Andrew Stegmann

Fake US embassy in Ghana shut down after 10 years issuing visas

Ghanaian and Turkish crime rings ‘paid corrupt officials to look the other way’ to illegally obtain authentic documents

Authorities in Ghana have busted a fake US embassy in the capital Accra run by a criminal network that for a decade issued illegally obtained authentic visas, the US State Department has said.

Until it was shut down, the sham embassy was housed in a rundown, pink two-storey building with a corrugated iron roof and flew an American flag outside. Inside hung a portrait of the US president, Barack Obama.

“It was not operated by the United States government, but by figures from both Ghanaian and Turkish organised crime rings and a Ghanaian attorney practising immigration and criminal law,” the State Department said in a statement.

Turkish citizens who spoke English and Dutch posed as consular officers and staffed the operation. Investigations also uncovered a fake Dutch embassy, the State Department said.

Officials in the Netherlands were not immediately reachable for comment on Sunday.

The crime ring issued fraudulently obtained but legitimate US visas and false identification documents, including birth certificates at a cost of $6,000 (£4,700) each, the statement said.

During raids that led to a number of arrests, authorities also seized authentic and counterfeit Indian, South African and Schengen zone visas and 150 passports from 10 different countries along with a laptop and smartphones.

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Andrew Stegmann

New visa rule means grandparents won’t meet their grandkids at Christmas

Christine and Shaw Dods-Brooks will have to wait even longer to meet their grandchildren after a new visa requirement for South Africans ruined their Christmas plans.

The retired Northland couple had been planning a family reunion at Christmas time with their son and his two children, Sam, 11, and Taya, 9, and their other grandchildren who also live in Whangarei, for two years.

The couple, who are originally from Zimbabwe but have lived in New Zealand for 15 years, booked a bach in Matata so they could all be together for the first time ever and Sam and Taya could also spend time with their twin cousins.

But a change in visa requirements for people travelling on South African passports meant their grandchildren would not be able to come.

Immigration NZ announced a new rule in October requiring South Africans to have a visitor visa to enter New Zealand from 21 November.

Yesterday the Herald told how the change had meant Adriaan Visagie’s grandparents could not visit him from South Africa for Christmas as the required visas would not be processed in time. Immigration NZ said it was liaising with its London agency about this case.

However Immigration NZ area manager Darren Calder told the Herald he was not aware of a large number of complaints, although would not provide numbers of how many had contacted the call centre.

“It is difficult to comment on people’s plans and how they may or may not have been affected by the need to apply for a visa.”

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Andrew Stegmann

South Africa: Minister Malusi Gigaba – Signing of Partnership Agreement Between Home Affairs and Procter & Gamble

Remarks by Minister Malusi Gigaba on the occasion of the signing of the partnership agreement between the Department of Home Affairs and Procter & Gamble at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto

A few years ago, in 2012, we hosted the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Conference in Durban where African Ministers responsible for civil registration gathered to declare our commitment towards developing and strengthening the continent’s birth registration systems.

It was at this important meeting where we all affirmed the significance of civil registration and agreed to deal a serious blow to what is known as the Scandal of Invisibility – a phenomenon where people are born and die without leaving behind any trace of their existence legally.

It is critically important to note that Africa comes from a dark past where those who oppressed us sought to deny our existence systematically by excluding us from claiming our birth-right through citizenship assertion and implemented largely fragmented and isolation-oriented policies that perpetuated the marginalisation of the majority of our people.

It is therefore encouraging that the South African government, through the Department of Home Affairs, has prioritised civil registration.

Our policies and legislation, in this regard, have been developed to continue to bolster our resolve towards achieving an improved and efficient civil registration.

In South Africa, the right to a name, identity, citizenship and to be registered at birth is a universal human right and is guaranteed in section 28 of the Constitution.

According to the Births and Deaths Registration Act, any South African citizen or foreign visiting parents must give notice of the birth of their child within 30 days.

In developed countries, civil registration is something that has been entrenched and practiced routinely.

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Andrew Stegmann

Why the ANC Women’s League should be marching to Home Affairs

NO MAN should enter this arena lightly. But I wanted to know. Why do so many divorced women retain their husband‘s surname? The floodgates opened. Fortunately, none of the Facebook and Twitter respondents came at the questioner, though one did make the point that we should not blame women “again” for a societal problem. I learnt a lot from the responses to what clearly is a multilayered problem.

The most common response was “the children”. When a couple get divorced and the children are still young, changing the surname of the child to the mother‘s or having two biological parents with different surnames creates confusion. So, said many women, we keep the name “for the sake of the children”. And where the husband goes off or remarries and makes another life, the irritation of his name remaining behind with subsequent children “is a bonus”, said one woman.

What was disturbing, though, was the second-most common explanation — the Department of Home Affairs. “Try to change your name, Jon,” said a family friend. What followed were horror stories of how incredibly difficult it is to change your surname after a divorce in South Africa. A light-hearted friend, recently divorced, imagined applying for a change of surname only to get back from Home Affairs documents rendering her names as “Matric Exemption” along with a Nigerian husband she had never met.

Even when women married and insisted on separate names ahead of a marriage, officialdom balked and assigned the husband‘s name. These women were frustrated that the bureaucracy would not fall in line with the times, let alone be responsive to their expectations.

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