The Acting High Commissioner for India in South Africa, Mr T Armstrong Changsan, said India was ready to introduce biometric visas for South African visitors but was stalling and adopting a wait-and-see approach as it weighed up the possibility of harming inbound tourism. For the moment, it will hold back unless it receives strict instructions from Delhi.
He said visa process in South Africa would be simpler than the South African experience in India as South Africa was far smaller and already had three Indian consular services, in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Mr Changsan said the possibility of visas on arrival for South Africans also remained a possibility and “a work in progress”. His “educated reading” was that it would not be a visa on arrival in the conventional sense but would take the form of an advance travel authorisation, where applications for entry would be made online, and copies carried by travellers for display at immigration counters on arrival.
He said the South African government could ease the biometric application process for Indian visitors if it added visa processing centres in Kolkata and Chennai to better service the Indian travelling public with a more comprehensive geographic spread. Currently South Africa operates consulates only in Delhi and Mumbai.
The Acting High Commissioner said that, as far as the unabridged birth certificate requirement was concerned, all Indian passports contained the names of both parents of minor passport holders. Furthermore, the granting of Indian passports was subject to very stringent approval process and was one of the most difficult documents to obtain in his country. He believed this would satisfy South African authorities and stand as a variation of the required birth certificate.
