While passport renewal applications for citizens living abroad were resumed on 27 July (after being closed since late March), additional urgent action is required.
Dr Jubber says given the already massive backlog of applications, and that SA passport renewals abroad already take 6 to 12 months as well as new uncertainties around processing times due to the lockdown in South Africa, this is of little immediate assistance to those citizens.
DA Shadow Deputy Minister for Home Affairs Adrian Roos has therefore written to the Minister of Home Affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi, to request that the passports of those working and living abroad, in need of urgent renewal, are stamped to remain valid for a period to cover the long waiting times of 6 to 12 months.

The DA Deputy Minister said in his letter that many South African expatriate citizens overseas “do not require the passports to return to South Africa under lockdown but rather to retain or extend the validity of their work and temporary residence visas. When the passport expires so does the visa. Roos offered up suggestions of procedures that are working in other countries.
Pakistan have implemented a system whereby expired passports were automatically extended for a certain period and whereby passports can also be extended manually for a period of one year at the Pakistani consulates and embassies for a small fee.
The Egyptian Government have also implemented an automatic validity extension and a system of stamping a validity extension in to passports of their nationals at their missions overseas.
He says this would ease the pressure on passport processing services at the Home Affairs back office.
Meanwhile Dr Jubber also said in a statement, what most South Africans living abroad already know: “The issue of the inefficiency and lack of timeliness in processing passports for those living, working and travelling abroad is not new, it is a decade old problem that both the DHA and their colleagues at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation have shown minimal interest in rectifying.”
Earlier this month, desperate South Africans abroad sent a letter to South African Ministers, Diplomats and even the Presidential Office… but received no response. In the letter they explained:
Many, many South Africans who are living and working abroad are in dire straights as passports expire and visas run out. Now, they say, it’s easy, just repatriate but it’s not that simple. WE have lives and homes here, kids are not allowed to be repatriated and we are now in a situation where we’ll be jobless, homeless, and unable to

fly to South Africa.
The letter revealed that:
Many families are losing homes and jobs due to expired passports! People who have lived in foreign countries for years, who have homes and businesses in South Africa, who have family and relatives depending on them for funds for food and life.
The South Africans abroad were frustrated by unanswered calls to the DHA. “According to human rights lawyers, this separation of families is a serious violation of rights!” said the writer, who wrote on behalf of “thousands of South Africans who are still stuck in foreign countries”.
The letter pointed out that SA’s economy would be in an even worse crisis if all these South Africans �` who could no longer work abroad with expired passports �` had to return home with no jobs, no homes and unable to pay tax.
The letter writer begged for help, saying: “I am at the end of the line and we need intervention and help! When I called my embassy yesterday I was treated with disdain and screamed at. We are all in this boat together, and right now, South Africans in foreign countries are lost and unable to feed families, both in South Africa and abroad:
Could you please look into opening the E-services for passports for those of us who are living in foreign countries. We can do biometrics at embassies which will take the pressure off the Home Affairs during this crisis. Many South Africas are trapped overseas without being able to travel to new jobs and are losing jobs because of expired passports.
The DA Abroad’s Dr Jubber says the SA Government “simply cannot blame the Covid-19 pandemic for these delays, as it has only worsened an already dire situation of poor service delivery. It is completely unacceptable that citizens abroad are left in a practical position of statelessness for an undisclosed number of months.”
SA citizen Ryszard Majewski‎, in Thailand, said: “I was amazed at the SA Embassy in Thailand yesterday when I was following up the renewal of my passport. The Embassy staff stated that Home Affairs is hopeless and inefficient, not responding to their heaps of requests from stranded SA citizens in Thailand, with various issues. Take my example �` it will take more than 8 months+ to get a new passport. HELLO!!!”
Dr Jubber says the DA will continue to sound the alarm on the “inefficiencies” of Home Affairs in protecting the interests of South African citizens abroad. V.3161

There are fears that more people will be separated by the introduction of a minimum salary level for those wanting UK family visas. Families living in the UK and abroad have raised concerns about what new rules will mean for them as they try to reunite with foreign spouses. In December, the Home Office, which says migration to the UK is too high, announced a package of measures to reduce net migration, following a spike in arrival numbers. V.5318
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An Ethiopian asylum seeker, who does not speak English, claims he was duped by a senior immigration official into paying an admission of guilt fine when he thought he was paying for bail.Two Western Cape High Court judges have condemned the official`s `deplorable` behaviour, set aside the fine, and ordered the immigration official be taken off the case. Tsegaye Esyas claims Annelise van Dyk treated him like an animal which led to him attempt suicide while in police cells. V.5320
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EREMY MAGGS: I want to stay with crime now. Individuals with a criminal record may be faced with significant challenges when seeking employment, I think that’s a given. Here in South Africa, employers may legally exclude an applicant from consideration for a position if having a clean criminal record is what is termed an inherent requirement of the job. That phrase, inherent requirement, is important, but what exactly does that mean, and when can an applicant be lawfully excluded for having a criminal record? V.5321
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As a South African who has adopted a nomadic work lifestyle alongside my wife, Ingrid Lotze, I’ve been an interested observer of South Africa’s snail-pace digital nomad visa (DNV) development process. Despite the optimism surrounding its introduction, the visa seems to miss several crucial marks for digital nomads like us. V.5322
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DA MP says hours lost continue to result in persons being unable to collect their ID documents due to unmanageable queues The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. V.5314
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Home Affairs’ seemingly endless court battles set the department back more than R110-million between April 2023 and the end of February this year. This was revealed in a written parliamentary response by minister Aaron Motsoaledi. He said the department accumulated a litigation bill of R117 692 996.3, higher than the R72 637 944.51 spent the year before. V.5315
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Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) this week revealed that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) has achieved a ground-breaking milestone by processing more than 10 million passengers over a single financial year. This is the highest number of regional and international passengers processed since COVID-19 V.5316
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In recent years, South Africa has seen a significant influx of immigrants from various African countries, as well as other parts of the world. This has raised important questions about the country`s immigration policies and their impact on job creation for both locals and immigrants. The South African immigration system, like many other countries, is a complex and ever-evolving process that aims to balance the country`s economic needs with its social and cultural interests. Let`s take a closer look at how this system intersects with job creation in South Africa. The South African government implemented the Immigration Act of 2002, which outlines the country`s immigration policies and procedures. Under this act, foreigners are required to obtain a visa or permit to enter, work, or study in South Africa. The type of visa or permit required depends on the intended purpose of the individual`s visit and their country of origin. V.5312
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Due to system downtime and load-shedding, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) lost nearly 141,000 hours of Smart ID application and production time between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 financial years. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed this figure in a recent response to questions raised in Parliament by Democratic Alliance MP Adrian Roos. Motsoaledi provided a breakdown of smart ID production and application hours lost to technical difficulties and load-shedding per province for each financial year from 2019/2020. These disruptions hit home Affairs offices in the Eastern Cape the hardest, with over 34,000 hours to rotational power cuts and system downtime. Mpumalanga offices lost the next-highest number of hours at 17 V.5313
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Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has said the public has shown great support for the final White Paper on citizenship, immigration and refugee protection which appeared in the Government Gazette on Wednesday. Briefing the media, he addressed what he saw as a long-overdue need to replace an outdated Citizenship Act, as well as enact proposed changes to existing legislation. V.5306
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