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• SA Visa /
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Citizenship Options

• South African Citizen by Descent
• South African Citizen by Naturalisation:
• Automatic loss of Citizenship
• Resumption of South African citizenship
• Deprivation of Citizenship
• South African Citizen by Naturalisation:
• Automatic loss of Citizenship
• Resumption of South African citizenship
• Acquisition of the citizenship or nationality of another country

South African Citizen by Descent:

Anybody who was born outside of South Africa to a South African citizen. His or her birth has to be registered in line with the births and deaths registration act 51 of 1992.

South African Citizen by Naturalisation:

Permanent Resident holders of 5 or more years can apply for citizenship. Anybody married to a South African citizen qualifies for naturalisation, two years after receiving his or her permanent residence at the time of marriage.

A child under 21 who has permanent residence Visa qualifies for naturalization immediately after the Visa is issued.

Automatic loss of Citizenship.

This occurs when a South African citizen:

Obtains citizenship of another country by a voluntary and formal act, other than marriage, or;

Serves in the armed forces of another country, where he or she is also a citizen, while is at war with South Africa.

Deprivation of Citizenship:

A South African citizen by naturalization can be deprived of his citizenship if;

The certificate of naturalisation was obtained fraudulently or false information was supplied.

He or she holds the citizenship of another country and has, at any time, been sentenced to 12 months imprisonment in any country for an offence that also would have been an offence in South Africa.

Home Affairs sends SA man’s Ukrainian wife and little boy back to conflict-torn country

Daily Maverick - 23 Apr 2022

More than 41,500km and R150,000 later, a Rustenburg man still hasn’t got his Ukrainian wife and son home.

A South African man has so far travelled 41,500km and spent more than R150,000 trying to get his new Ukrainian wife and three-year-old son into South Africa and out of danger back home. But because of the intransigence and apparent confusion of South African immigration authorities, she and their son are still in Ukraine, just as it faces a new offensive from Russia.

Roan Lindsey, a diesel mechanic from Rustenburg, had planned to marry Marta, whom he had met in Ukraine in December 2020, in April in her home town of  Kamianets-Podilskyi in western Ukraine. Then Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February and telescoped their plans. In early March he travelled to Ukraine to fetch Marta and Marat and bring them back to South Africa to start their life together here. 

They travelled to Copenhagen to get married and then to Budapest to get South African visas for Marta and Marat.  This time South African bureaucracy intervened.

When they arrived at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on 2 April, immigration officials would not allow Marta and Marat into South Africa, Lindsey told Daily Maverick this week. 

Apparently, because the Ukrainian government’s passport production facilities in the capital Kyiv had been damaged in the war, Ukrainian immigration officials had put Marat’s details into his mother’s passport as a temporary emergency measure.

Lindsey said that officials in South Africa’s embassy in Hungary had nonetheless given Marta and Marat visas to travel to South Africa and had assured them that Marat’s details being endorsed in Martha’s passport would not present a problem.

But when they arrived at OR Tambo, immigration officials there consulted a senior Home Affairs official in Pretoria who refused to let Marat into South Africa on Martha’s endorsed passport.

“I pleaded with the immigration officers, but they said they were powerless in this decision because it comes from the top of Home Affairs,” Lindsey said.

“We called the Ukrainian embassy and a gentleman there tried to help us and tried to talk to the immigration officers, but they didn’t want to talk to him. I called a lawyer to talk to them, but they still refused. They said that she is denied and she will be sent back to Budapest that same day.”

He said that an OR Tambo airport official his mother had pleaded with had been “extremely rude” in refusing to help.  Lindsey said he did not feel he was responsible for what had happened “as we got completely the wrong information from the South African embassy in Hungary”.

South African officialdom would not budge and Lindsey said he could not let Martha and Marat fly back to Budapest on their own. “She has no friends or family there to help her or meet her.”

So he flew back to Budapest with them. “I had to buy three tickets back to Budapest for the same day which was very expensive and I didn’t work for a month. We flew for 16 hours, waited at the airport for eight hours and had another 16-hour flight back to Budapest. 

“Her son was extremely upset and restless. Crying non-stop. It was a horrible situation and we had no plan.

