Passport application - Home affairs

Stevi

Stevi

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Hi all,

Hope you are well.

With regards to the passport application process at the Home Affairs at a branch, a colleague of mine could only get a booking for the end of the month. She went through the whole payment and all.

We need to travel for work in early August, so it may be cutting it too fine to get the passport in time.

Do you know if she would be able to go to a Home Affairs office and complete her application there? (as in carry on the next step of the process there) She is worried she may lose the money for the original application.

Edit: Tried phoning them and no answer...

Thanks
 
With Home Affairs you don't book, unless things have changed in the last two months. You book with banks though, if you have the option of going to a bank.

Home Affairs is just a matter of doing the application and payment online, then pitching up at a DHA branch at some weird hour, and camping there to get your fingerprints and photo taken. Then you wait two weeks or so to get the SMS that the passport is ready, and go back and fetch it.
 
mr_norris said:
With Home Affairs you don't book, unless things have changed in the last two months. You book with banks though, if you have the option of going to a bank.

Home Affairs is just a matter of doing the application and payment online, then pitching up at a DHA branch at some weird hour, and camping there to get your fingerprints and photo taken. Then you wait two weeks or so to get the SMS that the passport is ready, and go back and fetch it.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

She originally made the appointment at one of the bank branches.
 
Stevi said:
Thanks.

She originally made the appointment at one of the bank branches.
Click to expand...

The home affairs passport and id system is currently broken. I know this because I have been twice to the Atlantis office in the Western Cape to fetch my completed passport with no success.

According to the lady at the office yesterday the system has been broken since Wednesday, and is likely to stay broken until next Wednesday in the Western Cape.

After a bit of research I found this which basically confirms what she said.

So it would seem that Gigababa has once again broken something that previously sort of worked, just, for this.
 
Last edited:
I t was all over the news, the HA systems will be down till Sunday. They are rolling out new software.
 
Has anyone tried the passport service at DHA in Malibongwe recently? What (if any) is a good day to queue?
 
Do they only accept cash at Home Affairs branches in and around Cape Town? Anyone know what the queues are like (for passport renewal and new ID card) at the CPT CBD branch?
 
Was at Barrack Street branch in July. Queued for two hours when they opened at 08:00.

On a different note, my application online now says “document ready for collection” but applied for passport and ID (two documents) so not sure if should risk going to see what’s actually available. Haven’t received any SMS yet and it’s been 15 working days.
 
It's been about 5 weeks since my passport appointment, and nothing has happened.

Computers at HA appear to be down quite often, so not sure whether anything will happen.

This is a problem, I need the new passport in a couple of weeks.
 
Rolled the dice and went to home affairs this morning. Turned out that both ID and passport were ready for collection. Based on the dates printed on both, they were finished within a week of the application. For some reason they don't send the SMS notification, other people in the queue had the same problem. I would recommend just going to their offices and checking the status.
 
A lady spoke to Cape Talk yesterday.

She took her daughters 5 and 8 with her but queued for 6 hours and were eventually turned away. Said the children were lying on the pavement :)
 
I guess it's going to be quite busy now.

I went for my renewal some time ago - around August 2015. Same process, though: queued outside Randburg Home Affairs at 06:30. Was a bit peeved to find about 20 people ahead of me, but when we started moving forward when the doors finally opened about 2 hours later, there were a few hundred behind me. Went and had my prints and photo taken (the scammers offering cheap passport photos still try catch uninformed people out while they wait outside - remember, it's all digital and done inside), and the whole process (apart from the wait) took about 30mins max. I received my collection SMS about 2 weeks later.

Only advice I can give is to get there as early as possible.
 
maumau said:
A lady spoke to Cape Talk yesterday.

She took her daughters 5 and 8 with her but queued for 6 hours and were eventually turned away. Said the children were lying on the pavement :)
Click to expand...
My wife had a similar issue at the Edenvale HA. Waited with her in the queue from 08:00-12:00. Got to 3rd from the front, and some random security guard said they don't want to take anymore people for the day. No specific reason why. Just not helping anyone else. At that stage there were about 100 people behind us - and we all just had to go home and try another day.

Interesting observation was that the opening times had been scratched off the glass on the door. Not updated, either.
 
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