The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has backtracked on its new Immigration Regulations but still has several new initiatives in the pipeline for South Africa.
Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi said that he would withdraw the recently gazetted Immigration Regulation Amendments.
The regulations replaced the highly-contested critical skills list with a new points-based system.
The regulations were received positively by businesses in South Africa, with the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa saying that they should ease the administrative burden that international companies with businesses in South Africa face when hiring skilled foreigners.
However, the Minister still faced backlash after the regulations were published a day prior to the closing date for comments (29 March), which he said was due to being misadvised.
He said that the Department is in the process of finalising the regulations and will provide a revised version next week.
He also announced several significant updates and initiatives within the Department.
Marisa Jacobs, the Managing Director at Xpatweb, broke down the new initiatives:
Remote Work Visa
The Remote Work Visa is designed for individuals wishing to work in South Africa while working for foreign employers.
The visa targets high-earning individuals and aims to stimulate the South African economy.
General Work Visa changes
The aforementioned Points-Based system for a General Work Visa aims to eliminate the need to obtain a letter from the Department of Labour.
This new streamlined approach looks at criteria based on factors, such as age and qualifications to determine visa eligibility on a points-based scale.
Critical Skills List
Organisations can now also expedite the gazetting process for critical skills that are seen as essential, removing the previous four-year waiting period.
This should facilitate swift approval for in-demand skills.
Trusted Employer Scheme
Jacobs said that the Trusted Employer Scheme (TES) has been successful, but the Minister warned that approved Employers will soon face stricter compliance measures, such as random checks by the Department.
Non-compliance would result in the expulsion of the TES program.
That said, the Department is inviting a second round of submissions from qualifying companies to join TES in May 2024.
Management of the Backlog
The Minister also said that 90% of the total backlog faced by the Department is due to Relative, Dependent and Spousal visas, with the delays attributed to challenges in verifying marriages.
A dedicated team has been assigned to expedite applications.
“The DHA plans to provide detailed statistics on visa approvals versus rejections to indicate the current processing times of the various visa categories,” said Jacobs.
“The Minister further touched on the current directive which allows any individual who has applied for an extension of their visa and has received a VFS receipt status in South Africa while awaiting the outcome of the application.”
Review of the White Paper
The DHA is also reviewing laws outlined in the highly controversial White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection, with a focus on replacing certain sections.
The White Paper aims to amend the South African Citizenship Act, which Motsoaledi called a ‘relic of the colonial era’, but Rebecca Walker and Loren B Landau from the University of the Witwatersrand that the changes are just a smokescreen to distract voters from the government’s failures ahead of the elections.
“Changes being considered adhere strictly to regulatory frameworks, ensuring compliance and legality,” said Jacobs.
New Start-up Visa
A new start-up visa is also being considered for individuals wishing to open or invest in a small- or medium-sized business in South Africa.
Concerned individuals will also be afforded access to the corporate account unit within the DHA.
Key Take Away
“Where you need an urgent work or residency visa, the process has not changed much for the past two years �` you need to apply as early as possible and be ready for legal escalation where DHA do not do their job,” said Jacobs
“We are cautiously optimistic, as we are seeing quicker turnaround on some matters. Yet, we were also today in court against DHA, so there remain two sides to the coin.”
“A correctly issued work and residency permit is one of the most stressful events where it goes wrong, as it impacts every aspect of one's life "

The Department of Home Affairs says it has lost close to 38 000 working hours over the past five financial years due to the impact of load shedding.

The Eastern Cape has the highest amount of working hours lost at more than 7 900. Mpumalanga lost 5 990 hours, while Gauteng lost 4 621 working hours.

This was revealed by the Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, replying to a Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary question on the total hours lost in each province due to load shedding.

DA MP, Christopher Roos, who posed the question, says this is an alarming number of working hours lost, and is a concern for service delivery.

