Andrew Stegmann

Here are your SA visa-free destinations: Coming soon, Europe?

Cape Town – A trip to the embassy is not exactly anyone’s idea of fun when you plan their holidays; especially when you live in a smaller city or town and have to trek the distance to get your paperwork stamped, sealed and delivered.

Not to mention that – depending on your choice of a destination – your life, financial situation and employment whereabouts – come under the magnifying glass of officials with surly faces making you doubt the status of your criminal record.

Recently, Home Affairs Minister, Malusi Gigaba has entered into negotiations with European Union Ambassador Marcus Cornaro on immigration-related issues between South Africa and Europe. And while the ministers and ambassadors are having their legal official conversations, South Africans are sitting on the edge of their seats with the possibility that they might be able to travel visa-free to Europe soon.

But on the other hand, South Africans are now facing major changes from the one down under with regards to the decision New Zealand made to enforce a visa restriction for South Africans.

New Zealand is closing its visa-free doors to South Africans and if you want to visit the All Black territory after the 21st of November you need to apply for a visa. The cost of the visa is not a pretty number; if you apply for a visa before 21 November 2016 you need to bid NZ$165.00 (about R1 637.07 at R9.92/NZ$) farewell. If you apply after 21 November 2016 you will have to pay $184 for paper applications, while the online cost remains $165.

Ouch.

The good news is that, if your travelling heart is not set on New Zealand, there are still quite a handful of countries to visit around the world that will grant your official green book of travel visa-free or visa-on-arrival access.

Here’s a quick glance of where you can go, visa-free or get a visa on arrival, with your South African passport:

Before you make any travel decisions, make sure what the exact visa regulations are for the country that you are planning to visit and if you don’t need a visa, or can get a visa on arrival, double check to see how long you may stay in the country.

Most visa-free and visa on arrival destinations won’t allow you to work while visiting and you are in the country strictly as a tourist.

For more information, and to see how your passport matches up with the passports of other countries, visit the Passport Index.

Africa
African countries we can enter without visas:
Benin, Botswana, Gabon, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Saint Helena, Swaziland, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

African countries we can enter with a visa on arrival:
Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Burundi, Cape Verde, Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mauritania, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia and Uganda.

South and Central America
South and Central American countries we can enter without visas:
Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Uruguay and Venezuela.

North America
No way around this one, you will need a visa.

Europe
European countries we can enter on our passport:
Reunion Island… But let’s see what the future holds.

Asia and Middle East
Asian and Middle Eastern countries we can enter on our passport:
Indonesia, Israel, South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Macau.

Asian and Middle Eastern countries we can enter with a visa on arrival:
Armenia, Cambodia, Iran, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Maldives, Nepal, Oman, Tajikistan and Timor-Leste,.

Oceania
Oceanian countries we can enter on our passport:
Cook Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu.

Visa-free entry to New Zealand will no longer be valid after 21 November 2016.

Oceanian countries we can enter with a visa on arrival:
Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Niue, Palau and Tuvalu.

 

This article was originally posted here.

Andrew Stegmann

Expats vote Uganda as best place to live in Africa

Andrew Stegmann

Silent war on Somalis in Port Elizabeth

Port Elizabeth – Aisha Ali Noor, 29, sits on the bed in her dimly lit first-floor apartment on Durban Road in the Port Elizabeth suburb of Korsten. It is 07:30 and outside her window the road is already alive with activity as shop owners and traders load their bakkies with goods from the numerous Somali wholesalers that line both sides of the street.

“I’m afraid all the time,” Noor tells GroundUp via a translator. “I don’t go out anymore unless I have to. I’m worried I will be killed.”

Noor came to South Africa in 2011 after losing both her parents in Somalia. She left four children back home and joined her husband in Port Elizabeth.

In 2014 Noor’s husband and his business partner were stabbed to death in front of her in their spaza shop in Motherwell, Port Elizabeth’s largest township.

Noor managed to escape, but she says she has been robbed and assaulted “six or seven times” since then. She showed GroundUp a number of police statements and case dockets that support her claims. In the most recent incident, which was reported on February 26, she was so badly beaten that she had to be hospitalised.

According to Fwamba Mukole, manager of Port Elizabeth’s Refugee Centre, a United Nations-funded project, Noor’s experiences are far from unique in the city, which has an estimated Somali population of around 6 000.

Source

Andrew Stegmann

With a heavy heart

I WAS on my way back from Swaziland on Sunday when I had an uncomfortable feeling at the border post.

Swaziland is not much different from South Africa and only through the process of getting your passport stamped do you realise that you have been in another country.

The process was quite efficient on the Swazi side. The building is pleasant and well-ventilated with well-marked counters and plenty of staff on duty, even on a Sunday, to keep the queues moving relatively quickly.

It was another story on the South African side. The computer systems were down. A narrow passage in front of the immigration counters means there can only be a squash of people, no queues.

 Three counters were in operation with tired, irritated officials having physically to write down people’s details instead of scanning passports.

People pushed and jostled in the small space to get to the counters. An elderly woman standing near me struggled to breathe. After an hour, my passport was stamped and we were able to re-enter South Africa.

There was a brief moment when I had a sense of foreboding about coming home. It was not the Home Affairs’ system malfunction that caused this, although it is depressing that we cannot get simple things right to welcome people into our country.

It was the realisation that South Africa is in such a state of turmoil that I was tempted momentarily to remain in the tiny monarchy with repressive practices.

After a month of violence on South Africa’s university campuses, a settlement to the higher-education funding crisis seems further than ever. Talks between students and management have broken down, many students have been arrested and injured, and several institutions are unable to continue with lectures and tests. The government is maintaining a safe distance from the chaos, periodically condemning the violence and damage to property. While many senior leaders in the ANC and government, including President Jacob Zuma and his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa, have distinguished themselves as conflict mediators, they have made no effort to intervene to stop the mayhem.

Zuma’s response to weeks of disrupted learning and almost daily running battles between police and students was to appoint a ministerial task team to look into the issues. It shows little appreciation for the intensity of the protests or the fact that a generation of young people are begging for his attention.

There are other things that cause despair. The campaign in support of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is not only because people believe he is being unfairly persecuted for political purposes. Gordhan, along with former South African Revenue Services officials Ivan Pillay and Oupa Magashula, is expected to appear in court on November 2 on fraud charges.

Source