Cape Town ranked the best long-haul destination for British tourists

Cape Town comes out tops in Long Haul Holiday Report 2024Cape Town has reclaimed its position as the best-value long haul destination for British tourists, according to the 2024 Long Haul Holiday Report from Post Office.Every year, the Post Office Travel Money Long Haul Holiday Report highlights the top destinations where UK travellers can get the best value for their money.They researched 32 faraway destinations worldwide and compared the costs of common holiday items like a cup of coffee, a bottle of water, and a three-course meal for two to find out which destinations offer the best value for money.The Mother City was then found to be the best of the best, cost-wise.Cape Town, South Africa is now the top best-value destination surveyed. Thanks to falling local prices and a weaker South African rand, British holidaymakers are seeing costs drop by 12% compared to last year Post Office wrote.At £55.59, the cost of 10 tourist typical staples ` including meals and drinks ` in Cape Town has fallen to the level last seen when South Africa topped the chart in 2018. This comes at a time when British Airways has announced an expansion in flights to Cape Town. Post Office researchers found that the latest barometer basket for Cape Town is over 14 per cent lower than in last years best value destination Hoi An, Vietnam, which has fallen to third place after seeing prices rise by over 21 per cent to £64.80. Post Office said in their report.The 10 typical tourist staple items, included:    a cup of filter coffee    a 330ml bottle of local lager    a 330ml bottle of cola    a 175ml glass of wine    a cocktail    a small chocolate bar    a 1.5l bottle of supermarket mineral water    a 200ml bottle of suncream    a 50ml tube/bottle of insect repellent    a three-course evening meal for two adults including a bottle of house wine.The Top 10 best value long haul destinationsThe ten destinations that came out cheapest overall were as follows:RankDestination        Total cost1Cape Town, South Africa  £52.662Tokyo, Japan          £64.073Hoi An, Vietnam          £64.804Bali, Indonesia          £67.705Mombasa, Kenya          £68.536Delhi, India          £74.907Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt  £76.478Colombo, Sri Lanka  £78.149Santiago, Chile          £88.9210Montego Bay, Jamaica  £93.74

Home Affairs on Wheels: We stood in line to apply for a passport, here's how it went

The Citizen tried Home Affairs services on wheels and found it to be disorganised. Residents have been using the mobile services provided by the Home Affairs trucks. Temperatures were soaring, with no chairs in sight and a long line ahead. This was the experience of a reporter when they lined up to try Home Affairs mobile services. The outreach programme sends trucks to areas to help make the departments services more accessible to residents who find it difficult to reach their offices. Earlier this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed residents of Mahwelereng in Mokopane on these units. These kiosks should mean improved services in our communities. We are appealing to all officials of home affairs to work with speed every day, he said. They must ensure our people do not wait long in queues.But is this the case? Are residents receiving fast, quality service?The Citizens reporter shares her experience: One of The Citizens reporters went to a home affairs truck in Newtown, Johannesburg, recently and described it as hugely disorganised. I arrived at 9:30am and left at 3pm. There was a long queue and no officials standing outside to guide people, the reporter said. Nobody was allowed to approach the truck. You could only go inside if you had a form.She said that occasionally an official would come outside and hold out a stack of forms, to which those in the front of the line would swarm to get one before they ran out.The units have an appointment system in which individuals can book a time slot beforehand, however, the lack of organisation made this pointless. People who made appointments complained that they were supposed to be given forms according to their time slot but werent. The units have been structured to accommodate three people at a time and one cannot go inside without a form. This process did not appear to run seamlessly as many waited hours before they were able to go in. The trucks only let three people with forms in at a time, but we only saw movement every hour or so.Even with the wait time, no accommodations were made for those standing outside in the hot sun. There were no chairs outside for us who were waiting in the queue. There were pensioners there who had to stand in the line for hours.Besides the heat, the reporter also had to contend with suspected scammers trying to sell spaces in line. After her unsuccessful attempt, she went to the Roodepoort offices and was out after two hours. These grievances were raised with the department, which has not yet responded to The Citizen`s request. This will be included once received.What can you do at these Home Affairs mobile units? The department has a fleet of 220 units and on Friday took its services to Zola, Soweto. There, residents were able to apply for a smart ID, a passport, a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, or a death certificate. In the 2023/24 financial year, the Department registered a total of 900 258 births, of which 744 610 were registered within 30 days while 108 336 births were registered between 31 days to a year, said the department. 47 312 of these births remain unaccounted for. By bringing these units in, the department hopes to decrease this number by making attaining birth certificates easier. We are planning to take these mobile offices to schools so that learners who need the services dont have to take days off school, said Home Affairs.

