Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi says that the flexibility afforded to passport applications and collections in South Africa is being removed to protect the integrity of the document.
The change follows high-profile cases of fraud and corruption involving passports in recent months, which have damaged the country’s reputation and brought the security of the South African passport into question.
“South Africa’s passport has been in the news for all the wrong reasons,” Motsoaledi said, highlighting incidents where department officials were arrested for fraudulently processing illegal immigrants and where Bangladeshi and Pakistani citizens were caught using false South African passports abroad.
While some instances have become a local joke, Motsoaledi said that these cases cause serious hardships, mentioning the RyanAir saga, which saw locals ostracised in the UK because there is simply no trust in the country’s passport.
Motsoaledi said that these cases have put South Africa and its passport security in a particularly bad light, forcing the department’s hand.
“It is for this reason that the Department of Home Affairs has to do something – because this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue unabated,” the minister said.
Because of the cases involving citizens from Bangladesh and Pakistan trying to pass through South Africa’s airports illegally, the department said it is withdrawing the transit visa exemption for Bangladesh and Pakistan from 1 August 2022.
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