Domestic travel during the festive season was dominated by the Golden Triangle of Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban, with flights between these cities increasing compared to other times. Globally, South Africans continued to prefer flights to the United Kingdom, Mauritius, Australia, the US and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This was revealed in Discovery Banks Festive Spend Trend report, which detailed the spending behaviour of its clients and Vitality rewards members over December and January. The bank collects this data as part of its aim to understand where and how South Africans spend their money. This enables the bank to build better products and personalise its rewards. In December, South Africans tend to spend more money much more quickly, with the average time to deplete a salary being less than 13 days. South Africans spend, on average, 15% more in December compared to the other months of the year, with expenditure on outdoor activities, movies, and childrens toys skyrocketing. However, one of the constants throughout the year is spending on travel, with South Africans spending heavily on flights in December as prices rise with the elevated demand. In Discovery Banks latest full-year SpendTrend report, the bank revealed that apart from groceries and fuel, South Africans spend most of their money on travelling. Over the festive season, Discovery Bank clients also spend heavily on travel and fully use the banks Vitality rewards programme. Over the festive period between 8 December and 14 January, there were 79,000 Vitality travellers who booked 158,000 seats. This means that Vitality travellers filled the equivalent of 900 planes and flew a distance thats equal to 420 trips to the moon and back.Data collected by Discovery Bank through its Vitality Travel platform showed that, unsurprisingly, domestic travel centres along South Africas Golden Triangle of Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town. Due to the rise in demand for flights to and from these cities, prices rose significantly over December compared to other months. Discovery Banks data also showed that flight prices rose compared to a year earlier, with the average flight between Johannesburg and Cape Town rising by 16% to R2,400. The average flight price between Johannesburg and Durban rose 14% to R1,400, while flights between Cape Town and Durban rose 2% to R2,550. The bank flagged in its full-year SpendTrend report last year that there is also increased travel to Garden Routw towns such as East London, George, and Gqeberha. Discovery Bank clients favourite international destinations were the United Kingdom, Mauritius, the UAE, Australia, and the United States. These flight prices also showed significant growth, except for flights to and from Australia, which remain relatively much more expensive in rand terms. Return flights to the United Kingdom rose by 10% year-on-year to an average price of R23,900, while flights to the US rose by 20% to R38,350. The price of return flights to Mauritius and the UAE rose to R15,250 and R21,050, respectively, compared to a year earlier. In the full SpendTrend report, Discvoery Bank said Europe, including the United Kingdom, remains the most popular continent for South Africans to travel to, with 58% of flights heading to the continent. It is followed by Africa, with 15% of flights outside South Africa landing on the continent. Mauritius is the most popular destination in Africa, followed by Namibia and Zimbabwe. Mauritius saw a big increase in demand from South Africans going overseas, which Discovery Bank attributed to the rising supply of accommodation and flights.

“This claim is incorrect,” said the SIU on Sunday.
Although the SIU is investigating allegations of maladministration at the department, it is focusing on the issuance of Permanent residence permits, Corporate visas, Business visas, Critical/exceptional skills work visas, Study visas, Retired persons’ visas, Work visas and Citizenship by naturalisation.
These investigations pertain to potential contraventions of the Immigration Act, 2002, and the South African Citizenship Act, 1995.

“The SIU urges the public not to share unverified information. Please verify accuracy through our official website and social media accounts. Sharing false information can cause confusion and harm. For accurate updates, rely on official SIU communication channels.”

SIU and Home Affairs
On 19 February, President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed a proclamation authorising the SIU to investigate allegations of serious maladministration in the affairs of Home Affairs and improper or unlawful conduct by officials or employees of the State entities, and to recover any financial losses suffered by the State.
The SIU will also investigate improper or unlawful conduct by officials or employees of Home Affairs in relation to the installation of T200 firewalls.

The Proclamation covers allegations of unlawful and improper conduct that took place between 12 October 2004 and 16 February 2024, the date of the publication of the Proclamation or before 12 October 2004 and after the date of the Proclamation that are relevant to, connected with, incidental to the matters or involves the same persons, entities or contracts investigated.

Officials bust
Between July and September 2024, the Department of Home Affairs finalised 31 disciplinary cases against its officials.
According to spokesperson Siya Qoza, the disciplinary cases resulted in a range of sanctions. These include criminal prosecution, dismissal, suspension without pay and final written warnings.
The officials faced transgressions relating to irregular recruitment, violation of the Citizenship Act and the violation of the Immigration Act.

