Port Shepstone granny crowdfunds UK deportation appeal
A 92-year-old Port Shepstone widow facing deportation from Britain has started a donation appeal on the Internet to enable her to take her case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The Home Office in the UK is threatening to send Myrtle Cothill back home because her application to stay permanently in England was not done in the correct way.
The elderly woman who is suffering from various ailments has been staying with her only daughter in Poole.
She says she has no family to return to in South Africa or look after her. Cothill has exhausted all her legal options in the UK in her bid to stay.
Her barrister, Jan Doerfel, has told Newswatch her appeal to the Human Rights Court will cost up to £18 000 or over R420 000.
"To embark in this lengthy and complex process where cases at the European Court of Human Rights can sometimes take up to years, it is a massive undertaking to embark on that process."
"So we have started an appeal on the website 'Go Fund Me'," Doerfel said.
(Photo: Gallo Images)