My husband's aplication for permanent residency was rejected. We submitted an appeal and have not heard back for months. Please help us!

The long answer

This is indeed enormously frustrating. It seems that there is such a huge backlog of appeals at Home Affairs because the Business Affairs Unit, which is the division at Home Affairs responsible for reviewing and ruling on rejected visas, waivers and permanent residency applications, only has nine adjudicators. This is far too few staff to cope with the massive number of appeals under Section 8 (4) and 8 (6) of the Immigration Act. 

June Luna Immigration Attorneys explain that under Section 8(4), the first rejection is reviewed by the Director General of Home Affairs. If the Director-General decides that the rejection must stand, the applicant can appeal to the Minister of Home Affairs under Section 8(6). The Minister will make the final departmental decision. 

In the event of a further rejection, the only remaining strategy would be to ask the High Court to review the decision, which would obviously be time-consuming and costly.

The courts have previously ruled that 8 to 12 months is a reasonable time frame for the Department to adjudicate appeals.

But because of the massive backlog, Home Affairs issued Immigration Directive no 7 of 2026 (EXTENSION OF TEMPORARY CONCESSION FOR FOREIGN NATIONALS RELATED TO DELAYED PROCESSING OF WAIVER, VISA AND APPEAL APPLICATIONS) on 30 March 2026. 

This allows individuals with a pending waiver, specific long-term visas and specific appeal applications to legally remain in South Africa until 30 June 2027. This will protect them from being declared undesirable or facing overstay penalties when exiting or entering the country. 

But the concession until 30 June does not apply to permanent residence applications or appeals. Thus, your husband must continue to maintain a valid temporary visa like a general work or spousal visa, while his permanent residence appeal is pending. 

If your husband has a VFS Global tracking link, he could follow up on the status of his appeal by emailing his tracking details together with a copy of his appeal to PRA.TRAappeals@dha.gov.za. 

The Department of International Relations & Cooperation says that this is the dedicated email channel for follow-up for Temporary Residence (TRA) and Permanent Residence (PRA) appeals.

So it would seem that the long ongoing delay by Home Affairs in contacting your husband about his appeal is something that many people may be experiencing. 

If Home Affairs continues to ignore all attempts to contact them about the appeal, you could lodge a formal complaint with the Office of the Public Protector for service failure, undue delay, or "unreasonable administrative conduct". 

They say that all new complaints must be submitted via Registration2@pprotect.org.

These are their contact details:  

Toll-Free Line: 0800 11 20 40

Customer Service: (012) 366 7143

 General Enquiries: (012) 366 7000 / (012) 366 7112

You could also ask one of the following organisations for assistance in dealing with Home Affairs:

• Lawyers for Human Rights

Email: info@lhr.org.za

Tel: Musina 015 534 2203

Durban: 031 301 0531

Pretoria: 012 320 2943

Johannesburg: 011 339 1960

Cape Town: 021 424 8561

• Legal Resources Centre

Email:info@lrc.org.za

Johannesburg: 011 836 9831

Cape Town: 021 481 3000.

Durban: 031 301 7572

Wishing you the best,
Athalie