South Africa: Minister of Home Affairs Dr. Leon Schreiber published the Draft Revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection in the Government Gazette on Friday, Dec 12, 2025 and asks for public comment.
Following the directive by Cabinet to maximise public participation beyond the festive season, the period for public comment will remain open till Jan 31, 2026. The Draft Revised White Paper updates the existing White Paper. It reviews and enhances certain policy propositions, adding up the necessary detail to proposals contained in the original version.
The revised version incorporates all the priorities of the Government of National Unity (GNU), the visa review done through Operation Vulindlela (OV) and the Department of Home Affairs’ digital transformation agenda.
The revised draft outlines a strong vision for the most fundamental reform to South Africa’s Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection frameworks in a generation. It is designed to clamp down on fraud and abuse, enhance national security, improve service delivery and promote the economic development.
Key reforms proposed in the Draft Revised White Paper include:
Refugee Management Reforms
It is the refinement and implementation of the ‘First Safe Country Principle’, which states that asylum seekers who have been granted refugee status or lawful protection in another country, or who pass through safe third countries to reach South Africa, are ineligible for asylum in South Africa.
The reform aims to curb asylum by designating safe third countries annually, ensuring protection against refoulement. It promotes bilateral agreements to share migration responsibility regionally and aligns South Africa with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR’s) route-based approach to manage migration flows.
Citizenship Reforms
The reforms introduce merit-based criteria for naturalisation and an annual window period for the submission of applications to prevent backlogs. A Citizenship Advisory Panel (CAP) will objectively consider and advise on applications on a point-based system for economic pathways to citizenship.
This is a new merit-based approach to the granting of citizenship, as opposed to basing qualification solely on the number of years as a foreigner has resided in the country. This is a new system that will operate in parallel to the existing principle that a child with at least one parent who is a South African citizen at the time of birth automatically becomes a citizen, while a child born to non-South African parents have to apply for naturalisation.
Immigration Reforms
These reforms to the immigration system are designed to ensure alignment of the visa system with the recommendations of OV and to the Department’s digital transformation agenda.
This includes the introduction of new visa categories for remote-work, start-ups, skilled workers (which combines the existing critical skills and general work visas into one category). It also considers sports and culture, and the replacement of corporate visas with sectoral work visas for specific industries.
It also introduces a new, merit-based points-based system for certain visas and permanent residency, and supports the rollout of the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) to record biometrics for every foreigner in South Africa.
Civil Registration Reforms
This is anchored in the transformation of South Africa’s National Population Register (NPR) into a modern, digitally enabled Intelligent Population Register (IPR) as the foundation for a Digital ID system.
Unlike the existing NPR, which simply records basic information, including names, births, and deaths, an IPR uses advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, biometrics, interoperability and real-time data integration, to improve governance, integrated service delivery, and national planning.
The Department will publish further details on the IPR through a standalone Digital ID policy which is currently under development. This will be supported by the introduction of mandatory digital birth and death registration for citizens and resident foreigners. The release of the Draft Revised White Paper initiates a public consultation period from Dec 12, 2025 to Jan 31, 2026.
During this time, individuals and organisations may submit written comments and attend consultation sessions. Public consultations will be held across all nine provinces between Jan 15 and 30, 2026, alongside a national stakeholder session involving government, civil society, business, labour, academia, and multilateral organisations.