This archive report was first published on 15 August 2019.
On Thursday, South Africa's Home Affairs Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, announced a unilateral decision to waive visa requirements for visitors from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and New Zealand.
This move aims to boost tourism in the country, which has been hit hard by an economic crisis and falling visitor numbers. According to official tourism figures released in May, the overall number of visitors to South Africa from Europe and the Middle East dipped in the first financial quarter of the year.
Foreign traveller arrivals decreased by more than 10 percent between April and May 2019 alone, with the country's economy contracting by 3.2 percent in the first three months of 2019 and unemployment at a record high of 29 percent.
However, the government estimates that there is potential to create 2.1 million jobs in the tourism sector by 2028, and Motsoaledi believes that the visa waiver will help to achieve this goal.
South Africa has already waived the visa requirement for 82 of the 193 countries who are UN members, and is in talks to extend the visa waiver to Ghana, Cuba, and Principe and Sao Tome.
