Two years after landmark Rayment & Anderson judgment — parental visas, constitutional protection and an enduring legacy.
Read the full opinion by our CEO, Claudia Pizzocri, as published on Daily Maverick here.
[Some extracts below]
Today, 4 December 2025, marks the second anniversary of the Constitutional Court’s landmark judgment in Rayment and Others; Anderson and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others. Read together with RS Nandutu and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others, it forms part of an emerging line of authority that holds immigration legislation to the discipline of dignity, family life and the best interests of the child.
Enduring legacy
Gary Eisenberg’s career was defined by treating immigration and citizenship law as constitutional law in practice. Over nearly three decades, he used litigation to push the system towards transparency, predictability and respect for rights. His law firm became known for challenging provisions and practices that produced arbitrary exclusion and for insisting that immigration decisions must be taken under the rule of law and within constitutional boundaries.
The Rayment litigation, initiated in the Western Cape High Court in early 2020 and eventually vindicated by a unanimous Constitutional Court, sits squarely in that tradition. The grounding idea is that a child’s rights are not incidental to immigration status but central to the analysis, and that when a spousal relationship ends, the legal system cannot treat the parent–child relationship as collateral.
From within the firm, at the second anniversary mark, the case is experienced as part of a broader legacy: one in which carefully constructed applications and hard-fought judgments gradually reshape the normative framework, and in which the task of practice is to ensure that those judgments are translated into real outcomes. Maintaining and honouring such a legacy means also examining how landmark judgments such as these are absorbed, or resisted, in day-to-day administration.
None of this detracts from what Rayment represents. Two years on, the judgment can be seen more clearly as a constitutional insistence that immigration law must absorb and reflect the lived reality of parents and children, rather than forcing them to shape their lives around rigid visa categories.
At the same time, Rayment now belongs to another legacy as well: that of Gary Eisenberg. Describing the parental visa as a “breakthrough towards the democratisation of South Africa’s immigration process” was never simply a phrase; it expressed an ongoing project.
To honour that project is to keep working at the level where law either protects or fails: to ensure that judgments like Rayment are not reduced to citations; to read each regulatory amendment closely; to notice where official practice drifts away from constitutional standards; and, where necessary, to continue testing that practice in the courts. Attorneys have an important role to play here as vigilant custodians of constitutional standards and practical watchdogs over implementation. The remaining work lies in narrowing the distance between the clarity of the Constitutional Court’s order and the uncertainty that still characterises too many encounters with the system.
by Claudia Pizzocri, CEO at Eisenberg & Associates Inc.