The South African Government has revised the list of high-risk countries whose citizens may presently not travel to South Africa for leisure / tourism purposes.

Whilst the list has been pared down from over 60 countries to 22 countries the revised list is disappointing as the countries from which the most international tourists are received are still on the list or have now been added to the list. The countries added to the list include Germany and Spain while the countries that remain on the list include the United Kingdom, United States, the Netherlands and France.

The updated list of high risk countries is:

The following categories of persons from high risk countries may still apply for permission from the Minister of Home Affairs to visit South Africa: : business travellers, holders of critical skills visas, investors and people on international mission in sports, arts, culture and science. 

It is important to note that persons from high-risk countries may also now apply for long term visas in their countries.

In an interesting development the Department of Home Affairs further announced that property owners from high risk countries that wish to come to South Africa for at least a 3 month stay may now also apply for special permission from the Minister of Home Affairs.

The Department of Home Affairs provided some stats with regards to the number of persons from high risk countries that had applied for and been granted special approval to enter South Africa.

In the first two weeks that the Covid19BusinessTravel@dha.gov.za email address had been in operation, 4 701 applications were received, mostly from investors in agriculture, manufacturing, mining and tourism. Of these applications, 3113 have been approved.

The Department advised that the capacity for processing these applications would be increased and that they were aiming to achieve a turn-around time of 24 hours for processing of such applications. By all accounts however these applications are not been timeously processed or sometimes are not being processed at all, and such advice should be viewed with scepticism.