E-visa system: Government should focus on a tourism reboot

Another government promise; another letdown. This time it’s the proposed new e-visa system – an online tool that was supposed to boost SA’s tourism and travel industries by making it easier for travellers to visit our country.

The application process should take 20 minutes. Our new e-visa system – an electronic processing of documents planned to be rolled out in 15 countries – was meant to go live in March. Covid decimated our tourism industry.

We can’t make any mistakes if we want to take our tourism to its previous heights, but shooting ourselves in the foot is what our government excels at. Apparently, glitches in the system have seen a delay in rolling out this e-visa process.

Government’s response? It’s not our fault. There’s no problem.

Home affairs director-general Tommy Makhode insists more than 70% of the world can visit our shores “without a visa”. At least Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu this month acknowledged there’s a problem and conceded “the backlog is huge”.

She said: “Just converting what we have on paper to being computerised is taking a lot of time.” But that’s not good enough. The Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa (Fedhasa) are disappointed.

Fedhasa national chair Rosemary Anderson says: “Unfortunately, we still don’t have a true e-visa system in place. The tourism and hospitality industry is very keen on assisting with this because it is a major catalyst towards attracting more international travellers to the country.

“We need each government department to look at facilitating the smooth running of tourism.” Tourism is only just finding its feet after the pandemic. We can’t afford any further slip-ups.

READ NEXT:  We still don’t have true e-visa system in place, we only have an online system – Fedhasa