The determination to approve or reject applications still lies with the Department of Home Affairs, although VFS Global will charge processing visa applications.

Home Minister is happy with the new system, He was talking to journalists:

“We will have the capacity to exercise complete control over the decision making procedures to make sure that our national interests and security imperatives are served at all times,” Gigaba said.

The determination to set up the brand-new facilitation centers and contract their running outside to a private company had been told, “by none apart from our obligation to enhance efficiencies and turnaround times,” he added.

Such centers have been already introduced by the section in several its own high-quantity missions abroad – including its assignments in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and China – where it had formerly fought to reduce expanded queues and lengthy turn-around times, Gigaba said.

“We’ve visa facilitation centers at quite a number of our high-quantity assignments abroad, and they’ve been working pretty successfully … bringing, I might add, to the success of our tourism stats during the previous couple of years. It’s this great practice that we expect to roll out in South Africa.”