JOHANNESBURG - Nandipha Magudumana may have a winnable case on her hands.
Immigration lawyer Gary Eisenberg says there are merits to her legal challenge.
Magudumana claims she was abducted from Tanzania and is therefore illegally before court.
She's lodged an urgent application to have her arrest declared unlawful.
But Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi insists everything was done by the book.
He wants to join the application as a respondent.
"What she says in terms very simply is that, with or without the concerted cooperation between South Africa and Tanzanian authorities, she was arrested by the South African police authority in Tanzania and she was driven to the airport, put on the plane and abducted," said Eisenberg.
"That is her case, and she says that abduction is unlawful and that she is unlawfully before the court.
"Now if those are the facts, and it's only her side of the story. I haven't read the answering papers of the respondents.
"I don't know what the minister is going to say in his joiner application, he wants to join the application as a respondent, because he says he has a vested interest in the outcome of the proceedings.
"But if these are the facts, then an abduction is unlawful. And that's all there is to it," he said.
"And if those are the facts that the court accepts as the matrix of facts in the matter that are uncontested, she is unlawfully before the court and the court has no jurisdiction to try her."