“Other factors that could strengthen the South African passport over the short-to-medium-term include President Cyril Ramaphosa’s intention to ease visa restrictions for African passport holders so as to induce greater intra-Africa trade,” Cummings said.
South Africa fell to 50th position on the most recent Henley Passport Index, measuring the strength of passports, down 15 places from a high of 35 in 2008.
Both Seychelles and Mauritius surpass South Africa, with passports at position 24 and 28.
Cummings said South Africa’s drop in the ranking was caused by concerns over the unlawful replication of passports, often abetted by corrupt officials within the department of home affairs.”
“These concerns saw visa regulations being enforced by several countries, including the UK and Colombia.”
An improvement at home affairs could see such decisions reversed.
The department is in the middle of a major upgrade of its systems, including going paperless.
South Africans can travel to over 100 countries visa-free, including Russia, Brazil and Ireland.
Amanda Smit, director at Henley & Partners South Africa, said South Africa hasn’t managed to increase the number of places passport holders can travel to easily.
“It has not improved its global access levels as quickly as other high-performing countries on the index, leading to an overall decline in its passport power,” Smit said.
Source: Business Insider
This is in line with the Department of Home Affairs’s new modernisation drive.
The move is set to appease parents travelling with minors‚ without necessarily compromising on security.
The move puts SA on the same level as most countries that already list the names of the parents on a child’s passport and removes the need to have an unabridged birth certificate.
Travellers from foreign countries who do not list the names of parents in minors’ passports still need to provide unabridged birth certificates.
Source: BusinessLIVE
Immigration Specialist at Xpatweb Marisa Jacobs says visa applications that are done in South Africa take an average of four to eight weeks to be processed:
“There are very few embassies that have these very long processing time. A normal application would not take a long extended time and when it does, I would suggest the applicant engages with the embassy or the VFS centre to ask what the delay is and see if there is anything they can do.”
Jacobs says when applicants submit their applications they must make sure they have all the required documents and that they are up to date.
“When you are submitting abroad, the embassies will often ask for documentation. It’s a matter of not only checking the normal statutory requirements but also checking with the embassy if they have specific requirements that they have in addition and making sure you tick all those boxes when you submit.”
Foreign nationals who therefore have the skills listed on the Critical Skills list may apply for a Critical Skills Work Visa to work in South Africa. The list has been highly criticised, from not including many business skills, to certain categories being “abused” by a wide interpretation.
Over the last 18 months there has been talk of refining the list further with the “Corporate General Manager” category top of the chopping block. This new list is highly anticipated with wide spread speculation on what will be included, or perhaps more importantly excluded.
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The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) has published the “National list of occupations in high demand: 2018” listing over 370 high-demand occupations in South Africa.
The occupations listed are those that show relatively strong employment growth and/or are experiencing shortages in the labour market or which are expected to be in demand in future.
The Critical Skills list published in 2014 was developed in conjunction with the occupations in high demand and the scarce skills lists of the DHET. It is therefore expected that the 2018 list will again be consulted when revising the Critical Skills list and as such may provide a window into what we may expect from revised Critical Skills list.
For the first time the DHET list has been divided into three levels of demand, highest demand, higher demand, and high demand. Cross referencing the occupations on the above DHET list to the current Critical Skills list published in 2014, we highlighted below some of the occupations still showing high demand as well as a few new and emerging occupations not on the DHET list before and not on the current Critical Skills list.