Technical glitches at King Shaka Airport finally resolved, says BMA


The BMA has confirmed the new switch-over system, installed to expedite data capture and to prevent future disruptions. The glitches that recently interrupted the flow of international flights at the King Shaka International Airport (KSIA) in KwaZulu-Natal have been sorted out, according to Mmemme Mogotsi, the deputy assistant commissioner for communications and marketing at the Border Management Authority (BMA). A few days ago, international travellers were delayed by the airport’s malfunctioning biometric movement control system (BMCS) which reportedly processed a single flight in three hours. The BMCS was introduced in 2022 at some of the biggest airports in the country. Mogotsi said although the capturing of biometrics could be slow, the system yielded good results of a number of interceptions at most of the ports of entry.

Biometric systems installed: The BMA was notified of the situation last weekend. Please note that the BMCS system is a shared system, with the department of home affairs as a host. There is currently a transitional process for BMA to take over this system with the assistance of the South African Revenue Service (SARS). In the interim, and to address the issues of service delivery at King Shaka International Airport, a switchover system was installed to assist with the speed of capturing data on the biometric system, said Mogotsi.

Contacted for comment, Airports Company South Africa (Acsa) spokesperson Ernest Mulibana distanced his organisation from the crisis that unfolded and said they were not part of the people managing the biometric system at the airport. Acsa does not have biometrics at King Shaka yet. The current ones belong to the BMA, he said. It was not the first time the processing of passengers at KSIA had been delayed due to technical glitches.

Safety concerns remain: In August, passengers complained about long queues at the airport, allegedly caused by technological failures. At the time, Acsa released a statement saying the situation was being attended to by the department of home affairs and BMA. Recently, a 50-year-old man reportedly collapsed and died at the King Shaka International Airport. Mulibana confirmed the incidents and said a police investigation was underway to determine what happened. The two incidents raise questions about the safety measures at the country’s airports.

I cant survive: Malawians hit hard by South Africas crackdown on illegal migration

