Andrew Stegmann

South Africa’s e-Visa Pilot Is Live

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has started with the testing and piloting of the electronic visa application system, the e-Visa.

The DHA revealed their plans at a briefing recently.

This follows President Cyril Ramaphosa’s promise at this year’s Africa Travel Indaba in Durban, to introduce a world-class e-visa system and reduce the red tape that travellers face when visiting the country.

Ramaphosa said at the time: “We must reduce the onerous and often unnecessary bureaucratic red tape that tourists who want to visit our countries face. This requires us to streamline our tourist visa regimes.

“As South Africa, we are committed to working towards the African Union’s goal of visa-free travel and a single African air transport market. We are in the process of radically overhauling our visa dispensation for the rest of the world and introducing a world-class e-visa system. The challenges are going to be ironed out,” he said.

DHA revealed in a statement that the decision to introduce the e-Visa provided many benefits. “It is reliable, client-friendly and convenient for visa applicants, airlines, trade partners and Home Affairs officials.

“Once fully rolled-out, prospective visitors will apply online for visas, at home, office or place of work. It will lessen administrative burdens, including those involved in receiving applicants at visa offices, printing visa stickers and returning passports to applicants.”

It also revealed that the department was testing the new system with Kenya.

“As part of the pilot, a team of DHA immigration and IT officials visited Kenya. This team is scheduled to return to Kenya next week, on December 9, 2019. The first Kenyan tourist who applied for the visitors’ visa on the new e-Visa system arrived yesterday (Saturday) afternoon and more are expected this week as part of the pilot.

“We are continuously monitoring this pilot process to ensure that user experience is not compromised,” the statement revealed.

China, India and Nigeria will be included to the pilot early next year, which will run until March 2020.

 

For information as to how Relocation Africa can help you with your Mobility, Immigration, Research, Remuneration, and Expat Tax needs, email info@relocationafrica.com, or call us on +27 21 763 4240.

Sources: [1], [2]. Image sources: PretoriaTravel [1], [2].

Andrew Stegmann

Constantia Emporium Opening: A Milestone for Cape Town’s Solomon Family

The Constantia Emporium Opening Ceremony held on Saturday 23 November marked the end of a very long journey and the start of a new one for the Solomon Family Trust – the owners of the land the new high-end shopping center is built on.

The minister of public works and infrastructure, Patricia de Lille, who spoke at the opening ceremony held in the new center’s parking basement, captured the moment best.

“As we acknowledge our past, we now have an opportunity to design our own future and this is what the Solomon family has done. They decided to design their own future with their own land. And I can only say, well done.” Haijie Solomon and Saba Owen Solomon bought Lots 10 and 11 of a Constantia farm named Sillery for 340 and 600 pounds sterling respectively in 1902.

Descendants of the Solomon family called this piece of land home until 1960, when – under the Group Areas Act of Apartheid legislation – 30 households were given five years to sell their homes and move out. The family of farmers and entrepreneurs ended up scattered across the Cape Flats, Grassy Park and Retreat. Rashaad Solomon shared the family’s land claim journey with guests at the ceremony. He said they had no choice but to pick up the pieces and to build new lives.

“We struggled, but we survived. We remembered the life in Constantia and prayed that one day we would return and this day has arrived.”

However, it took lots of perseverance and many court battles to get there. The trust finally regained the title deeds to the land in 2012, 16 years after the trust first submitted its land claim to the Land Claims Commission. Mayor Dan Plato, who also attended the opening ceremony, said the Solomon family’s journey was a testament to what could happen with other restitution cases. “As I listened to your family’s incredible history, I was reminded of all the documentation, the meetings. I saw all the tears, the frustration. “I am glad to see the end of the road of your long journey and I wish you well on the next one,” said Plato.

The 15 000m² shopping center officially opens on Tuesday 26 November. It has 26 shops, including Woolworths, Clicks, MTN and various restaurants, banks and a floor of office space.

Checkers, who have walked this path with the Solomons family as their business partner since 2006, is the center’s anchor tenant. More than 140 new jobs were created with the Checkers store’s opening, and 98 of the total store complement of 186 are women. The store will be managed by branch manager Adrian Saunders. “Checkers Constantia is a flagship store and we are so excited to provide our shoppers with a fantastic new store and a world-class shopping experience,” Saunders said.

The store sources many of its products from local owner-run suppliers including Schoon Bakery, Exotic Taste, the Nut Man, Soet Cakes and My Sugar.

Store design enhancements include wider aisles and seamless floors that allow trolleys to move with limited noise and fresh departments were designed as dedicated destination areas, offering customers an artisanal market experience within the supermarket environment.

Venture Workspace, a full turnkey solution for existing businesses and start-ups, rents the entire first floor of the center which covers approximately 1 200m². Louis Fourie, the director of Venture Workspace, says the center’s convenient location just off the M3 with easy access to the highway, makes it not only attractive to shoppers, but also offers suburban co-working spaces as an alternative to the CBD.

“The center is very accessible, so it’s no fuss for people to make a quick stop en route home or into town. Traffic is such a huge issue in Cape Town and fighting through main roads on the way to pick up dinner is not ideal after a long day of work. This center will add huge value to the community by way of its accessibility.”

To read more about the new upmarket Checkers store in Constantia Emporium, click here.

 

For information as to how Relocation Africa can help you with your Mobility, Immigration, Research, Remuneration, and Expat Tax needs, email info@relocationafrica.com, or call us on +27 21 763 4240.

Sources: [1], [2]. Image sources: [1], [2], [3].

