The agent of Bafana Bafana defender Siyanda Xulu has explained why exactly the South African was denied entry to Israel and held for hours at the airport.
The 29-year-old was traveling from South Africa to Israel for pre-season but experienced a nightmare at the airport when officials didn’t let him enter the country.
iDiski Times reached out to Paul Mitchell, the agent of the former Kaizer Chiefs and Maritzburg defender, who explained that the error was on his club Hapoel Tel Aviv’s side after they gave him a document that the immigration officials questioned.
“As you know South Africa is on the red list, however, Siyanda has got a work permit and he has been inoculated for Covid-19. So from a Covid-perspective everything was in place,” he Mitchell told iDiski Times.
“He also had a permission of entry from the ministry of health, but the problem was that one of the documents given to him in Hebrew language from the club, was a document that immigration felt was a forged document, or a document that wasn’t in good standing.
“Obviously that document was given to Siyanda by the club, so somebody at the club is responsible. Unfortunately because of that document they denied him entry and he’s had to come home now.
“The South African embassy they tried their utmost best to help and were very good, but unfortunately this is the rule. Until we get to the bottom of the document with his club, we’ll just wait for 24-48 hours to see what the next correspondence from the club will be.”
Xulu was visibly shaken from the treatment he experienced, saying “a day to forget never thought I’ll be treated this way when I’m only human”.
“It was a bad experience,” Mitchell continued.
“He’s not banned from entry in Israel, but obviously this had an affect on him.
“We’re going to give it 24 hours and let Siyanda rest, because now he’s back in South Africa. Maybe, for him to go back to Israel, he first has to spend 14 days in another country that is not on the red list.
“It wasn’t nice, it wasn’t comfortable because he arrived at 4am in the morning, and he only flew out at 1am the next day. He spent the whole day in an immigration room, it wasn’t nice.”
