13,000 tourists not allowed to enter South Africa – DA WC

13,000 tourists not allowed to enter South Africa

19 April 2017

Faulty national legislation by the Department of Home Affairs relating to visa requirements for foreign visitors is seriously hampering growth in South Africa's tourism sector. The abbreviated birth certificate requirement for traveling minors prevents hundreds of thousands of potential visitors from coming to our country. Last year alone, about 13,000 people traveling to South Africa were turned away from foreign airports because they did not have the relevant documents.

I urge the new Home Affairs Minister, Hlengiwe Mkhize, to urgently review the tourist visa rules, as this outdated law is stifling the potential for job creation and revenue generation that South Africa so desperately needs. Abbreviated birth certificates for children entering the country are an unnecessary measure that has a serious impact on our economy.

South Africa's tourism industry is one of the very few still thriving despite economic uncertainty following increasingly erratic and reckless decisions by the national government regarding our economy. In 2014, there were 711 746 individuals employed in the tourism workforce alone, which is equivalent to 1 in every 22 South Africans employed in the sector. South African tourism has even overtaken the mining sector as a national employer. Furthermore, the sector is set to bring some R300 billion into the economy. With so much potential, we cannot afford to hamper the growth of South African tourism, something the Home Department is intent on doing with unnecessary visa rules.

The initial rationale behind the visa rules was to curb child trafficking, but it has to be regulated through traveler profiling and cooperation with Interpol, which is done by almost every other country in the world. South Africa's approach to this problem through the use of abbreviated birth certificates is economic suicide.

The DA will continue to protect and promote economic growth in South Africa as a principled means of uplifting our people through the creation of jobs and opportunities.

Issued by Beverly Schaefer, Chair of the Standing Committee on Economic Opportunity, Tourism and Agriculture, 19 April 2017