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It`s still a sorry state of Home Affairs

Source: Business Day, 08/07/2015

I WOULD give Home Affairs spokesman Mayihlome Tshwete the benefit of
the doubt if he had a track record of backing successful projects.
Previously, he castigated this newspaper for criticising South African
Airways (SAA) for flying to Beijing, when it was obvious to everyone
except him, his boss (Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba) and the
government that SAA had no business flying this route.
"Give it time" was his argument back then, while SAA wasted hundreds
of millions of rand on a vanity project, which as it turns out was a
colossal waste of taxpayers` money.
We keep hearing about global best practice when it comes to child
trafficking, yet South Africans can travel visa-free to dozens of our
peer countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and not one of them,
to my knowledge, requires parents travelling with their children to
have a birth certificate of any kind.
These are our peers — the countries against which we compete for
trade, investment and tourism. So it doesn`t matter if US and European
tourists have the documents easily available and don`t need visas to
come to SA, it is still simpler to go elsewhere with their kids.
While we have implemented biometrics and numerous other bureaucratic
hurdles upon the Chinese to get visas, many Asian countries that were
fearful of Chinese mass tourism (Korea, Taiwan and Japan) have opened
up to Chinese visitors with visa exemptions in order to cash in and
establish their markets as Chinese citizens get used to travel.
The long-term consequences of the regulations will not be seen in
plunging tourist numbers but in a sector that fails to reach its
potential. It`s not exactly like the rest of the economy is creating jobs.

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