Bushiri ‘declared tithes as own riches’ in bid for residency

Sunday World - 24th Apr 2022

The Department of Home Affairs has shed light on how self-proclaimed prophet Shepherd Bushiri illegally used tithes from his church and an aircraft to obtain documents for permanent residency in South Africa.

In final submissions filed in a disciplinary case against the senior official who granted approval for Bushiri’s permanent residency, the department goes to length to show that Bushiri and his family did not qualify for permanent residency after they used bank accounts of their church and an aircraft purchased for $1,25-million as proof of an investment they were going make.

The department contended that Bushiri did not have a net worth of R12-million and instead used the bank account of the church for his application in 2016.

“Accepting for the moment that one could consider an aircraft as an investment, it must be purchased for commercial/freight business use. However, purchasing it for personal use, as Bushiri did, does not constitute an investment.

“It is like a person purchasing an expensive Rolls Royce in South Africa and calling it an investment because of what it costs and the fact that it needs a chauffeur. This is utter nonsense. This, without even considering the fact that a cash purchase of an aircraft for $1,25-million should immediately raise eyebrows about possible money laundering or contravention of exchange control regulations,” the department said.

“Secondly, the chartered accountant relied on the bank statements of the church. Church funds cannot be relied upon as a source of investment, and it is not clear why they were even attached. A cursory glance at the bank statements in any event reveal that large amounts of cash were deposited and then withdrawn each month,” the department added.

The Bushiri’s permanent residency was also unlawfully authorised along with applications for refugee status.

In terms of the Immigration Act, an applicant must invest or intend to invest R2,5-million in the country to be granted permanent residency, among other qualifying criteria.

The act also states that the minimum net worth of an applicant should be R12-million, of which R120 000 should be paid to the director-general of home affairs upon approval of the application.

The submission is based on the report of an internal investigation that the department conducted into the saga.

The department wants Ronney Marhule, the suspended chief director of permits, to be found guilty of misconduct related to gross dishonesty, gross negligence and non-compliance with the Immigration Act. The outcome of the case will be out in a few weeks.

In January, the Labour Court dismissed Marhule’s application opposing the fact that the department used a lawyer to preside over his disciplinary hearing.

The department alleges Marhule approved Bushiri’s application while the application file and all relevant documents were still at the Lilongwe mission in Malawi and were only couriered to the department’s head office in Pretoria during December 2019.

“There was documentary evidence available in the files of the department establishing that Bushiri was in South Africa on a visitor’s visa but had, contrary to the Immigration Act, been conducting a business, which ought to have resulted in the rejection of the application, or alternatively, its referral for further investigation.

“There was documentary evidence available in the files of the department, establishing that Bushiri’s spouse, Mary Bushiri, had submitted a fraudulent exemption certificate issue in terms of the repealed Aliens Control Act prior to the application and recommendation for the approval of Bushiri’s permanent residence permit, which ought to have resulted in rejection of the application, alternatively, its referral for further investigation,” the department said.

In October 2020, the Bushiris  were arrested and charged with fraud and money laundering by the Hawks.

The status of Bushiri’s citizenship was brought into question during the arrest.

The department, through its counter corruption unit, initiated an investigation into allegations of irregular approval of permanent residence permit of Bushiri and his family.

That November, Bushiri and his wife fled to Malawi.

www.samigration.com

South African Spousal Visa

This type of South Africa Spouse or life partner permit is available to people in either heterosexual or same-sex relationships and can be applied for as either a spouse temporary residence permit or a permanent residence permit depending on the length of the marriage or relationship in question.

Foreigners who are spouses of South African citizensor permanent resident holders may apply for permanent residence. To obtain permanent residence, you would have to have been with your partner for more than 5 years.

Being one of the most progressive countries in the world in recognizing same-sex couples and affording them equal rights to that of heterosexual unions South Africa grants spousal permits to life partners in both same-sex and heterosexual relationships.

