Visa and Waiver Extensions now until End of 2023
On 29 March 2023, The Director General of the Department of Home Affairs has issued the long-awaited Circular in which the currently pending Visa and Waiver applications are extended again, this time until the end of the year, 31st December 2023. But differently from the previous extension, this extension only pertains to all long-term visa, not to any 90-Day Visitor Visa.
Those, who applied for an extension of their visitor visa are now required to leave the country on or before the 30th of April 2023. Only long-term visa applicants (Work, Business, Study, Relative or Critical Skill) may remain until end of the year.
For those, who need to leave the country, the rules have also changed: while before you could use your VfS submission receipt to leave and re-enter, now if you applied for a waiver you will have to abandon your application and re-enter with a visitor visa and if you applied for an extension of your temporary visa. The same applies and you have to abandon your application to return on a visitor visa.
This circular is a written admission of the Department that the backlog has now increased to 62 692 applications and to the failure and inability of the current leadership, especially Minister Motsoaledi, to run the Department of Home Affairs. It is also a slap into the face of any foreigner still waiting for the legal extension of their temporary residence and just another expression of the xenophobic attitude of those Ministers, who are untouchable and stay in office despite their blatant incompetence.