{"id":219017,"date":"2026-01-03T11:07:01","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T09:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/lesotho-passport-issuance-remains-a-crisis\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T11:07:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T09:07:01","slug":"lesotho-passport-issuance-remains-a-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/lesotho-passport-issuance-remains-a-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesotho: Passport Issuance Remains a Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"6\"><em>&#8230;despite government efforts to reduce backlog<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"36\"><strong>D<\/strong>ESPITE the government&#8217;s promise to issue passports within three days for Basotho working and studying in South Africa, many applicants say there is little hope they will receive their documents in time to return to work.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"32\">Thousands of Basotho have been queuing daily at passport offices in Maseru since Saturday, but progress has reportedly been minimal due to an alleged system shutdown at the Department of Home Affairs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n  <span style=\"font-size: 110%;\"><br \/>\nKeep up with the latest&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202601020242.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Lesotho\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/\">Lesotho<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;despite government efforts to reduce backlog DESPITE the government&#8217;s promise to issue passports within three days for Basotho working and studying in South Africa, many applicants say there is little hope they will receive their documents in time to return to work. Thousands of Basotho have been queuing daily at passport offices in Maseru since [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":219018,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1406],"tags":[258,256,3723,17722,4717,1407,257,4346,7602,254],"class_list":["post-219017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lesotho","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-crisis","tag-issuance","tag-lesotho","tag-lesotho-news","tag-news","tag-passport","tag-remains","tag-south-africa-today"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}