Mausi and the I are slowly getting all the papers required by the German authorities sorted out. The hold up is, as ever, Pretoria, but, after almost two years of waiting, even the Standesamt is prepared to make allowances. Finally, yesterday, he acknowledged that we'd run out of option for getting a response from Pretoria acknowledging my divorce in 1995 has been duly noted and recorded. The official has finally accepted the copy of the Marriage Certificate from my old ID Book as a valid document and the print-off from the SA Dept of Internal Affairs Population Register that shows me as "Divorced."
We were told it's irregular, but all our other papers are valid, so they will have to accept what we are able to supply from the South African end as it's obvious we aren't going to get a response.
All I can say is, it's taken 9 months to get this agreement. Nine months of phoning Embassies, Pretoria, more Embassies and Consulates and more calls to Pretoria. Thankfully, having shown all the forms, all the letters and emails, our Standesamt has agreed its a hopeless pursuit. Finally the Magistrate will look at issuing an approval for our marriage.
All I can say, after this experience of the system in South Africa, is I really cannot understand how anyone actually gets anything done there. It must be murder to get anything at all out of any government department and, as for dealing with two ... No, forget it.
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At last! :)
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