Many of those who sought work in South Africa have been deported back to a country in dire financial straitsCollins Kamoto was heading out for a drink with a friend on a Sunday evening in May in the small gold mining town of Nigel, south-east of Johannesburg, when they were stopped by the police and arrested.A month later, the 46-year-old, who had been in South Africa since March 2023, was charged with not having proper documentation. Then in September, after four months in jail, he was deported back to Malawi, part of what many of his compatriots believe is a renewed crackdown by South African authorities on immigrants working there illegally.My life is miserable, because even when I was working here it was not enough to help my family, Kamoto said in an interview in his home village of Kampala in Mulanje, a district bordering Mozambique in Malawis south-east.Kamoto, who has three children and one grandchild, left Malawi to look for work after losing his job and seeing friends in South Africa doing well. Life in South Africa turned out to be hard, he said. He lived in a metal-walled shack with no running water, doing occasional, difficult work feeding farm animals or working in fields, and was paid 100-350 rand (£4.35-£15.21) a day.But, even though he could go for days without a job, Kamoto said it had been worth it: When I went to South Africa, I was getting enough to support my relatives.South Africa has a history of importing migrant labour, especially to work in its mines. In recent years, poverty and political unrest have contributed to migration to the country.Collins Kamoto: When I went to South Africa, I was getting enough to support my relatives. There are about 2.4 million foreign-born people in South Africa out of a population of 62 million, according to the 2022 census, which aimed to count people regardless of immigration status. Almost half are Zimbabweans, followed by people from Mozambique and Lesotho, with just under 200,000 Malawians.However, the struggles of South Africans  more than four in 10 are out of work ` have fuelled xenophobia against other Africans, which has periodically erupted into anti-immigrant violence.In South Africa, you always look left and right and usually meet with the sound of sirens,Kamoto said, of his eventually unsuccessful attempts to evade police, which led to him being among 205 Malawians deported from South Africa in four bus-loads last month.South African police have been mounting roadblocks and searching shacks and blocks of flats where they suspect illegal immigrants are living, something that did not used to happen, said a Malawian in his 30s, who had been deported several times and did not want to be named. One video seen by the Guardian appeared to show four men hiding from authorities on a roof.In recent years, Malawi has faced a collapsing currency, soaring inflation and shortages of imported fuel, medicines and food. In 2022, 89% of Malawians said the country of 20 million was going in the wrong direction, according to the pan-African survey network Afrobarometer.The dire economic situation, lack of formal jobs and poverty  GDP per capita was just $645 in 2022  has pushed many people to leave. Remittances from Malawians working abroad have more than trebled in the last decade as a proportion of Malawi GDP, to 1.3%, according to World Bank data.Anecdotal evidence shows that there is an increase in irregular migration flows out of Malawi, said Ncube Nomagugu, the International Organisation for Migrations Malawi chief of mission.South Africa remains the preferred destination for most of these flows. We also do not have figures for Malawians being deported back but anecdotally there seems to be an increase driven by the evolving policy direction of the South African government on migration.From 2018 to 2022, South Africa deported about 20,000 people a year, after an increase above 135,000 in 2017. In the early 2000s, deportations never fell below 105,000 annually, and reached a high of more than 312,000 in 2007, according to government data.At a border post with Mozambique, a driver of one of the transport companies contracted by the South African government to ferry deportees back to Malawi said that they had been doing more trips in the last three months, sometimes weekly compared with one or two a month previously.South Africas home affairs minister, Leon Schreiber, said in July, just weeks after joining the cabinet after elections in May, that operations to crack down on illegal immigration would increase.South Africa is wide open for business, wide open for people who want to legally contribute with their skills through our visa system, he told journalists. But at the same time we are also going to be more strict in enforcing when there are violations of the law.Meanwhile, Kamoto has not been able to find work in Malawi and wants to return to South Africa: I cant survive with nothing to do.

Antiquated, inefficient, and paper-based red tape must go’ : Home Affairs to go fully digital


It’s assessment time for the Government of National Unity. One hundred days into Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber’s tenure, how do his actions measure up against his words? Daily Maverick sat down with Schreiber, went into the field and gathered some ratings of his performance. 

Leon Schreiber, like many officials in the national executive, inherited a poisoned chalice when he was sworn in as Minister of Home Affairs on 3 July.

Crippled by years of corruption, capacity constraints, political paralysis, budget cuts and other issues, the Department of Home Affairs has been stuck in a dejected state of nonstop crisis. It’s no wonder that Daily Maverick coined the phase “Hell Affairs” for this defective department.

The Government of National Unity (GNU) will soon reach a milestone: the first 100 days of its existence.

Since Schreiber delivered his inaugural budget speech, he has made attention-grabbing statements about digitising Home Affairs, tackling network issues and cracking down on corruption.

He has given numerous media interviews. One can argue that Schreiber has so far been more available to the public than his predecessor, Aaron Motsoaledi.

In a recent interview at Parliament to discuss his first 100 days in office, Schreiber spoke to Daily Maverick about his digitisation agenda, and his plans to counter corruption and deal with long queues and network failures at Home Affairs offices across the country.

