South Africa has established itself internationally as a staunch friend of the Palestinian people. So why is the Department of Home Affairs scrapping its visa exemption for Palestinians? On 6 December, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) announced that it was scrapping a 90-day visa exemption for Palestinian passport holders, causing outrage from activists.
We unpack the saga. During November,two mysterious charter planes carrying Palestinian passengerslanded at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport. Due to the circumstances of the flights — which included that passengers seemed to have been stripped of possessions before boarding and in many cases were not aware that their final destination was South Africa — speculation immediately began to circulate that these flights, organised by a dubious company called Al-Majd Europe, could be part of an Israeli project to depopulate Gaza.
In its statement, the DHA effectively confirmed this, without giving details. “Following investigations and recommendations by national intelligence structures and consultations conducted within the Security Cluster — which confirmed the deliberate and ongoing abuse of the 90-day visa exemption for Palestinian ordinary passport holders by Israeli actors linked to ‘voluntary emigration’ efforts for residents of the Gaza Strip — the Department of Home Affairs has withdrawn the exemption,” it stated. “Investigations also indicated that the arrival of these charter flights were not intended to be once-off events, but that they may be part of a broader, ongoing effort to relocate Palestinians to other parts of the world.” The statement concluded by quoting Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber as saying: “South Africa will not be complicit in any scheme to exploit or displace Palestinians from Gaza”.
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In other words, DHA says it is withdrawing the visa exemption to protect Palestinians and prevent them from being “flushed out” of Gaza. In theory, yes. DHA said: “Going forward, visa applications from bona fide Palestinian travellers will be processed accordingly to enable them to visit South Africa.” They would, in theory, simply need to apply for a visitor’s visa, like nationals of all countries that don’t have a visa-exemption protocol with South Africa.
But in reality, lawyers say, it will be extremely difficult for Palestinians to achieve this. Immigration attorney Anke Truter told Daily Maverick: “No Palestinian will be able to board either a commercial or charter flight to South Africa without a valid visitor’s visa. And to do this, they have to present themselves at a foreign mission accredited to receive applications for South African visas.”
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