HARARE – Zimbabweans living in South Africa will pay higher fees to acquire passports after the government said their passport applications will be treated as “express” or “emergency”.
An ordinary passport which takes seven days costs US$150 in Zimbabwe, with an additional $20 “application fee.”
In a shock announcement, Zimbabwe’s embassy in South Africa says this option will not be available to Zimbabweans living in that country.
Instead, they will pay US$250 (about R4,550) plus the application fee of US$20 (R364) – the fee that Zimbabweans at home pay for emergency passports.
In a July 26 statement, Zimbabwe’s Consul General Eria Phiri said: “The ministry of home affairs has directed that all e-passport applications that are processed at the consulate in Johannesburg shall be handled as express/emergency applications.”
No explanation was provided for the decision.
Zimbabwe recently started processing passport applications at its consulate in Johannesburg. South Africa is reported to be home to between one to three million Zimbabweans, but the exact figure is difficult to determine due to the challenges of tracking undocumented migrants.
South Africa’s new home affairs minister Leon Schreiber has urged foreign nationals to formalise their stay in the country as he launched an intensified deportation campaign.
Zimbabwe is producing passports in partnership with Garsu Pasaulis, a Lithuania-registered company owned by Semlex of Belgium. The two companies have been accused of paying bribes in third world countries to win tenders. Garsu Pasaulis was granted the contract without a public tender, and ministers refuse to say what share the company collects from each printed passport.
By comparison, Zimbabwe’s passport is the most expensive in the regio. An adult passport is R600 in South Africa, P260 in Botswana and R400 in Namibia.
