29/08/2026
Traveling can be challenging but more challenging as a family whilst having passports from different countries.
1. Some immigration officers still don't understand that people from different countries can be married 😀😀. They still don't know that love knows or see no borders.
2. If you have dual nationality, meaning you have two passports from two different countries, suppose one of those passports is from South Africa because you are a citizen, and you got another one through marriage or staying in that country for minimum required time, when leaving or arriving in 🇿🇦, you can only use South African passport and some countries where you got your passports from, will only allow you to leave or arrive using their passport only, meaning you travel with both of them.
3. When you arrive in 🇿🇦 as a family, suppose your husband or wife is holding a foreign passport and they don't have permit or permanent resident in 🇿🇦, you will have your passports stamped at two separate counters,as there is a counter for citizens and permanent residents or permit holders and there is a separate counter for other passports mostly those on visit visors and that counter line is very long.
4. The most challenging one is 🇿🇦 passport has more countries where visa is not required or it's easy to obtain visa, whereas Ministers passport gets less countries, so even if we want to visit a certain country, we have to get visa for Minister first. What ever place we want to visit, we have to think of Ministers passport first. A good example, we wanted to visit the USA, as South African passport holders, getting visas was easy, yet the Minister's visa was rejected. Mind you, he has been to the USA before but this time they rejected his visa.
5. This one has nothing to do with the passport type, but if one parent is travelling outside 🇿🇦 with children, the other parent who is not travelling,must sign an affidavit, giving the other parent permission to travel with kids. Even if both parents are travelling together, they must carry children's birth certificates and marriage certificate and handover to the immigration officers. This is meant to curb unauthorized child movement. This is a very good initiative.
6. By the way, South Africa allows dual citizenship. Meaning if one parent is from South Africa, a citizen, the child automatically is South African and they can, if they want, also have the citizenship of the other parent, hence dual citizenship.
7. In other countries, I have heard people, asking my fellow South Africans, who are not black, "Why are you South African when you are not black". I don't know who told people that South Africans are only black.
8. Others, especially from the so called developed world or leaders of this world, think Africa is one country compressed into a village. When you say you are from South Africa or Zimbabwe, they don't understand. They want you to say I'm from Africa, then they smile,get excited and start asking questions like, "Oh yeah, I have a friend, in Ghana, do you know them?". They think Africa is a village and we meet everyone whilst fetching water in a community well. Travelling will make you question the education standards of these so-called leaders of this world.