“Eventually we found out that passports would be issued in Ukraine again in the soon future. So we had to make the heartbreaking decision of taking her and her son back to Ukraine.

“We took two trains from Budapest which took 18 hours and we got to Suceava (in Romania). Two days later she crossed the border back into Ukraine to go to her parents’ house” — which is in Kamianets-Podilskyi in western Ukraine near the Romanian border. Lindsey said that part of Ukraine had so far not been caught up in the war which was now concentrated in the east and the south. But that could change. 

On 11 April, Lindsey arrived back in South Africa. 

“Now we will have to do this all over again,” he said wearily.  He said Marta now had an appointment with Ukrainian immigration officials on 23 April to apply for Marat’s passport. Then she would have to wait for it to be issued. When Marta had the new passport for Marat, Lindsey would return to the Romanian-Ukrainian border to fetch them and bring them to South Africa again. “We’ll go to Budapest again to apply for visas for them. And then pray that when we return to OR Tambo they won’t deny them entry again.”

He said that this time he would apply for a spouse’s visa for Marta and a relative’s visa for Marat. She was now on a tourist visa, but he didn’t want to take any chances of her not being allowed into South Africa again. 

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi (Photo: Netwerk24 / Elizabeth Sejake)

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa Liubov Abravitova has been trying to persuade the South African government to relax its rules to allow people like Marta and Marat into South Africa even if their passports are not quite regular, because of the war. 

She told Daily Maverick that she appreciated that South Africa did not yet have regulations on how to deal with these situations and so it was against South African law to permit entry to a child endorsed on a parent’s passport. 

“And we do respect the law.” But she said that she had requested an urgent meeting with Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi to try to find a way around the problem. He agreed to meet her on Tuesday this week. 

“The meeting was in a good tone. The minister was really supportive, thoughtful and understanding of the urgency of decisions needed to be made with regard to the humanitarian situation.”

She said they had agreed to establish a working group comprising her embassy and the departments of Home Affairs and of International Relations and Cooperation to resolve all the technical and administrative problems. 

Abravitova said others were in the same predicament as the Lindseys. 

Lindsey said he had endured “a very long 35 days to be back to square one where I started”  and had so far travelled about 41,500km on trains, buses and planes. He faced still more travel to fetch Marta and Marat. The saga had so far cost him more than R150,000 — or more if one factored in 35 days of lost work.

“We thought we would start our lives together in South Africa. And now my wife and three-year-old son are back in Ukraine. We are completely devastated and it has cost us an incredible amount of money. We lost a lot of our savings.”

www.samigration.com

 

Life Partner Visa

Life Partner visa is issued to someone in a long term relationship.

This type of South Africa life partner visa is available to people in either heterosexual or same-sex relationships and can apply for a life partner temporary residence visa or a permanent residence depending on the length of the relationship in question.

An application for temporary residence life partner visa requires that the partners are in a proven relationship for 2 years. Foreigners who are life partners of South African citizens or permanent resident holders may apply for permanent residence if they have been together for 5 years or more in terms the Immigration Act.

To obtain permanent residence, you would have to have been living with your partner for more than 5 years. This came about with the new regulations.

The life partner visa is very similar to the spousal visa but accommodates same sex partnerships. You will have to prove financial and emotional support and may be called upon to be interviewed by the department.

SA Migration Intl will guide you through the entire process and make sure that your application is fully compliant with the immigration law to ensure a successful outcome. Once your application has been submitted we ensure you will be able to track the progress of said application either directly via VFS or via our followup processes via our application tracking system and be kept fully up to date with the progress of your application.

Once we confirm that you will qualify for the visa we will ensure you have a successful application.

Road to Nowhere — a day in a Hell Affairs queue

The Daily Maverick – 23 April 2022

South Africa has illusions of grandeur about being a modern, competitive country. A day or two or three in a queue at a Home Affairs office in Johannesburg should quickly (well, slowly) disabuse you of that notion. This is a story written while waiting in one of those lines.

inter is coming. The mornings are darker and colder. Nonetheless, by the time you arrive at Home Affairs at 7am, the queue is already a hundred people long. You can see on their faces that they are in for a long day. Grim determination.

