• An Adult Passport with 32 pages will cost R600 (up from R400) from 1st November.
• Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says citizens who travel can afford the increases.
• The department has reiterated that there is no such thing as an emergency passport.

Obtaining your passport is about to get a lot more expensive so if you’re in line for a renewal, you may want to do that before 1st November.

On Monday, Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced an increase in the cost of South African passports and other travel documents. The increases are substantial but the last adjustment was set down in 2011.

“We believe that the people who are able to travel out of the country are financially better off than ordinary citizens and they don’t need to be subsidised in the manner we have been doing,” Motsoaledi said in a statement.

The new fees follow on below:

The minister also announced that when applying for documents outside of South Africa the following increases should be noted:

The production costs for passports and other documents are also reportedly higher according to SA News. Government has reportedly been subsidising this cost for passport applicants but not for ordinary ID applicants. For reference, a replacement ID (your first is free) costs R140 and a temporary ID costs R70.

“Once more, we wish to advise our people that there is nothing called an emergency passport. The emergency travel certificate mentioned above is a document available only to South Africans stranded abroad. It helps them to come back home and when they arrive, the usefulness of the document lapses. There is no emergency travel certificate for South Africans who need to travel abroad,” Motsoaledi concluded.

As we mentioned, if you need to renew your passport, do so before 1st November when these increases go into effect.

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