Andrew Stegmann

DHA’s Aaron Motsoaledi: Children of Immigrants Must be in School

Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi said every child needs to go to school.

He said when he had asked the Department of Basic Education why immigrant children were barred from school, he had been told the department was scared of Home Affairs inspectors. “That can’t happen in any modern democracy. I told them Home Affairs inspectors must not visit any schools unless there is a crime committed that needs Home Affairs. It’s more dangerous to have a child who is not in school.”

“Send them to school … We’ll look at the documentation later.”

He was speaking to GroundUp after briefing a joint meeting of the portfolio committees on Home Affairs and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs recently.

Motsoaledi told GroundUp that the three special permits which were issued to legalize the status of nationals from Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Angolans already living in South Africa, will be renewed.

“The Lesotho permit is expiring in December. I am already in the process of renewing it,” said Motsoaledi. “We can’t stop those special permits if the problems that led to those special permits are not yet resolved.

“Unfortunately the Zimbabwean permit was for four years and the situation never became normal in those four years. We will renew, but we can’t automatically as the department. We have got to discuss with the cabinet.”

“The issue of migration is not purely a problem of Home Affairs as the mayor of Johannesburg would like people to believe,” said Motsoaledi. “It talks to many government departments because it talks to economy; it talks to job creation; it talks to inequality; it talks to unemployment – all those issues cannot be resolved by one department which is called Home Affairs.”

“We have accepted long ago that our borders are porous. We have presented to Parliament before that we are going to spruce up the Border Management Authority. We want to bring that forward,” he said.

In 2009, the South African government introduced a Dispensation of Zimbabwean Permit (DZP) to legalize the many Zimbabweans already inside the country because of the political and socio-economic situation in Zimbabwe. In 2014, the DZP was renewed and renamed ZSP (Zimbabwean Special Permit), which expired in December 2017. The ZSP was replaced with the ZEP (Zimbabwe Exemption Permit), which will expire in 2021.

The ZEP entitles the holder to study or conduct employment, but does not entitle the holder to the right to apply for permanent residence, irrespective of the period of stay in South Africa.

A similar dispensation was extended to nationals from Lesotho and Angola.

 

For information as to how Relocation Africa can help you with your Mobility, Immigration, Research, Remuneration, and Expat Tax needs, email marketing@relocationafrica.com, or call us on +27 21 763 4240.

Sources: [1], [2]. Image sources: [1], [2].

Andrew Stegmann

South African Government Launches Pilot of Online Business Registration Platform

The South African government has launched the pilot phase of a new business portal, led by the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC). Companies can be registered for as little as R175.

“[The portal] is a pioneering and innovative project for government e-services. It will improve the time and ease for young people to start new enterprises and sends a great signal two days before the SA Investment Conference,” said Minister of Trade and Industry Ebrahim Patel.

The Biz Portal is a single integrated company registration platform in South Africa.

Through this platform an entrepreneur will be able to register a business within a day in South Africa, a dramatic improvement on turnaround times of 40 days recorded by the World Bank 2020 Ease of Doing Business Report.

The public has been encouraged to test the new portal while it is been piloted over the next three months at https://bizportal.gov.za.

The digital platform is aimed at bringing together business-related services from various public entities within South Africa.

Through collaboration with the South African Revenue Services (SARS), the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and the Compensation Fund (CF), CIPC made it possible for applicants of private companies to obtain the following:

  • Company registration
  • Tax registration number
  • Domain name registration
  • B-BBEE Certificate
  • Compensation Fund registration
  • Unemployment Insurance Fund registration
  • Business Bank account

The Minister said the Biz Portal entails company registration functions that have already been tried and tested for several years within the CIPC’s E-services environment. This will also cater for options in terms of registering for UIF and Compensation Fund Reference Numbers.

According to the Department of Trade and Industry, four major banks are participating on the platform.

“Depending on the nature of the agreement, the customer will be able to make a direct payment in relation to the registration services at the end of the transaction, be routed into a safe banking platform to apply for a business account or opt for their personal details to be passed on to a bank of their choice,” said the department.

In the pilot phase, the system is being tested and strengthened. The next phase of the Biz Portal will make provision for other services related to running and maintaining a business.

Identity authentication will be via the real-time Home Affairs Population Register and other sophisticated measures would serve as a necessary buffer to ensure integrity of the system.

“The applicants will also have an option to apply for a Domain Name and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Certificate, thanks to the partnerships CIPC has with the Domain Name Authority, ZADNA and the dti, respectively.

“From a customers’ perspective, there is no need to visit multiple government institutions, saving them time and money. Such seamless registration services will enable entrepreneurs to focus on transforming innovative ideas into beneficial products and services, which will contribute to the creation of jobs in our country,” Patel said.

The Biz Portal also demonstrates government’s commitment to the fourth industrial revolution and is one of the means through which government can demonstrate its commitment to creating an enabling investment environment characterised by efficient service delivery.

CIPC Commissioner, Advocate Rory Voller, said: “CIPC continuously strives to improve service delivery to businesses and is proud to launch Biz Portal, a pioneering platform for e-government services. The Biz Portal is a first for South Africa in terms of government e-services and will significantly reduce the time to register a business.

“This latest addition to the suite of channels is a digital platform which is the result of a collaboration between CIPC, UIF and the Compensation Fund involving the integration of registration services of all three public entities.”

 

For information as to how Relocation Africa can help you with your Mobility, Immigration, Research, Remuneration, and Expat Tax needs, email marketing@relocationafrica.com, or call us on +27 21 763 4240.

Sources: [1], [2]. Image sources: [1], [2].