“I think one of the risks in this portfolio, maybe in many others, is that you end up trying to run fast on the hamster wheel,” he said. “It’s great to be able to fix problems, but you must also identify the right problems at the right level.

“I think that’s where we’re getting it right in Home Affairs. We’ve identified problems at the highest level.”

Schreiber is contending with systemic challenges that have few quick solutions.

Although he has championed the digital overhaul of Home Affairs as the solution to the problems his department faces, there is little concrete evidence of interim measures being put in place to improve service delivery on the ground.

Daily Maverick visited three Home Affairs offices – two of which have been covered extensively in our “Hell Affairs” series – and found there is still a great deal of work to be done to shorten queues, alleviate staff shortages and get branch officials to treat people with dignity.

“I’ve said it from day one; there is simply no magic wand,” Schreiber told Daily Maverick. “If there was one, I would’ve waved it and we would’ve fixed all those things overnight.”

Reducing backlogs (9/10)

Arguably, Schreiber’s most visible achievement has been to reduce the backlog in the processing of visas and permit applications, which has been increasing for more than a decade.

In November 2023, Motsoaledi revealed in a response to Parliament that the processing backlog of visas and permits had been 118,253 in August 2023. Motsoaledi had a target of clearing the backlog by November 2024.

In his budget speech this July, ¬Schreiber said the department had already reduced 30% of the backlog, which had ballooned to about 306,000 applications.

This week, he announced that 62% of the backlog had been cleared. He told Daily Maverick the department was “on track” to have a backlog-free Christmas.

“We’ve made major progress … We’ve done it through a combination of things,” he said.

These include prioritisation, a partnership with Business Unity South Africa, which has provided training and resources for the visa backlog team, a dedicated visa backlog team that is working overtime, and daily reports and monitoring, according to Schreiber.

Schreiber announced last week that the department had also cleared a backlog of 247,500 identity documents (IDs) that had begun to accumulate in November 2023 following a change in IT service providers.

Reactivating the Immigration Advisory Board (9/10)

In his budget speech, Schreiber announced that he would be reactivating the Immigration Advisory Board.

South Africa has been without such a board for more than a decade, in breach of the Immigration Act. The board provides for role players to engage with the department about problems affecting the sector.

Importantly, the minister said the board would provide him “with evidence-based advice on tackling issues such as the court-ordered process of consultation on the future of the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP)”.

“That’s where we can have – we must have – conversations around the ZEP; we must talk about all those policy things … in a space that is more inclusive than what has been the practice before,” Schreiber told Daily Maverick.

“We’ve got hundreds of applications [to the advisory board],” he said.

He added that the process of appointing applicants had been delayed because all the applications had to be compiled, but the department would now move to short-listing candidates.

Digitisation project (7/10)

The digitisation of Home Affairs is the top priority for the department. It has been on the agenda of former ministers, but was hobbled by budget cuts and capacity constraints.

Asked by Daily Maverick if he believes he can achieve the digital transformation of Home Affairs in his five-year term, Schreiber responded with a resounding yes. “That’s because it’s the only priority,” he said.

Schreiber said that one of the outcomes of a recent strategic planning session was that employees’ performance would be measured entirely by their contribution to the digital transformation project.

“At a senior level, we have one goal: Home Affairs at Home,” he said.

This vision for his term of office – “Home Affairs at Home” – was announced this week. The ambitious plan to turn the department into a digital-first organisation would mean that, over time, no one would have to visit its offices in person for routine services.

Schreiber’s announcement fleshes out his plan more, but is scant on details about how much the project is estimated to cost. It’s also unclear what the project would mean for the majority of South Africans who do not have access to data or Wi-Fi, and are un¬¬able to access online systems.

Speaking to Daily Maverick, Schreiber kept his cards close to his chest when pressed for details on where the plan currently stands.

“I’m not going to tell you too much,” he said. “There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes to put in place the partnerships we need to test the technology that we’re going to require and to create a proof of concept; that’s the phase we’re in.”

