When her refugee permit expired in June last year, Congolese nurse Marseline Buhoro started getting calls from her bank in Johannesburg saying her account would be frozen. Then her children’s university told her they would not be able to graduate because her family was technically undocumented. Buhoro pleaded for a grace period, explaining she had finally figured out how to apply for a renewal using the government’s new online system but had been waiting months for confirmation that her application went through. “It’s like a second trauma,” said the 53-year-old nurse who came to SA in 2005 to …
