Zimbabweans living in South Africa will have to pay a premium fee of $270 to acquire passports, as the government has indicated that their passport applications will be treated as “express” or “emergency” cases.
An ordinary passport that takes seven days to process costs $150 in Zimbabwe, with an additional $20 “application fee.”
However, the Zimbabwean Consulate in Johannesburg has announced that the option to apply for an ordinary passport will not be available to Zimbabweans living in South Africa.
Instead, they will be required to pay $250 (approximately R4,550) plus the application fee of $20 (R364) – the same cost that Zimbabweans in the country pay for emergency passports.
The Zimbabwean government recently started processing passport applications at its consulate in Johannesburg, a move that has now resulted in the implementation of these premium fees for Zimbabweans residing in South Africa.
In a public notice issued on Friday, July 26th, Zimbabwe’s Consul General Eria Phiri announced the new passport application fees for Zimbabweans in South Africa. He said:
The Ministry of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage has directed that, all e- passport applications that are processed at the Consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa shall be handled as express/ emergency applications in terms of Statutory Instrument 1 of 2024.
In effect, this means passport application fees for the express/ emergency passport shall be USD250.00 charged at the prevailing USD/ZAR exchange rate with effect from Monday 29 July 2024.
Zimbabwe’s passport fees are the most expensive in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. An adult passport costs R600 (approximately $33) in South Africa, P260 ($19) in Botswana, and R400 ($23) in Namibia.
In comparison, the Zimbabwean government has set the passport fee for its citizens at $270, which is significantly higher than the fees charged by its regional counterparts.
Zimbabwe’s passport production is being carried out in partnership with Garsu Pasaulis, a Lithuania-registered company owned by Semlex of Belgium.
According to ZimLive, this contract was granted to Garsu Pasaulis without a public tender process, and the Zimbabwean government has refused to disclose the share of revenue the company collects from each printed passport.
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