Man’s long battle for ID
‘Home Affairs used their people, the police and their jails to take my life’
SHOCKING details of the abuse of a teacher – who went from being employed and functioning to living on the streets after Home Affairs officials wrongly decided he was an illegal immigrant – have emerged in the Port Elizabeth High Court.
Reginald Vusumzi Sothomela, 69, won the last of several battles with Home Affairs, stretching over 20 years, finally getting an ID last month.
“They stole my life,” he said, describing how he had been sent from pillar to post, with Home Affairs officials insisting he was an illegal immigrant.
“Home Affairs used their people, the police and their jails to take my life,” Sothomela said.
After being stabbed in the eye while living on the streets, Sothomela is fast losing his sight.
An affidavit used to obtain a court order compelling the Department of Home Affairs to issue Sothomela with an ID details a series of administrative bungles – first starting in 1996 – that included arrests and deportations to Swaziland where Sothomela also held citizenship.
His mother, Gertrude Thokozile Abrahams, is a Swazi national.
According to records released by Home Affairs to Sothomela’s attorneys, his father, Njokweni Archibald Sotomela, who died in 2008, lived in Ferguson Road, Port Elizabeth, for all his life.
His parents, who never married, met when his mother worked as a nurse at Livingstone Hospital. He and his mother later moved to Swaziland where he matriculated in 1975 before studying teaching.
He held teaching posts in South Africa until retiring in 2006.
According to Home Affairs records, Sothomela was first arrested and deported to Swaziland in 1996 for “being in possession of a Swaziland passport bearing a surname other than Sothomela”.
“The surname on the Swazi passport was Abrahams, being my mother’s surname, the name under which my mother registered my birth in Swaziland,” he said.
In 2002, he was issued, once again, with a South African ID after he and his father submitted DNA evidence to prove their relationship.
In 2007, he asked for his ID to be reissued after it was stolen, but when he went to Home Affairs to ask about it, he was arrested.
“I was not even allowed to take my belongings from the place that I was renting in Central. I was driven to Lindela [Home Affairs’ holding facility for illegal immigrants] and taken to the Swazi border. But I returned to Port Elizabeth,” Sothomela said.
His identity document then got lost when he was treated at Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital while in Johannesburg.
“I went back to Home Affairs. They sent me to Pretoria, Pretoria sent me back to Port Elizabeth,” he said.
After several attempts to obtain information on the application came to nothing, he was informed that his ID had been “blocked”.
On June 27 last year, Sothomela was accompanied to Home Affairs’ Port Elizabeth offices by Legal Aid attorney Mike Burmeister.
“The office manager told us all the relevant documentation had been forwarded to Pretoria who were now dealing with the matter,” he said.
But he would wait another six months to hear anything.
“Without an ID, I can’t find work or housing or apply for a grant. My aged mother is in Swaziland and I cannot visit her,” Sothomela said.
No response was received from Home Affairs, but in papers before court they said the delay was caused by an outstanding document.
“The unfair treatment that Mr Sothomela received from Home Affairs prompted PE Justice Centre staff to act on his behalf,” Legal Aid spokeswoman Abongile Tyopo said.
She said following an application brought by Legal Aid, Sothomela has been issued with an ID and a passport to visit his mother in Swaziland.
Burmeister has also written to Sassa to reinstate Sothomela’s old age grant with back pay.