Eight of these cases came from the Free State, while six came from KwaZulu-Natal.
One of the includes that of an official who failed to abide by the required standards of ethical conduct. His trial is set to start on 6 November, facing fraud charges.
The official was dismissed from the department last year after the conclusion of disciplinary processes.
He was implicated by the Counter-Corruption Branch in multiple fraudulent transactions that benefitted mostly Pakistani nationals. He allegedly committed fraud by manipulating the systems Home Affairs uses to administer immigration.

The drivers, who marched from Wespark Primary School to Tshwane House, demanded that Mayor Nasiphi Moya personally receive their memorandum and provide clear timelines for solutions.
The group brought traffic to a standstill around the municipal offices.
Braving the heat, frustrated e-hailing drivers remained outside Tshwane House, calling for better regulation of their industry, operational support, and the issuing of permits.

Attempting to accept the memorandum on behalf of the mayor, Transport MMC Tlangi Mogale said that many drivers were aware they did not meet the requirements for permits.
"A large number of our e-hailing operators are foreign nationals. Some can’t produce the necessary documents, and the ones making noise are those who failed to submit new applications."
Despite this, the protesting drivers continued to press for the mayor’s direct engagement

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has told its officials that undocumented foreign parents and guardians must be allowed to enrol their children in schools ahead of the start of the 2025 academic year and register for matric examinations even if they do not have the required documents.
Undocumented foreign parents and guardians as well as their children do not require any form of identification before being admitted in South African schools

Basic Education director-general, Mathanzima Mweli, has indicated that the department has received complaints from civil society organisations that learners have been denied admission to schools or were prevented from registering and writing the 2024 final national senior certificate (NSC) examinations due to their failure to, among others, produce an identity document or a birth certificate or, in the case of foreign learners, an asylum seekers permit.
Mweli unequivocally stated that undocumented learners cannot be prevented from registering and writing the NSC examinations.

In addition, he said Umalusi, the government’s education quality assurance council, has also confirmed that an identity document is not compulsory for the issuing of an NSC certificate.
“The policy position of Umalusi is articulated in this statement: ‘Whether documented or not, all registered candidates will be certified if they fulfil the qualification requirements.

“In short, the Identity document is not a requirement for the issuing a certificate’,” Mweli told heads of provincial education departments, provincial governance sections, district directors, school governing body associations, National Alliance of Independent Schools Association (Naisa) and school principals.
He said in instances where the DBE and provincial education departments submit learner information using their names and date of birth, such learners will not be rejected (or denied access to their NSC) if no identity document is submitted.
“All education officials are hereby directed to refrain from any actions or messaging that could result in undocumented learners not being admitted to schools, and thereby dropping out of school or not writing their NSC examinations due to a notion that they will not be issued with the NSC,” Mweli stated, urging that the contents of the December 5, 2024, circular to be shared with all provincial, district and circuit officials as well as school principals.

He said there were various reasons that learners may not have an identity document and these include that they are not South African learners with birth certificates but have not yet applied for their identity documents for reasons beyond their control.
According to Mweli, these learners could be undocumented South African learners waiting for the Department of Home Affairs to finalise their applications for late registration of birth or that their caregivers have not yet lodged applications for birth registration.

Additionally, they are undocumented foreign/immigrant learners or they are foreign/immigrant learners who have a regular status (for example, learners on asylum seekers’ permits who possess asylum numbers) but do not have an identity number.
The recently promulgated Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act, to which President Cyril Ramaphosa assented in September and came into immediate effect in its entirety last month, provides that any learner whose parent or guardian has not provided any required documents, whether of the learner or such adult person acting on behalf of the learner, during the application for admission, shall nonetheless be allowed to attend school.

In terms of the Bela Act, the principal of the school must advise the parent or guardian to secure the required documents.
At the end of last year, thousands of Grades 1 and 8 pupils were still unplaced in Gauteng, with the province’s education MEC Matome Chiloane promising that no learner would be without a classroom this year.
On social media, anti-migrant group Operation Dudula has already indicated that it is ready to start its schools opening programme to ensure that South African children get first preference over those of illegal immigrants as well as oversee the employment of local teachers.

However, Operation Dudula national organiser, Che Serobedi, did not respond to questions at the time of publication.
Naisa secretary-general, Ebrahim Ansur, said the association was aware of the circular even though the DBE is yet to send it to them.