Asked about funding, the minister was unable to provide estimated costs, but admitted “it will not be a cheap exercise”. The department has a budget of R10.5-billion for 2024/25 – a meagre increase from R9.8-billion the previous year.

Schreiber said the department would begin by reprioritising funds internally before requesting additional funding from National Treasury. “We’ve got a substantial IT budget,” he said.

Corruption, fraud and accountability (5/10)

Like all his predecessors, Schreiber has vowed to clamp down on fraud and corruption in his department. “Syndicates and mafia have infiltrated every sector of society and Home Affairs is absolutely no exception,” he told Daily Maverick.

A 2022 report by the former director-general in the Presidency, Cassius Lubisi, exposed the rot in the department, detailing evidence of fraudulent visa applications first being rejected, then accepted after reconsideration, and the department’s antiquated systems being used illegally.

In a recent parliamentary response, Schreiber revealed that 109 corruption cases had been reported to the department’s counter-corruption and security services branch for investigation since the beginning of the financial year in April 2024, News24 reported.

Schreiber said a strategy had been developed to manage fraud and corruption risks in the department.

However, of the 109 cases, it’s unclear how many were reported after Schreiber took office.

Speaking to Daily Maverick, Schreiber maintained that the department was tackling fraud and corruption in a “systematic way”. After pressing for tangible evidence of this, Daily Maverick was told that Schreiber’s spokesperson would provide us with figures on arrests and convictions. No response had been received by time of publication.

Network failures (6/10)

In his budget speech, Schreiber announced that he would prioritise solving the problem of offline systems, saying he intended to be the “minister of ‘system online’”.

The department has in the past been hamstrung by system outages, often blamed on the State Information Technology Agency (Sita), which have caused interminable queues at its offices.

According to the department’s 2022/23 annual report, Home Affairs depends on Sita for all its information technology, but the department “has long advocated a separation from Sita in order to reduce its dependency” on the agency.

Speaking to Daily Maverick, Schreiber indicated that steps were under way to ditch Sita.

“What we need to do, under the existing model, is chase Sita every day, and we’re chasing them as effectively as we can, but it remains a losing battle,” he said. There was a “severe bottleneck” relating to Sita.

“We cannot wait for Sita to one day magically become an effective institution, which is not going to happen.

“I’ve spoken to the Minister of Communications to say Home Affairs cannot implement our plans if you are going to constrain us with this monopoly, and so we are doing a lot of legal work in the background with the Auditor-General and others to understand what is re¬¬quired for us to actually move our network on to a reliable space,” he said.

Queues and capacity constraints (4/10)

Day-long queues have become permanent features outside Home Affairs offices around the country. In 2022, Daily Maverick reported how people at the Stellenbosch Home Affairs office and the main Barrack Street office in Cape Town waited in vain for a whole day to apply for IDs or passports.

Last Tuesday, 1 October, Daily Maverick visited the two offices again.

We also visited the office in Epping, Cape Town, which is implementing a pilot project that takes only online bookings, and where processes such as photographs and cashier payments are integrated.

Daily Maverick found that all three offices were heavily understaffed.

When we arrived at the Stellenbosch office at 9.30am, we saw only four officials at work. There were about 20 people inside the office and two long queues outside. The queue for those who had booked online appeared to be moving relatively quickly compared with the stagnant queue for those who had not.

Several people who had not booked online said this was the second day that they were queuing for their documents, as they had not been attended to the previous day.

Alison Malgas had arrived at the Stellenbosch office just after 6am to apply for a new ID. At 10am, she was still in the queue. She said she had tried to book online, but the first available date was 23 October.

Malgas said that, shortly after she arrived, a security guard had come around and written down people’s ID numbers, but since then there had been no communication.

“I’m even considering going home because I’m getting very cold,” she said.

In February 2022, in a parliamentary response to Schreiber, who was the DA constituency head for Stellenbosch at the time, former minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the Stellenbosch office was supposed to be staffed by 41 officials, but only had six.