“This despite for tens of million of rands being spent on equipment upgrade, communication upgrades at Home Affairs offices. And the minister of Home Affairs needs to start pretending to care for our people at least, and head to the DA’s request to have the system down-time status displayed on the Home Affairs website so that while at least they try to sort the issue out, that people will not have to waste their time travelling all the way to the offices, especially in places like the Eastern Cape where the issue is worse by far than any province. So people do not have to waste their time always travelling there only to find out that the system is off line and they will have to travel back and come again.”



Industry injected an estimated R1.2bn into the Western Cape economy in the last financial year, with around 90 000 passengers and 38 000 crew members expected to step ashore in the current year.

For the first time in history, Friday (11 April) saw two of the world’s most famous cruise liners the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Victoria dock in the Port of Cape Town at the same time.

The Queen Mary, concluding a 30-day voyage from Hong Kong, was undertaking a turnaround call in the Mother City. This included the disembarkation and embarkation of passengers for her next journey to New York in the US.

The Queen Victoria made a brief stopover for a turnaround call before continuing to Walvis Bay in Namibia.

The area now includes a food market with restaurants and coffee shops, a small craft gin distillery, and a brewery.

Red Sea risk

South African ports are currently benefitting from vessels avoiding the Red Sea as Yemen-based Houthi rebels targetcontainer, cruise, and other ships that would normally use the Suez Canal to access or head back to Europe.

The MSC Virtuosa the biggest cruise ship to dock in a South African port recently called at the Port of Durban’s Nelson Mandela Cruise Terminal to refuel and stock up as part of her return journey to Europe after being diverted to avoid risks in the Red Sea.

Read: MSC Virtuosa mega cruise ship calls in Durban to avoid Red Sea

Wesgro, the official tourism, trade and investment promotion agency for Cape Town and the Western Cape, estimated in a report that the cruise industry has been a significant contributor to the province’s economy, generating around R1.2 billion in the 2022/23 season.

Although cruise ship passengers do not necessarily spend significant amounts on accommodation and hospitality when they disembark, since their voyages often include all meals and they sleep on the ship, benefits are reaped over the longer term.

Returning tourists

Research shows that 63% of cruise passengers have returned to a destination they first visited on a cruise ship.

“This is important for the Western Cape. This repeat tourism can increase incrementally over time as international visitors are introduced to the Western Cape and become regular visitors,” says Wesgro CEO Wrenelle Stander.

Bob Dixon, director of sales for Cunard Line, the Southampton-based shipping company that owns the ‘Two Queens’, among others, told Moneyweb its passengers rate Cape Town “exceptionally high”.

The rand’s favourable exchange rate against the dollar, the euro, and the pound means passengers who disembark are not shy about spending money at restaurants and shopping malls in the Mother City.

It is estimated that one full-time provincial job is created for every 30 arriving cruise passengers.

“The current 2023/24 season is seeing 65 confirmed ship visits. With an expected 90 000 passengers in the 2023-24 season, we know that roughly 3 000 new permanent jobs have been created in this season alone,” said Mireille Wenger, Western Cape MEC for Finance and Economic Development.

Moneyweb was part of a media tour of the Queen Mary 2 on Friday. The impressive cruise liner comprises 13 decks and can carry close to 2 700 passengers. Altogether 330 metres long and 67 metres high, the ship boasts eight restaurants, a nightclub, a theatre that can house an audience of 1 000 people, and two open decks, both with swimming pools and hot tubs.

The Queen Mary 2 has around 400 South Africans among its crew members.



Border Management Authority SA commissioner Mike Masiapato on Sunday revealed that over a 10-day period during Easter nearly 4,000 people were intercepted attempting to enter the country illegally.
Addressing a media briefing, Masiapato said 2,403 of those intercepted did not have any documents at all. Another 1,019 individuals were refused entry for being undesirable and 419 were found inadmissible to enter the country due to various reasons.


“The majority of those arrested without documents were intercepted at the vulnerable segments of the borderline. They were processed, declared undesirable for five years, and were deported. Most of the inadmissible individuals were found with invalid passports, fraudulent visas or just failed to produce relevant documents such as valid yellow fever certificates, especially those travelling from yellow fever endemic countries,” Masiapato said.

