South Africa's Department of Home Affairs has announced that New Zealanders, along with six other nations, can enter South Africa visa-free.
Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi announced the change today in a bid to help their tourism industry.
"Tourism will soar if we relax visa requirements for entry into South Africa. We know that tourism is very important for job creation," Motsoaledi said.
"Out of the 193 countries who are member states of the United Nations, the department has granted visa-free status to 75 countries. Of these 16 are in our continent and are SADC members and 59 are from all over the world."
Today, we wish to announce an addition to our visa – free countries.
— HomeAffairsSA (@HomeAffairsSA) July 10, 2019
These are:
•Qatar
•United Arab Emirates
•New Zealand
•Saudi Arabia
•Cuba
•Ghana
•Sao Tome and Principe@travel24 @tourism_gov_za#DHABudgetVote2019 pic.twitter.com/u6edTwkWxu
The minister said that his office would immediately enter into discussions with the countries about how a visa-free regime will work.
The department announced that the following countries will now be able to enter the country, visa-free:
• Qatar
• United Arab Emirates
• New Zealand
• Saudi Arabia
• Cuba
• Ghana
• Sao Tome and Principe
He said that "homework" still needed to be done for three other countries which make up close to 30 per cent of the world's population to the list: China, India and Nigeria.
"While we are busy tackling the matter of the three countries, we shall this financial year increase two and a half times the number of people who work for Home Affairs to process visas in both China and India. We shall double the number of people who process visas to our country in Nigeria," he said.
Speaking to BusinessTech, a department spokesperson said that the countries announced by the minister only apply to inbound visas (citizens from the listed countries visiting South Africa).
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