Opinion: My ordeal at the South African High Commission

Posted by admin Africa & World Politics, Headlines Monday, August 13th, 2012

The South African High Commission recently informed me of something I was not aware of about myself. In very clear terms and very few words, I was told that: “With reference to your application for a visitor’s Visa, please be informed that your application has been denied for the following reason(s): INVALID COPY OF YELLOW FEVER CARD ATTACHED. If you intend re-applying please attach all the required documents.”

Thus, with these few words, I was brought to a rude awakening: You, dear Chris Ihidero, are a fraudster! This awakening is rude because, contrary to what the rejection letter says, I have always insisted that I was incapable of being fraudulent. At the risk of sounding arrogant, especially with the realisation that I am a Nigerian, and therefore believed to be genetically fraud-inclined, I have so far lived my life in a way that ensures that I do not do anything that will necessitate the questioning of my integrity.

This declaration by the South African High Commission is therefore not merely a rejection of an application, but also a rejection of my attempts to do things the right way.

Sometime late last year, I followed an aunt to Kosofe Local Government Area office in Ojota, Lagos. She was about to travel abroad and her Yellow Card had expired. At the office, we were taken through the procedure and eventually she got her Yellow Card. Fast forward to May 2012 and I went back to the same local government office to acquire a Yellow Card. My wife and I paid N500 each at Oceanic Bank on Ogudu Road, Ojota, and on the appointed day (May 17, 2012), we both received the vaccines for both Yellow Fever and Cerebrospinal Meningitis and were issued our cards. A week later, we applied for and got visas from the Indian High Commission, using our yellow cards as part of documents submitted with our applications.

On May 30, 2012, we both travelled to India and presented our Yellow Cards at the immigration entry point at the Indira Ghandi International Airport in New Delhi. At no point when our yellow cards were checked were we informed that they were invalid.

The question then to ask is; What is the basis for authentication that was employed by the South African High Commission that invalidated my yellow card? What test is a yellow card put through by the South African High Commission that tells of the card’s authenticity or otherwise? If someone gets a yellow card in a far-flung local government area in the most rural areas of say, Northern Nigeria or the riverine areas of Bayelsa State, how does the South African High Commission authenticate that yellow card? How is a yellow card authentic with Indians and invalid with South Africans? Can one begin to infer that this flimsy excuse for rejecting a visa application being employed by the South African High Commission is a form of control of how many people come to that country? Would it perhaps be too far-fetched to assume that the South African High Commission in Nigeria is attempting to avoid the uproar that followed the recent repatriation of over a hundred from South Africa on the claim of invalid yellow cards by refusing to grant visas to individual Nigerians on the same claim, knowing that those individuals will probably just reapply and the public will remain unaware of this? Can one begin to ask how many Nigerians have had their integrity and sense of personal worth so erroneously questioned by such a false claim by the South African High Commission?

I applied for a South African visa because I was billed to deliver an academic paper on Nollywood and participate in the International Association for Media and Communication Research conference at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. I wasn’t going to that country for sight-seeing or thinking of emigration. I had been chosen as one of the six researchers across the continent to discuss Nigeria’s phenomenal film industry, Nollywood. My research and entire trip were fully funded by a South African company. To have this truncated by a false accusation of holding an invalid yellow card borders on the absurd and utterly ridiculous.

I am aware that it is the prerogative of the high commission to grant or not grant a visa. I have no problems with having a visa application rejected at all. What I have an issue with is the rejection of an application on a false claim. My aunt, whom I followed to the local government area, applied for and got a visa and travelled to South Africa in January this year, using a yellow card signed and stamped by the same person who signed and stamped mine, in the same office.

Curiously, as I walked out of the South African visa centre on the day I went to pick up my passport, I ran into a friend who had recently been granted a South African visa. When I told him what had happened to me, he said the mistake I made was going to get an original yellow card from Kosofe Local Government, as the South African High Commissioned favours yellow cards from Eti- Osa Local Government Area, opposite the South African visa centre. He had once been refused a visa on the claim of an invalid yellow card, and had been reliably informed by a visa agent that applies on behalf of people that he should go get one at Eti Osa. He did as he was told, buying the card for N1000 (without taking the vaccines) and subsequently got a visa. I have no way of authenticating his story, but one begins to wonder if the South African High Commission is now encouraging Nigerians to be fraudulent.

I have another conference to attend in South Africa in December; I shall re-apply for a visa using the same yellow card. I will not be forced into telling a lie.

– Ihidero is a filmmaker, teacher, and the COO of Amaka Igwe Studioswp_posts