OA037022014

This is an appeal against the determination of First-tier Tribunal Judge Ghaffar, promulgated on 10 th November 2014, following a hearing at Birmingham Sheldon Court on 6 th October 2014. In the determination, the judge allowed the appeal of Master Erick Junior Tinotendashe Nyabanga. The Respondent, subsequently applied for, and was granted, permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal, and thus the matter comes before me.

The Appellant is a citizen of Zimbabwe, a male, who was born on 9 th September 1998. He appealed against the decision of the Respondent Entry Clearance Officer, made on 13 th February 2014, to refuse to grant him entry clearance as the child of Ms Precious Gwese, a person present and settled in the United Kingdom.

The Appellant's claim is that, there was a time when his mother, Ms Precious Gwese, did not have custody of him. He had lived with his mother's parents until about 2007 and then he did not come home from school one day. That was the last time that he had lived with her parents. He was taken to South Africa and the mother, Precious Gwese, was not allowed to contact him. She was separated from her husband in 1999, and this was only a year after they had married. Between 1999 and 2007, it was the sponsoring mother, Precious Gwese, who had sole responsibility for the Appellant.

The Appellant was then taken to South Africa, depriving the mother of her parental right to have access to a child. The Appellant then returned back to Zimbabwe and it is then that Precious Gwese applied for his entry to the UK on the basis that she had sole responsibility for him since then. The Appellant had not been living then in South Africa. The sponsoring mother had herself been to South Africa on three occasions to see the Appellant himself.

The judge considered at length the refusal letter (see paragraph 3, which maintained that the sponsoring mother in the UK had not exercised sole responsibility and had not made decisions with regard to the Appellant's educational health, especially given that the Appellant had been residing in South Africa with his father from 2011 to 2014.