Three reasons Ghanaians still need a visa to South Africa

Ghana is yet to act in respect of a 90-day visa-free arrangement for ordinary passport holders with the Republic of South Africa (RSA), despite the challenges businesses and individuals currently have to go through to acquire a visa to travel to the Southern Africa nation.

AviationGhana sources close to the issue, explained that the South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Regional Cooperations tabled the offer more than a year ago so as to facilitate trade and investment between the two countries but Ghana is yet to accept the terms.

The Department offered a 90-day visa-free entry per year for Ghanaian ordinary passport holders. Persons who want to stay longer would have the option of applying for visa to enable them extend their stay.

However, Ghana is said to have asked for 180days – a length of time rarely granted in such visa-free arrangements between two nations.

Additionally, while the SA Department of International Relations and Regional Cooperations was seeking to have this done through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) since there already exist a bilateral relation between the two countries. However, Ghana say it is to table arrangement through Parliament before it can give effect to same.

The third issue is the removal of undesirable persons from the RSA. RSA wants the Government of Ghana (GoG) to bear the cost of returning its citizens who overstay their welcome or go contrary to the laws of RSA for which reasons they become unwanted in the rainbow nation. GoG disagrees with this, according close sources with in-depth knowledge about these discussions.

Despite these initial observations raised by Ghana, there has not been any further action on the South Africa visa waiver proposal. The RSA Home Affairs office says it has been waiting all this while for Ghana to act and move the discussions forward so as to actualize the said arrangement.

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