The country’s visa restrictions for the general employment permit meant that for her husband to join her, she’d have to earn at least 30,000 euros annually for two years (about 31,500 United States dollars per year). To reunite with each of her three children, she would need to bring in increasingly more.
Tanya earns an income of about 27,000 euros per year (about 28,400 dollars). She spends her time caring for children with autism, but her own children live without her in South Africa.

“I struggle to sleep. I am always emotional. I have become too sensitive and negative towards life,” Tanya says.
Her story is common in a global economy increasingly reliant on migrant workers, who now constitute 4.9% of the global workforce. The demand has risen steadily since 2013 and surged during the pandemic. But as demand increases, so do restrictions on visa policies regarding family members who want to move to be with their spouses or parents in the world’s biggest economies.

Health care workers like Tanya in particular are in high demand. Approximately 15% of the global health care workforce is employed outside their home country or country of training.
The situation is especially pronounced in big economies like the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, where labor shortages and aging populations strain health care systems.

On the supply side, it’s countries with smaller economies like Zimbabwe that are among the main exporters of talent, especially health care talent. The migration of health workers from Zimbabwe is so severe that in 2023, the World Health Organization added it to a “red list” of 55 countries from which international recruitment of health care personnel is discouraged, due to the critically low numbers of health workers remaining to serve their home populations.
Some countries, including Switzerland, the UK, Australia and Denmark, relaxed their visa requirements during the pandemic but have since reverted to previous policies, says Godfrey Kanyenze, director of the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe, a research think tank.
There has been a rollback of what Kanyenze calls “sensible arrangements” that had enabled migrant workers to relocate with their families.

In one such reversal, the UK implemented new measures in December 2023 to curtail migration into the country, which then-Home Secretary of State James Cleverly described as “far too high.”

Among the changes is that care workers — who were in such high demand at the onset of the pandemic that the UK had to introduce a special visa for them in 2022 — can no longer relocate with their families.
The policy also increased the salary threshold — or the minimum amount of money one must earn to qualify for the visa — for all migrant workers by close to 50%. Now, migrant workers need to earn at least 38,700 British pounds (about 49,000 dollars) per year to retain their visa status.

In most cases, low-skilled workers such as care workers earn too little to meet these income requirements, says Hilda Tinevimbo Mahumucha, senior legal consultant with Women and Law in Southern Africa, Zimbabwe, a gender justice organization.
In 2023, Sweden, a major migration hub, also announced new restrictions on low-skilled labor migration into the country. Scheduled to take effect this year, migrant workers from “third world countries” will be required to earn a monthly minimum of approximately 2,200 euros (about 2,300 dollars) to obtain a work permit, and even higher income requirements to bring family members to join them.

Receiving countries capitalize on the skill sets of migrant workers without bearing any of the costs, especially the cost of training people, says Abel Chikanda, an associate professor at the School of Earth, Environment and Society at McMaster University in Canada.

“[They] are essentially benefitting from human resource that they did not contribute towards,” he says.
For example, in the case of health worker migration, annually, Africa loses about 2 billion dollars invested in medical training when its health workers migrate abroad. Meanwhile, destination countries enjoy substantial savings by bypassing these costs.

The human cost
In the end, it is migrant workers and their families who pay the steepest price, each in their own way.
Senzeni Chiutsi, a psychologist based in Harare, says that while migration allows parents a chance to support their families economically, the children they leave behind are prone to stress and trauma.

A 2018 study on the effects of migration on children and adolescents left behind by their parents noted signs of depression and loneliness. And 8 in 10 of those interviewed reported having once considered suicide.
Already, the distance between Tanya and her children is widening. On the rare occasions she visits them, her 9-year-old son finds more comfort in video games, while her two girls remain behind the closed doors of their bedrooms.
“One time when I went there, my second child said, ‘Mommy … I don’t even know [the last time] I was hugged,’” Tanya says.
Although she stays in touch through phone calls, it is difficult because of the time difference and her working hours. By the time she is home, her children are already asleep.

The emotional cost of being abroad is just too high, she says.
“One of my friends normally jokes about how we were given the wrong information coming here,” she says. “If you’re doing well in Zimbabwe … I don’t see a need of coming here.”

That’s a big question mark. Most people move because their governments have failed to keep their end of the bargain by providing workers with fair conditions such as adequate pay, says Chikanda, the professor.
If Tanya were employed as a care worker in Zimbabwe, she would earn an annual income of about 4,284 dollars — a sixth of what she is earning abroad.

Even so, she’s set a deadline for herself of this year to return to her family if they can’t join her in Ireland.
“What if they’ll be broken adults?” she says. “It’s not like I’m going to be rich, to be honest.