FILE: Ajay and Atul Gupta. Pictures: YouTube
CAPE TOWN - Seven years since Parliament’s Home Affairs committee said it was satisfied the department had not erred in granting citizenship to the notorious Gupta family, new Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber is taking a fresh look.
He’s written to Ajay Gupta's son, Kamal Singhala, to invite him to make representations as to why the citizenship granted to him in 2015 should not be revoked.
Singhala is currently in a battle with the department over a passport for his daughter.
However, Schreiber believes Singhala was issued citizenship prematurely after a first application by the family was rejected.
In 2017, Parliament’s Home Affairs committee heard from the department that it had recommended to then Minister Malusi Gigaba to waive residence requirements for citizenship for members of the Gupta family, in light of multi-million rand investments they were making in the country.
Documents were put before the committee to show the process that had been followed when the family applied for citizenship as a unit.
Schreiber said the department acted too hastily after rejecting the initial application for citizenship, to then consider another application just a few months later, and not only after a year as required by law.
The Democratic Alliance (DA)’s Home Affairs spokesperson, Adrian Roos, has welcomed the move, saying any remaining vestiges of state capture must be addressed.
It’s unclear where Singhala currently resides.
Schreiber said he was serious about a clean-up of his department and if Singhala believes his naturalisation is legitimate, he can present his case to the department in person.
• South Africa plans to introduce the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme (TTOS) in January 2025 to simplify visa processing for Chinese and Indian tourists.
• Home Affairs Minister emphasized that a ten percent annual increase in tourism could boost South Africa’s economic growth by 0.6 percent.
• South Africa aims to increase Indian tourist arrivals to 100,000 by the end of 2024.
Starting January 2025, South Africa will launch a new Trusted Tour Operator Scheme (TTOS) to streamline the entry process for Chinese and Indian tourists.
According to South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs, this initiative aims to facilitate travel to the country, which saw only 93,000 Chinese tourists out of over 100 million outbound trips in 2023, VisaGuide.World reports.
South Africa Aims to Boost Indian Tourist Numbers From 16,000 to 100,000 This Year
In the first three months of this year, South Africa welcomed 16,000 Indian visitors. Tourism South Africa aims to significantly boost this number, targeting 100,000 Indian tourists by this year. Indian tourists comprise just 3.9 percent of South Africa’s international visitors, and Chinese tourists account for only 1.8 percent.
After seeing the positive impact made by the Trusted Employer Scheme (TES), which provides swift and simplified visa processing services to vetted and approved businesses to attract critical skills, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber directed that the same principle be applied to cutting red tape and improving efficiency for tourists from non-visa exempt countries like China and India.
South Africa's Department of Home Affairs
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber highlighted that research shows a ten percent annual increase in tourism could enhance economic growth by 0.6 percent and generate tens of thousands of new jobs in South Africa.
Exciting as it is, TTOS is but an interim measure to boost tourism while we move quickly to digitally transform Home Affairs. Ultimately, our vision is for a fully automated process that delivers secure tourist visa outcomes digitally and within seconds to tourists from around the world.
South Africa Proposes 90-Day Visa Waiver for Indian & Chinese Tourists
As the Department of Home Affairs explains, under the TTOS, approved tour operators from these countries will be invited to register with the Department of Home Affairs. In return for a rigorous screening process and responsibility for their travel groups, these operators can submit group visa applications. This marks the first time that group visa applications from Chinese and Indian tourists will be processed in this way.
Applications through TTOS will be managed by a specialized team of adjudicators, ensuring faster and more efficient processing while eliminating the bureaucratic obstacles that have historically impacted South Africa’s tourism sector.
In May this year, the South African government unveiled a plan to improve the visa application process, focusing on Indian tourists. In this direction, the Minister of Tourism Patricia de Lille announced introducing an E-Visa system. At the same time, the Ministry of Tourism also proposed a 90-day visa waiver for visitors from India and China.
He’s written to Ajay Gupta`s son, Kamal Singhala, to invite him to make representations as to why the citizenship granted to him in 2015 should not be revoked.
Singhala is currently in a battle with the department over a passport for his daughter.
However, Schreiber believes Singhala was issued citizenship prematurely after a first application by the family was rejected.
In 2017, Parliament’s Home Affairs committee heard from the department that it had recommended to then Minister Malusi Gigaba to waive residence requirements for citizenship for members of the Gupta family, in light of multi-million rand investments they were making in the country.
Documents were put before the committee to show the process that had been followed when the family applied for citizenship as a unit.
Schreiber said the department acted too hastily after rejecting the initial application for citizenship, to then consider another application just a few months later, and not only after a year as required by law.
The Democratic Alliance (DA)’s Home Affairs spokesperson, Adrian Roos, has welcomed the move, saying any remaining vestiges of state capture must be addressed.
It’s unclear where Singhala currently resides.
Schreiber said he was serious about a clean-up of his department and if Singhala believes his naturalisation is legitimate, he can present his case to the department in person.
Germany is set to expand border checks following a knife attack which left three people dead in the town of Solingen in August.
The government has come under pressure to take a harder line on immigration since the stabbing, in which the suspect is a Syrian national who was facing deportation after a failed asylum bid.
The attack has been claimed by the Islamic State group.
The new controls - which will be introduced on 16 September and initially last six months - were announced days after the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) made big gains in local elections.
German Interior Minster Nancy Faeser insisted the government was "taking a hard line" against irregular migration, and said the checks would reduce Islamist extremism and cross-border crime.
"We are doing everything in our power to protect the people of our country against these threats," she added.
Germany already has controls at its eastern and southern borders with Poland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Austria, primarily spot checks on roads and in trains. Similar measures will be introduced at all border points.
However, critics said the move is more about politics than security.
Germany's mainstream parties were thrown into turmoil by the AfD's performance in regional elections in the east, which saw a far-right party top a poll for the first time since the Nazi era.
The governing SPD and other mainstream parties appear to have viewed the results as a message from voters to take a tougher stance on immigration and borders.
Successive governments in Berlin have allowed relatively large numbers of asylum seekers to settle in the country in recent years.
Germany took in more than one million people mostly fleeing war in countries such as Syria during the 2015-2016 migrant crisis, and has received 1.2 million Ukrainians since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
However, with polls indicating the AfD could perform strongly in a regional election in Brandenburg on 22 September, parties on both the centre-left and centre-right are coming up with proposals that would have been unthinkable until recently.
The CDU - the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel - has proposed turning all asylum seekers back at the border, even those who are eligible, on the basis they have travelled through other safe EU countries.
Gerhard Karner, Austria's interior minister, told Bild newspaper on Monday that his country would not take in any migrants rejected by Germany.
"There's no room for manoeuvre there," he said.
Since the Solingen stabbing, Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government has announced a raft of measures on migration.
They include changing the rules so asylum seekers facing deportation will lose benefits, and resuming the deportation of convicted Afghan criminals to their home country for the first time since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.