International Tourism Association’s Fred Duma said the visa backlog was now sitting at more than 95 000 applications.
Tourist arrivals in South Africa hit a positive trend, with improvements in the number of visitors spanning 2021 to 2023 - despite the department of home affairs chasing away visitors who have not received visa renewals by 23 February.
In a directive issued by home affairs on 21 December, tourists were advised to leave the country by the end of this month, despite admitting a backlog and long turnaround time for visas.
International Tourism Association’s Fred Duma said the backlog was now sitting at more than 95 000 applications, “which clearly means no-one will get their visa by the time the minister Aaron Motsoaledi has set”.
Duma said this seemed like a deliberate sabotage from the department, “because you have already granted this person a visa and because of your own doing you cannot extend it, despite the promising figures from Stats SA”.
“Stats SA clearly indicated an increase in visitors since Covid. At just more than eight million tourists last year, there was a notable improvement, where the total tourist arrivals were 17.1% below the pre-pandemic levels, moving from 10.2 million in 2019 to 8.4million in 2023,” he said.
Stats SA noted “the December 2023 number (862 460) remains 41.8% lower than the pre-pandemic figure (1.4 million) recorded in 2019”.
“Other African countries have shown a notable recovery by exceeding the pre-pandemic levels by 11.9%, from 38 501 tourists in 2019 to 43 093 tourists in 2023.
“There is, however, a possibility for a complete recovery for the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) and overseas region, as overseas tourist arrivals have reached 78.5% of 2019’s levels and Sadc has reached 90.2%,”
Stats SA said. Southern Africa Tourism Services Association chair Oupa Pilane said home affairs’ irrational decree showed complete disregard for the tourism industry and “will be ruinous at a time when the country desperately needs visitors’ foreign capital”.
“South Africa grants

short-term visas on arrival to tourists from many countries. But due to astounding levels of ineptitude and incompetence, home affairs regularly fails to process the simple visa extensions in a reasonable time,” he said.
“The much-needed ‘swallows’ who visit for up to 180 days are a golden goose for South Africa’s economy and, indeed, its tourism sector, which is the third-highest GDP earner for the country and enjoys a deep and vast supply chain creating job opportunities.”
Pilane said it was shameful that home affairs could not execute its simple mandate in issuing visas on time, and “then thinks nothing of imposing arbitrary edicts to eject visitors who planned six-month stays and, in many cases, own property here”.
“Tourism is trumpeted as a priority by government, yet this renegade department -and others like the department of transport - appear to be doing their utmost to shackle this critical sector, either with deliberate intent or through staggering ineptitude,” he said.
“It is disgraceful to penalise visitors for their inexcusable dysfunction.” The DA shadow minister of home affairs Angel Khanyile said tourists, when entering South Africa, could be issued with a 90-day visa and, subsequently, apply for a 90- day extension if they wish to stay longer.
“The country stands to lose millions in lost revenue by not allowing them to extend their visas during the busiest season,” Khanyile said.
“The solution to the backlog for the department is simply to avoid dealing with it and remove the responsibility to process extensions.”
“The DA has written to the minister of home affairs to request that he issue a new directive which will provide tourist who are in our country on a 90 day visa, awaiting the outcome of their extension, to be granted the right to remain until such a time that the backlog is resolved, or on the basis of their date of departure - depending on which comes first,” she said. V.5296

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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