The situation at the Barrack Street office was no different. At 19 counters, Daily Maverick could spot only three officials. With about 40 people waiting inside the office and about 50 people in queues in the street at 12.30pm, it was difficult to see how they would all be served by closing time.

Faiek Williams of Manenberg opted to visit the Barrack Street office after the online system offered dates that did not suit him. He faced a wait of more than an hour to collect his ID.

“For collection purposes, I don’t think it should take that long,” he said.

Schreiber, in his interview with Daily Maverick, said the department would be opening an office at the Cape Town Civic Centre to alleviate the pressure on Barrack Street. But a new office, which will require more staff and resources, does not solve the capacity shortages at Barrack Street.

Problems with the online system were recurring concerns during our conversations with people in the queues at Barrack Street and Stellenbosch. These included limited availability of bookings and the system’s inaccessibility to those without internet.

At the Epping office, the queue moved swiftly, and people who spoke to Daily Maverick were generally pleased with the service they received. “Our booking was for 10am … We were sitting outside for about five to 10 minutes and then we went inside,” said Hendricks Samson.

“There are only two counters for passports and ID applications. The rest is collections. But when they work, they work fast. They are very professional.”

Schreiber said he would be rolling out the Epping model to other offices. However, pressed about when this would happen, he responded: “It’s in the strategic plan.”

According to the latest Home Affairs annual report, the department has only 42.37% of the staff it should have.

Schreiber told Daily Maverick that the department was in the process of filling three senior management vacancies.

“So that’s three DDG [deputy director-general] positions; it’s basically IT, human resources and immigration,” he said.

He added that the counter-corruption and security services branch was operating at a staffing level of 28%. “[State-owned enterprise] bailouts are a moral disgrace when Home Affairs has 28% of the anti-corruption officers it needs,” he said.

Mixed reviews from public representatives

As Schreiber approaches the 100-day milestone on Friday, 11 October, we gathered reviews of his performance.

The spokesperson for the Public Servants’ Association of South Africa (PSA), Reuben Maleka, said it was “troubling” that Schreiber appeared “to be riding on initiatives and plans set in motion by his predecessor”.

“The minister has only managed to re¬iterate all known challenges of staff shortages, lack of digital transformation needs, network failures and the dilapidated state of offices…

“The PSA has yet to see tangible progress in addressing these pressing issues.”

The parliamentary coordinator for the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Matthew Parks, said it was too early to assess any minister.

However, he said Cosatu was pleased that Schreiber had, since his appointment, agreed with many of the key issues Cosatu had been raising – including that the department cannot be expected to operate optimally at 40% capacity; queues cannot end when Sita is often offline; and IT systems need to be “overhauled and modernised”.

“We need the government to work with labour at Home Affairs to turn it around … workers should not be made to queue for days on end when applying for IDs. This robs them of their daily wages and disrupts the economy,” said Parks.

ActionSA’s chief whip in Parliament, Lerato Ngobeni, said the party was concerned about the shortfall of R4.35-billion for the Border Management Authority.

“Without a clear plan to address this, South Africa’s borders will remain porous and inadequately managed,” said Ngobeni.

Political analyst and professor of political studies Mcebisi Ndletyana said reducing the backlog of visa and permit applications, and reactivating the Immigration Advisory Board, were clear indications that Schreiber had “hit the ground running”.

“He seems to have tackled [the backlog] within a matter of a few months. But that programme was started before he was appointed, so it is a programme that preceded him. It’s very important to note.

“Nevertheless, it doesn’t take anything from him; he seems to have accelerated it,” said Ndletyana.

Build One South Africa (Bosa) leader Mmusi Maimane described the work the minister and officials at Home Affairs had done as “commendable”.

“It has demonstrated ruthless focus on eradicating backlogs.

“Now is an opportunity to focus on giving more access to South Africans who are undocumented, regularising our im¬migration processes and ensuring that with the new budget cycle Home Affairs is able to improve the digitisation process,” he said.