Foreigners, beware of the 60 days visa filing trap

Source: Business Day, 11/06/2025

If you are visiting SA or already here on a visa, take this as a public-interest warning. In 2025, a quiet, but sharp, shift has taken hold inside parts of home affairs adjudication ranks: applications are being refused almost mechanically if they were not submitted at least 60 days before visa expiry.A wave of refusals repeating near-identical wording:The applicant did not submit his/her application no less than 60 days prior to the expiry date of his/her visa.

The rigid application of this rule, devoid of consideration for mitigating circumstances, raises serious concerns about the fairness and legality of such administrative decisions. Expedient decisions that appear to priorities throughput over individualized assessment. Little leeway is shown for good cause, and scant attention is given to the real-world context that the law actually requires decision makers to weigh. From buffer to tripwire This matters because the 60-day filing rule was never meant to be a guillotine. It appears in regulation 9(8)(c) for extensions and regulation 9(5)(a) for changes of status or conditions. Those provisions, which date back to 2014, set a protective default timing that functioned as an administrative safeguard.Its purpose was to provide a buffer period, ensuring that applicants were not unduly penalised for delays in processing that were beyond their control. Until the Covid-19 lockdown and the resulting visa backlog, visa applications were indicatively processed within 60 days. However, the current stringent implementation of this regulation as an inflexible deadline has transformed it into a tool of punitive precision, disregarding the context in which it was established.

For the past decade applicants who could show good cause for their late filing of a visa application successfully submitted a short condonation motivation that acknowledged the rule by pleading for its waiving. Adjudicators have an obligation to balance, where good cause exists, the rule against other interests in making fair and rational administrative decisions. PAJA, Section 33 and legitimate expectations What has changed in 2025 is not the text of the regulations, it is a practice: a growing tendency to read the 60-day line as an absolute bar, with refusals issued on mechanical reasoning. That approach is not merely harsh; it is legally brittle.Fair administrative justice in terms of section 33 of the constitution, given legislative force through the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act of 2000¯(PAJA) demands decisions to be lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair.

A refusal that treats regulation 9 as absolute while ignoring any good cause constitutes an abuse. A rejection notice that disregards relevant considerations, including submission appointment scarcity (via VFS Global), medical or school calendars, delays to access required documentation, or public-interest factors such as critical skills and business investment, is unreasonable.

The preamble of the Immigration Act itself commits the department to issuing permits as expeditiously as possible via simplified procedures and objective, predictable and reasonable requirements and criteria, and without consuming excessive administrative capacity, an administrative ethic that is incompatible with treating 60 days as a tripwire as it is currently.

Further compromising this practice is the acceptance of visa and processing fees paid by applicants to book visa appointments, which gives rise to a legitimate expectation of fair processing and reliance on good cause condonations.

Even where the department seeks efficiency, PAJAs demands that a departure is reasonable and justifiable, having regard to the objects of the empowering provision, the nature, purpose and likely effects of the decision, any urgency, and the need for efficient yet good governance.

Inlate filing matters, where outcomes can jeopardise families, jobs, studies and investment, those factors generally point towards supporting a condonation.

Moreover, the constitutional imperative to protect family unity, as underscored by landmark Constitutional Court rulings such as Nandutu (2019) and Rayment/Anderson (2023), necessitates a more nuanced approach.

The inflexible application of the 60-day rule in cases involving spouses or children of SA citizens or permanent residents is not only legally indefensible but also constitutionally flawed where family life and childrens interests are engaged, as it jeopardises the very fabric of family life.

The Constitutional Court has clearly advanced a rights-sensitive approach that enables in-country regularisation to protect family unity and childrens best interests.

Emotional and economic cost This trap is wide and has vast repercussions. It catches off guard tourists who decide to extend a stay, students who discover an exam timetable conflict or delays in enrolment; critically skilled employees awaiting for a SA Qualifications Authority (Saqa) evaluation, foreign business investors seeking to renew their visas that were previously granted as deemed to be in the national interest; spouses arranging paperwork across borders, and applicants who simply cannot find a submission slot early enough. The list could go on.

In each of these scenarios the legislative scheme expects adjudicators to look at the facts, consider good cause and make reasoned and balanced decisions, not mechanically reject applications which were accepted against payment of fees at the time of scheduling an appointment.

One cannot celebrate the departments recovery from the backlog and at the same time punish applicants for living through it.

Institutional memory and balance A credible system must be able to practise two institutional disciplines: memory and balance. Memory means owning the departments recent past of years-long delays, appointment scarcity, the chain of directives and concessions published addressing the backlog and the delays in the processing of visa applications.

It also means understanding the basis of the existence of the 60-day precautionary measure as a buffer, which was never intended to bar foreigners from acting on the validity of their statuses and to avoid becoming illegal, and where necessary until the last working day before the expiry. Balance means applying the scheme we have, which allows for good-cause condonation; PAJAs and constitutional principles of reasonable and justifiable decisions.

Decisions taken with memory and balance are predictable without being punitive: they conserve administrative capacity, keep willing applicants inside the lawful channel, and give business and families a stable system. Decisions that lack this operational framework sow uncertainty and undermine the objectives set out in the preamble of the act.

It is incumbent upon the department to adopt a balanced approach, one that acknowledges the complexities of real-world situations and the inherent flexibility required in administrative decision-making.