WE SHOULD BE TOGETHER

Their application for permanent residency was made two years ago but it still hasn’t been approved, so Francois waits in SA while his husband and child have to stay in China

- LESEGO SEOKWANG

SEEING their faces on his phone screen is the highlight of his day but it also makes him feel sad and alone. Because every time Francois Oosthuizen says goodbye to his husband, Bowen Li, and blows air kisses to their son, he wonders when the day will come when they’re living under the same roof.

Francois (40) is in Cape Town and his spouse, who’s a Chinese national, is thousands of kilometres away in China with their four-year-old child, Kaiwei.

Bowen can’t join his husband in South Africa because he’s still waiting for the department of home affairs to issue the permanent-residency permit he applied for two years ago.

Francois, frustrated at how long it’s taking the bureaucratic wheels to turn, returned to South Africa from China just over a month ago in the hope that he could speed things up. But he didn’t realise how hard it would be to be separated from the people he loves most in this world.

“It’s been very tough. I find it very difficult to sleep because of the stress,” an emotional Francois tells YOU. “I’m not only separated from my husband, but also from my child.”

When they tied the knot in October 2016, he and Bowen swore they’d build a life together but now because of circumstances beyond their control they’re being forced to live on different continents.

Francois resorted to launching a change.org petition in the hope that it would get the department of home affairs’ attention.

“I just heard of another couple who waited 15 years and the permanent residence has still not been issued,” he tells us. “It’s ridiculous. How can that happen?”