1. South African Missions abroad provided limited services to South African citizens during lockdown. This included applications for passports and emergency travel certificates for those who wanted to return to South Africa.
2. No contact was made with governments of countries with large expatriate communities of South African citizens because South African citizens abroad were allowed to apply for passports during lockdown.
3. The transportation of applications and official correspondence from South African Diplomatic Missions abroad is done in term of Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961and is done via Diplomatic Bag which is administered by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation.
4. Yes, the Department is considering the installation of the eHome Affairs and Live Capture System in the Missions abroad in order to reduce the turnaround times for South Africans living abroad. In July 2019, an IT team visited the UK Mission and concluded that before such installation is done a network security review should be conducted by the State Security Agency (SSA) before implementation, in order to prevent vulnerabilities and cyber-attacks and the implementation plan will be finalized during the 2021/2022 financial year.
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