• The spousal permit is classified under the relative’s visa category and is renewable.
• The spousal visa is issued for a period of 36 months at a time. An added factor is the expiry date of the passport , ie the visa cannot be longer than expiry date of passport.
• It is a temporary residency visa and is only issued to foreign nationals who can prove a committed relationship with a South African citizen or person holding permanent residency.
• The couple must be able to prove a relationship longer than two years

If you would like to study or work while in the Republic you may do so but you would have to apply for working rights to be added to your visa. Persons on a spousal permit may also only apply to have either study, or business or working rights added to their visa, but not all three. This means that if you added a working rights endorsement to your visa you may only work for an employer.

South African Business Visa

A business visa may be issued by the Department of Home Affairs to a foreigner intending to establish or invest in a business in South Africa in which he or she may be employed, and to members of such foreigners’ immediate family providing that certain requirements have been met.

The Act calls for investment of R5,0 million in a business and you need to make sure you employ 60% South African citizens or permanent residents to get both a temporary and permanent business visa, you can get these visas with less capital investment - sometimes for as low as R600,000 investment using our expert team at SA Migration.

Many businesses do not require a capital investment as large as R5 million and in certain cases, you are allowed to reduce this amount and commit to a smaller investment if your business falls within the certain industries. The following businesses to be in the national interest, and therefore qualifying for reduction or waiver of the capitalisation requirements as determined to be in the national interest in relation to a Business Visa: Many of these business owners do not have the required investment amounts. If this is the case and the business falls in line with one of the following industries, a capital waiver can be requested. This would mean a reduction in the required investment amount.

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• Citizenship
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Citizenship Options

• South African Citizen by Descent
• South African Citizen by Naturalisation:
• Automatic loss of Citizenship
• Resumption of South African citizenship
• Deprivation of Citizenship
• South African Citizen by Naturalisation:
• Automatic loss of Citizenship
• Resumption of South African citizenship
• Acquisition of the citizenship or nationality of another country

South African Citizen by Descent:

Anybody who was born outside of South Africa to a South African citizen. His or her birth has to be registered in line with the births and deaths registration act 51 of 1992.

South African Citizen by Naturalisation:

Permanent Resident holders of 5 or more years can apply for citizenship. Anybody married to a South African citizen qualifies for naturalisation, two years after receiving his or her permanent residence at the time of marriage.

A child under 21 who has permanent residence Visa qualifies for naturalization immediately after the Visa is issued.

Automatic loss of Citizenship.

This occurs when a South African citizen:

Obtains citizenship of another country by a voluntary and formal act, other than marriage, or;

Serves in the armed forces of another country, where he or she is also a citizen, while is at war with South Africa.

Deprivation of Citizenship:

A South African citizen by naturalization can be deprived of his citizenship if;

The certificate of naturalisation was obtained fraudulently or false information was supplied.

He or she holds the citizenship of another country and has, at any time, been sentenced to 12 months imprisonment in any country for an offence that also would have been an offence in South Africa.

Home Affairs sends SA man’s Ukrainian wife and little boy back to conflict-torn country

Daily Maverick - 23 Apr 2022

More than 41,500km and R150,000 later, a Rustenburg man still hasn’t got his Ukrainian wife and son home.

A South African man has so far travelled 41,500km and spent more than R150,000 trying to get his new Ukrainian wife and three-year-old son into South Africa and out of danger back home. But because of the intransigence and apparent confusion of South African immigration authorities, she and their son are still in Ukraine, just as it faces a new offensive from Russia.

Roan Lindsey, a diesel mechanic from Rustenburg, had planned to marry Marta, whom he had met in Ukraine in December 2020, in April in her home town of  Kamianets-Podilskyi in western Ukraine. Then Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February and telescoped their plans. In early March he travelled to Ukraine to fetch Marta and Marat and bring them back to South Africa to start their life together here. 

They travelled to Copenhagen to get married and then to Budapest to get South African visas for Marta and Marat.  This time South African bureaucracy intervened.

When they arrived at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on 2 April, immigration officials would not allow Marta and Marat into South Africa, Lindsey told Daily Maverick this week. 

Apparently, because the Ukrainian government’s passport production facilities in the capital Kyiv had been damaged in the war, Ukrainian immigration officials had put Marat’s details into his mother’s passport as a temporary emergency measure.

