \u2018is ordinarily resident in the Republic … for a continuous period of not less than five years preceding the date of his or her application\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe high court agreed and effectively set aside not only the (department\u2019s) refusal to grant citizenship\u201a but also the regulation that led to this wrongful decision\u201a” De Saude-Darbandi said.<\/p>\n
She said the department had two months to decide on the family’s application.<\/p>\n
Read full article: https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/2018-06-07-tears-of-joy-after-court-rules-against-home-affairs\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ernest Mabuza 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\u201a Johannesburg\u201a finally found relief on Tuesday after a protracted battle with the department which had refused their […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","region-south-africa","type-news-articles","item-year-642","item-theme-nationality-and-refugees","item-theme-naturalisation-and-marriage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18858"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18860,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18858\/revisions\/18860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}