It is raining heavily as Siyabonga Twala trudges down the steep pavement that leads from the British embassy in Ankara. In a soft Cheshire accent, he says: “I don’t mind when it rains, it feels like home, like.”
For almost three months, walking around Turkey’s capital has been the only way to keep his mind and body busy while wondering if he will ever come home to his British son and family.
Twala’s purgatory began in Istanbul on 30 December when he was barred from boarding a flight to Manchester. He was on his way back from a family holiday to South Africa with his son, Mason, eight, and his parents and siblings. The trip was the first time that Twala, 34, had returned since his family left Durban for Chester when he was 15.
Twala was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 2010. But the Home Office barred him from re-entering Britain because of a 2018 conviction for cannabis possession with intent to supply. He had no previous criminal record and served four months of a nine-month sentence – lower than the 12-month threshold that triggers automatic deportation.
His case reveals the continuing impact of the “hostile environment” – and the way it can interact with a justice system that is much more likely to send black men to prison for drug offences. Last year Rishi Sunak pledged to double deportations of people convicted of crimes who do not have citizenship.
Many of the people treated as foreigners have lived in Britain since childhood and the blanket policy raises ethical questions about the effect on British children whose parents commit minor offences.
This week Twala’s new lawyer is submitting a fresh tranche of evidence to the Home Office in the hope that officials show clemency. His Turkish visitor’s visa also runs out this week. He hopes to be granted an extension but the deadline adds greater uncertainty. “It’s felt overwhelming, as if I’m being punished again and again and again,” Twala says.
Twala ended up in Ankara because of the British embassy. When he called a Home Office helpline from Istanbul, he was told they might be able to help since he was travelling with his British son. But by the time he got an appointment at the embassy, Mason had already returned to the UK with Twala’s parents.
When Twala turned up, the embassy’s guards would not even let him through the gates. Without a British passport, they said, his appointment had been invalidated. “I just had this sinking feeling … It felt like my life had just ended,” he says.
Since then he has had many days where he has wanted to give up. “The bad days are when I just feel completely numb.” Getting back to his son is the thing that keeps him fighting.
His lawyer, Nick Hughes, is putting together a case, arguing his exclusion is unlawful. “[Exclusion] is only for serious criminality,” Hughes says. “It’s for behaviour that encourages or incites terrorism, for example. It doesn’t apply to an individual who served four and a half months of a nine-month sentence for possession of cannabis. It’s such a minor offence with a low risk of harm to the public to apply such a serious policy to.”
The Guardian went to the embassy with Twala to see if anyone would speak about its handling of his case. Twala was told that only the press office in London could discuss it.
Turkey feels foreign to Twala but so does South Africa now. Stopping in a cafe next to Ankara’s main square to warm up with a cup of Turkish black tea, he describes how he still has nightmares about his early childhood in a rough township north of Durban.
When Twala’s father left Durban 20 years ago to join the NHS as a nurse, he “was working purely to get us out of there”, Twala recalls. He sent money home and two years later the rest of the family followed him to Chester, where Twala went to school.
The Twalas no longer have close family in South Africa and when they visited in December it was as tourists, going on safari and sightseeing. The thought of trying to build a life there as an outsider terrifies him. “People can tell by your accent [that you’re not local] and you just become a bit of a target,” he says.
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After Twala was released from prison he was given a deportation order and his relationship with Mason’s mother broke down not long after. Twala qualified as a heavy goods vehicle driver on leaving prison and found a steady job that left him free to collect Mason from school on Fridays for their weekends together. He rented a bungalow in farmland near Wrexham with a bedroom for Mason and a garden they played football in.
When the family court formalised his role caring for Mason from Fridays to Mondays in 2021, a fresh application to overturn his deportation was made that was still outstanding when he left on holiday in December. But he says he had assumed this was resolved by a family court order giving permission for the trip.
There was no signed deportation order when he was refused permission to fly. Then last month the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, told Twala’s MP he had been blocked from returning because he “is now considered to have departed the UK voluntarily”. Jenrick said the department was considering his case.
He has been struggling to sleep. Staying awake, his mind races, wondering about his future – and picking over the Home Office decision. “Some days you wake up and think: this is hopeless.”
Twala’s family say Mason is distressed by his father’s absence. “My mum has noticed a big change in his behaviour,” Twala says. “He’s crying at night and punching his pillow and stuff like that and he’s been falling asleep in the daytime.”
They find phone calls hard. “When I say I can’t come back I can see his face immediately drop,” Twala says.
Mason wants answers to many of the same questions that Twala has for the Home Office. “He’s always asking me about my situation. And I’m trying to shield him from that right now until I hear from the Home Office. I’ve said: ‘Look, something’s going on so Daddy might not be coming back for a little while, but I’m going to try and fight as far as I can to come and be with you.’”
The Labour MP Diane Abbott, who has campaigned on behalf of Windrush victims, said his situation showed the devastating impact of government policies. “This case is an example of the hostile environment at its worst. No consideration given to the relatively minor nature of the offence, that Twala has spent most of his life in Britain and that he has a British child. And who thinks that he would have been treated like this if he was white?”
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Twala knows he did something wrong. The night he was caught with cannabis in his car, he says, he turned down the chance of a lawyer at Chester police station because he wanted to confess. “I thought I was doing the right thing,” he says. “I said: ‘Hands up, I was doing it for the money. I was struggling mentally.’ And I said I’m sorry and I take full responsibility.”
Now he wonders what would have happened if there had been a lawyer beside him encouraging him to say “no comment”.
Twala says his lawyer for the hearing at Chester crown court was optimistic: “My solicitor was like, you’re not going to get any jail time, don’t pack a bag. I was expecting a community order or a suspended sentence.”
The sentencing guidelines for possession of a class B drug with intent to supply begin with a fine or community order. It was a first offence but Twala was sent straight to prison.
The odds of a black offender receiving an immediate custodial sentence for a drug offence are 40% higher than for a white offender, according to the Sentencing Council. When prison sentences can end a person’s life in the UK, this disparity takes on greater significance.
Like many people with residency in Britain, Twala never got round to applying for citizenship because of the prohibitive cost. In 2015, when he first became eligible, he had a young son to support and fees were already more than £1,000 with further costs for tests.
Twala’s younger brother, Honor, 31, has been a British citizen since 2019. He said earlier this month: “I think of him as British. He’s been here as long as I have. You feel at home until something like this happens and it feels like the government is trying to put you in your place.”
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Earlier this month, Twala’s savings ran out and his parents could not send much more on their salaries as a nurse and a carer. But his luck has started to change since the Guardian first reported on his case – with several readers contacting him to help.
One charity worker from Chester, living in Ankara coordinating the humanitarian response to the earthquake, took him for dinner and helped him with rent. Others simply sent money. “It’s made a lot of difference because before that I was on the brink of being homeless and not having any food in my stomach,” Twala says.
One reader, Pavel Theiner, 66, a translator in Prague, decided to get on a plane to Ankara to see how he could help. Theiner came to Britain from Prague as a child refugee and is outraged by what he calls the “extreme hostility” of the current government.
Over dinner in Ankara on Thursday night, Theiner said he had never met Twala but thought helping him was a good way to start a few weeks of travelling. His first plan was to take him shopping for clothes.
The Home Office’s stance on his case remains firm. A spokesperson said: “Foreign national offenders who exploit our system and commit crimes here in the UK will face the full force of the law, including deportation at the earliest opportunity for those eligible.”
Twala’s father, Siyabonga Twala senior, is heartbroken by its position, given his son’s efforts to turn his life around. “I think they’re really, really harsh,” he said. “I think they’ve punished him enough.”