Before the gates open at 8am, an official sends a Covid-19 form down the queue. Fill in your ID number, say whether you have any symptoms and so on. You know the drill. Unfortunately, it’s about the most efficient thing that will happen to you for the next six hours. Except that it’s completely unnecessary. Like Covid fogging. Even though Home Affairs is “run” by a doctor, they didn’t get the message or the prescription. 

Or maybe it’s because the department is run by a doctor. 

All the President’s Men: The deployees we should hold responsible for dysfunction and corruption in the Home Affairs Department. (Photo: Mark Heywood)

After that, there’s no communication, no numbering system (until you get through the door, which is many hours away). Just the hum of people quietly chatting.

Some people seem to get quicker access than others. Word passes back along the queue that “they have online bookings”. But you can’t make online bookings — it doesn’t work, says one of my new queue friends. 

“Most likely a backhander somewhere,” says another. 

After seven hours: Inside at last, inside at last, thank God Almighty we are inside at last. (Photo: Mark Heywood)

So most continue to queue in patient resignation, joking darkly about “the nightmare”. The experience adds to the cynicism and distrust of government. For all it claims, it’s not a government that cares. Batho Pele’s in the bin. But there’s no choice. You need that document. Your life and ability to function or travel depend on it. 

Some clever people bring camp chairs and lunch boxes. They must have friends in low places who gave them advance warning. 

During the interminable hours, some drop by the wayside and give up. I know the feeling. I was here yesterday. After five hours I gave up too. It felt like dropping out of a marathon. A harried bureaucrat had told us early in the morning that the “system is down”, but after that — silence. It seems nobody knew or cared when it would be up again. 

A sign outside the office. (Photo: Mark Heywood)

Some arrive, see the queue and disappear. 

I discovered, as I posted an SOS on Facebook, that there’s a science to finding a functional Home Affairs office. Some mention Alex. Some say Centurion. Others say take a drive to Randfontein. 

But the problem is, once you are in the queue, you’re stuck. Your mind plays tricks with you. Maybe, maybe, maybe… 

As you stand, sit, perch, you can understand why millions of people don’t have IDs. 

The toilets in a container at the Randburg office. (Photo: Mark Heywood)

And so, as my anger levels increase, I send a message to Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi (whose number I still have from his days as Minister of Health — I’m tempted to share it, but won’t):

“Hello Minister. I hope you are well. I just wanted to say that your home affairs offices are a disgrace. I have spent eight hours so far queuing to renew my passport in Randburg. I can see no reason why it should be as inefficient and contemptuous of people as this. And I hear it’s the same everywhere. It makes me wonder what you are doing as the Minister. Maybe you ought to queue yourself one day to experience what ordinary people do.”

Several hours later I was happy to get a reply. Explaining that he was ill with flu and in bed, the good doctor said:

“I am not sure whether you are asking for my help or you just wanted me to know what you think of me. I am aware of the problems at the Randburg office and have just suspended the manager there to rebuild the office.” 

Cold comfort for me and my queue buddies.

Inside the toilets at the Randburg Home Affairs Department. (Photo: Mark Heywood)

The only good thing I can say is that Home Affairs is a great leveller. In this queue are citizens with little kids, pensioners, people with big cars, people with no cars, all races, all ages. It’s where the nation meets. Everybody but politicians. 

I’m left to have a solitary conversation with myself about state failure. What’s so complicated about processing, producing and disbursing ID documents and passports? If we can’t succeed with something as simple as this, how can we run a sophisticated economy and state? 

As a friend pointed out, what’s to stop Home Affairs having secure online stations at their offices (like ATMs) where an applicant enters all their information so that they need less than two minutes with an official to verify their identity. 

Or why doesn’t Home Affairs introduce a user rating system for its branches? 

People who queued all day, but didn’t cross the line. (Photo: Mark Heywood)

It’s at a coalface like this that you really understand the implications of State Capture, corruption and state neglect. 

I don’t blame the workers. After four hours, when I made it into the actual office, the officials were reasonably personable. It’s the system that fails them. If you starve your public service and public servants, this is what you get. 

Where’s the leadership, you might ask? 

The answer is MIA or being nasty and shifting blame to straw men like illegal immigrants. 