Lindsey said that officials in South Africa’s embassy in Hungary had nonetheless given Marta and Marat visas to travel to South Africa and had assured them that Marat’s details being endorsed in Martha’s passport would not present a problem.

But when they arrived at OR Tambo, immigration officials there consulted a senior Home Affairs official in Pretoria who refused to let Marat into South Africa on Martha’s endorsed passport.

“I pleaded with the immigration officers, but they said they were powerless in this decision because it comes from the top of Home Affairs,” Lindsey said.

“We called the Ukrainian embassy and a gentleman there tried to help us and tried to talk to the immigration officers, but they didn’t want to talk to him. I called a lawyer to talk to them, but they still refused. They said that she is denied and she will be sent back to Budapest that same day.”

He said that an OR Tambo airport official his mother had pleaded with had been “extremely rude” in refusing to help.  Lindsey said he did not feel he was responsible for what had happened “as we got completely the wrong information from the South African embassy in Hungary”.

South African officialdom would not budge and Lindsey said he could not let Martha and Marat fly back to Budapest on their own. “She has no friends or family there to help her or meet her.”

So he flew back to Budapest with them. “I had to buy three tickets back to Budapest for the same day which was very expensive and I didn’t work for a month. We flew for 16 hours, waited at the airport for eight hours and had another 16-hour flight back to Budapest. 

“Her son was extremely upset and restless. Crying non-stop. It was a horrible situation and we had no plan.

“Eventually we found out that passports would be issued in Ukraine again in the soon future. So we had to make the heartbreaking decision of taking her and her son back to Ukraine.

“We took two trains from Budapest which took 18 hours and we got to Suceava (in Romania). Two days later she crossed the border back into Ukraine to go to her parents’ house” — which is in Kamianets-Podilskyi in western Ukraine near the Romanian border. Lindsey said that part of Ukraine had so far not been caught up in the war which was now concentrated in the east and the south. But that could change. 

On 11 April, Lindsey arrived back in South Africa. 

“Now we will have to do this all over again,” he said wearily.  He said Marta now had an appointment with Ukrainian immigration officials on 23 April to apply for Marat’s passport. Then she would have to wait for it to be issued. When Marta had the new passport for Marat, Lindsey would return to the Romanian-Ukrainian border to fetch them and bring them to South Africa again. “We’ll go to Budapest again to apply for visas for them. And then pray that when we return to OR Tambo they won’t deny them entry again.”

He said that this time he would apply for a spouse’s visa for Marta and a relative’s visa for Marat. She was now on a tourist visa, but he didn’t want to take any chances of her not being allowed into South Africa again. 

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi (Photo: Netwerk24 / Elizabeth Sejake)

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa Liubov Abravitova has been trying to persuade the South African government to relax its rules to allow people like Marta and Marat into South Africa even if their passports are not quite regular, because of the war. 

She told Daily Maverick that she appreciated that South Africa did not yet have regulations on how to deal with these situations and so it was against South African law to permit entry to a child endorsed on a parent’s passport. 

“And we do respect the law.” But she said that she had requested an urgent meeting with Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi to try to find a way around the problem. He agreed to meet her on Tuesday this week. 

“The meeting was in a good tone. The minister was really supportive, thoughtful and understanding of the urgency of decisions needed to be made with regard to the humanitarian situation.”

She said they had agreed to establish a working group comprising her embassy and the departments of Home Affairs and of International Relations and Cooperation to resolve all the technical and administrative problems. 

Abravitova said others were in the same predicament as the Lindseys. 

Lindsey said he had endured “a very long 35 days to be back to square one where I started”  and had so far travelled about 41,500km on trains, buses and planes. He faced still more travel to fetch Marta and Marat. The saga had so far cost him more than R150,000 — or more if one factored in 35 days of lost work.

“We thought we would start our lives together in South Africa. And now my wife and three-year-old son are back in Ukraine. We are completely devastated and it has cost us an incredible amount of money. We lost a lot of our savings.”

www.samigration.com