“Incrementally, since the first deployment of the border guards, the authority has managed to intercept and stop more than 281,000 individuals who attempted to enter South Africa illegally.”

Security had been strengthened at the borders during this time, with Masiapato saying 400 junior border guards had been deployed at some land ports to “assist in the critical role of sanitising the border environment and ensuring the uninterrupted facilitation of the legitimate movement of people and goods across the ports.`

On a more positive note, the authority said during the Easter period, they observed a reduction in the number of undocumented and or unaccompanied minors arriving at South African ports of entry.

However on March 28, they intercepted about five children at the Beitbridge port of entry, Masiapato said.

They handed them to colleagues from the department of social development who activated the social workers at Musina.

“They later engaged their Zimbabwean counterparts and processed the children back to Zimbabwe to be reconciled with their respective families. Another incident involving a child was at Grobler’s Bridge port of entry where a woman was attempting to exit South Africa to the Democratic Republic of Congo via Botswana.

“The supposed ‘mother’ did not have a passport but was carrying an emergency travel document (ETD) which was issued by the embassy of the DRC and the child was completely undocumented. They were both handed over to colleagues from the department of social development who processed and took them to a place of safety in Limpopo,” he said.
South Africa`s borders were busier this year in comparison to last year.

The authority said they facilitated 1,136,250 travellers across 71 ports of entry in 10 days. In the same period last year, 913 859 travellers were processed  meaning there were over 222 000 more travellers this year. Masiapato said as the norm, OR Tambo International Airport, Lebombo port of entry to Mozambique and Beitbridge port of entry to Zimbabwe remained the top three ports which processed the majority of travellers at 528,042.

“OR Tambo facilitated the most travellers at 217,855, followed by Lebombo at 157 069 and ⁠Beitbridge at 153,118 travellers.”

Many holidaymakers opted for ship cruises this year.

The authority said it noted an increase in the number of holidaymakers boarding cruise ships at Cape Town Harbour bound for various destinations.

“In facilitating the movements across all our modalities, we processed 36,675 private vehicles, 1,893 minibus taxis and 1,309 buses. In terms of air travel, we processed over more than 2,621 aircraft at our various international airports,” the authority said,

“For the sea modality, we processed about 252 vessels across our seaports of which 119 were for crew changes through the off-port limit mechanism. This has to do with the facilitation of crew changes for vessels that have not docked at the port. During the implementation of this plan on people movement, we deployed proactive preventive measures for the speedy detection of non-compliances on the set port protocols,” Masiapato said.

Home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi says surveillance drones, speedboats and hand-held biometric devices have been ordered to help manage the country`s porous borders.

South Africa`s land borders cover about 4,700km. Insufficient security and the poor state of fencing make the borders insecure, with foreigners entering illegally and allowing other acts of criminality.Speaking on SABC on Sunday, Motsoaledi said they have employed technology to deal with undocumented foreigners and crime syndicates at borders. “We have ordered 18 drones to be used at the borders, four speedboats and 500 hand-held gadgets that can identify you by your fingerprint,” he said. He was responding to ActionSA`s Funzi Ngobeni on empowering the Border Management Authority.

The question of South Africa`s unprotected borders has been topical for years, with some South Africans losing patience with the government`s slow progress and blaming undocumented foreigners for illegality and “taking jobs”  but the police minister has said foreigners are not the primary source of crime.

Leading up to the May 29 national and provincial elections, political parties have shared their stances on the issue. The EFF wants a borderless Africa and a South Africa with no provinces. Gayton Mackenzie of the PA says “let’s fix our country first before we worry about other countries” and wants the mass deportation of foreigners. The DA has said borders must be secured and illegal immigration stopped.

In 2019, two months before national and provincial elections, then defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said they would use drones and rely more on technology at borders to tackle the influx of undocumented immigrants.