The Department of Home Affairs has launched South Africa’s Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) platform, which was designed to modernise and digitally transform South Africa’s visa and immigration system.
ETA was officially launched on Wednesday, 12 August by South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, together with the Minister of Home Affairs, Leon Schreiber.
The ETA is described as the cornerstone of South Africa’s modern digital immigration system and the flagship reform of the Department of Home Affairs’ digital transformation programme.
This digital authorisation allows prospective travelers from eligible visa-required countries to travel to South Africa without the need for a traditional visitor’s visa.
Home Affairs Minister Schreiber said, “The process was manual, in many case it was paper-based and there were only a few locations available in some countries where prospective visitors had to physically go and apply.”
Schreiber emphasizes that this old-school process resulted in huge economic losses for South Africa, as well as security vulnerabilities.
“These manual processes could be manipulated – everything from a visa permit document to a passport or even just outright bribery is possible when you have a system that is discretionary and where an official is actually processing that application.”
“So we are addressing both the economic side of the equation as well as the security side by rolling out this Electronic Travel Authorisation.”
During the pilot phase with four countries, 6 100 out of 210 000 applictions were declined because of security concerns.
Schreiber says the ETA will deliver a visa within 24 hours of an application being made.
Security measures include facial recognition and verification of submitted documents, as well as additional risk management tools like checking whether the applicant is on any wanted lists.
“If they are a legitimate traveller, they get a visa outcome within 24 hours which they store in the wallet on their phone. When they arrive in South Africa they do facial verification once again, so we completely remove discretion from this process.”
Schreiber explains why they are making the electronic visa available also on a voluntary basis.
“For people who are visa-exempt, which is particularly our traditional tourism source markets, we’re going to make it available voluntarily because we think there are pull factors that will make people actually demand this.”
The benefits include quicker processing on arrival in South Africa and a built-in extension module making it easier to get the 90-day extension visitors are entitled to, but have experienced huge problems with.