All the president’s men? But do the ministers give a fuck? I doubt it. They get their blue lights, their perks and their arse-licking officials. And like the rest of them, they don’t have to queue, use the public health system or send their children to government schools.

www.samigration.com

South Africa Working Visas

South Africa seeks highly skilled individuals to live and work in SA.

SA Migration Services will provide professional assistance to arrange your work visa for you if you qualify.

Work Visas are regulated in terms of Section 19, Regulation 18 and items 18 (1), 19(2), 20, 21 and 22, of Schedule A.

There are three common types of Work Visas:

• General Work Visa
• Inter Company Transfer Visa
• Critical Skills Visa

General Work Visa

Under the General Work Visa there are very strict requirements. The South African government, although trying to promote work and trade in South Africa, recognize the need to give South Africans the chance to obtain employment ahead of any foreigner.

You will have to prove that you are the only person who can fill that position and that no other South African can play that role. This is done by placing an advert in a national newspaper advertising the position.

A Department of Labour report would need to be obtained.

You will also need to have a job offer/contract from your future employer.

The most important part of the process is skills assessment by SAQA (South African Qualifications Authority) in SA which evaluates your formal qualifications and compares them to a SA qualification. This process is mandatory and for this we would need your academic transcripts and award diplomas. Note under the regulations provision is made for the recognition of work experience in the absence of formal qualifications and this therefore makes provision recognition of prior work experience (RPL).

This is a paper based system which merely compares the foreign qualifications and arrives at an equivalent qualification in SA, and if qualified in SA then no SAQA needed.

Next your employer has to prove that you are the only person that can fill the position and no other South African can fill that role. This is done by placing an advert in a national newspaper advertising the position.

Please note the work Visa is issued in the name of the employer so the person is tied to the employer. If they change the job they will require a new work Visa.

There is some good news for people who are qualified through work experience only and they can qualify if they don’t require formal qualifications, ie SAQA.

Inter Company Transfer Visa

An intra-company transfer work Visa may be issued by the Department to a foreigner who is employed abroad by a business operating in the Republic in a branch, subsidiary or affiliate relationship and who by reason of his or her employment is required to conduct work in the Republic.

An important factor is that the applicant has to have been employed with the company abroad for a period of not less than 6 months.

The Intra company transfer is not designed to be a long term visa. The idea is to bring in foreign workers employed by the company abroad with a branch or subsidiary branch here in South Africa; they work or conduct training for four years, and then return home.

This Visa does not require the hassle of proving the company could not find suitable applicants and it does not require the hassle of verifying an applicant’s formal qualifications. It is based purely on employment. If you are a company that needs to transfer in foreign employers, please contact us and we will make this go as smoothly as possible.

It is important to note that this category of work Visa cannot be granted for more than four (4) years and this type of Visa is not extendable.

Critical Skills Work Visa

The Critical Skills Visa South Africa is for skilled workers whose occupation is on the Critical Skills Visa List for South Africa. This list reflects the occupations that are in demand in South Africa.

The newly published "Skills or qualifications determined to be critical for the Republic of South Africa in relation to an application for a Critical Skills Visa or Permanent Residence Visa"

This category of work visa may be issued to an applicant who falls within a specific professional category or specific occupational class determined by the Minister by notice in the Government Gazette. This is done after consultation with the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Trade and Industry.

If an applicant falls within one of the professional categories listed on the critical skills list and also has the appropriate post qualification working experience in that profession then such applicant may qualify to apply for this category of work Visa.

The applicant also needs to where applicable register with the relevant South African professional accreditation body regulating that industry as stipulated by Minister of Home Affairs. Such body must also confirm the applicant’s skills, qualifications and working experience.

Furthermore, such applicant’s qualifications need to be evaluated relevant to a South African level. An applicant for a Critical Skills Visa may enter South Africa on such visa without having secured a job offer first. It is, however, required of the applicant to confirm employment with the Department of Home Affairs within a period of one (1) year upon arrival in South Africa, failing which, the Visa would automatically lapse.

The Critical Skills Work Visa is tied to an individual and not to an employer so under this Visa a person can leave from one employer to the next without obtaining a new work Visa.

Download the list / government gazette here (Updated: 03 June 2014)

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