Maseru, Mar. 19 — Members of the public have expressed mixed feelings on the recently announced 90 days visa for Basotho to be in South Africa.
On Thursday last week, Ministers of Home Affairs, South Africa and Lesotho announced the 90 days visa which will be implemented once the Parliament in the former country has finalized and gazette it.
Speaking in an interview, one Mr. Lebamang Mofolo said that this is another issue which shows that South Africa thinks very little of Lesotho saying that they made sure that only the agreement for return of third country citizens was signed because it fully concerns South Africa.
He said that even the 90 days visa should have been signed saying that they could have facilitated the signing of agreements for both issues.
Another Ms. Lineo Mocheko said that South Africa is going for elections in May and there is no way that the ruling party African National Congress (ANC) can make such a drastic decision.
She said that many Basotho work in South Africa and 90 days is not going to help at all saying that the 30 days are still acceptable.
“South Africa will never make it easy for foreigners to work there, it has a 27 percent unemployment rate and since it is elections soon the ANC will never commit such a grievous mistake,” she said.
On the other hand, Mr. Tumo Shelile indicated that this is just a tactic by South Africa as it is going for elections in May saying that if this could be gazetted and implemented before May then it would be just so that Basotho who have South African identity documents (IDs) but still stay in Lesotho are lured to go to vote.
Moreover, Ms. Mamello Khoabane said that if Lesotho should have any agreement it has to return the six months visa and not three months especially with passports being a great challenge for Basotho. She said that this would mean that passports will take longer as they will not be stamped.
Lesotho introduced an E-Visa program on May 01, 2017 for visa-required nationals. It provides 90-day visa exemptions to nationals of 49 countries and 14 days visa exemptions to nationals of 22 countries.
