President Jacob Zuma got the full state visit reception in Nairobi, Kenya on Tuesday, including a 21-gun-salute and a guard of honour mounted by the country\u2019s military.<\/p>\n
Speaking about visa exemptions, cuts in visa fees and multiple-entry visas for business people to visit South Africa, Zuma said: \u201cThe matter is receiving attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite his host, Kenya\u2019s President Uhuru Kenyatta, calling him \u201cdear brother and friend\u201d and pleading Kenya\u2019s case for visa relief, Zuma said at a joint press conference with him that issues of immigration had to be handled carefully.<\/p>\n
Kenya wanted visa reciprocity to enable a much freer movement of people between Nairobi and Johannesburg. Kenyans grant visas to South Africans on arrival in Nairobi and Nairobi has been pushing South Africa to do the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause this is a privilege that Kenya already extends to South African nationals coming into Kenya, in our view there is no reason why both our governments cannot agree on exemption for visas for each other\u2019s citizens. I believe such an action will allow both our people, to get to know one another and to be able to work together for mutual benefit,\u201d Kenyatta said reminding Zuma.<\/p>\n
Kenyatta said Zuma had made a \u201ccommitment to urgently look at resolving these outstanding matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a reply to a question, Zuma said that visas were discussed, but the discussions were inconclusive. The South African government had heard the pleas from Nairobi and would work on a compromise.<\/p>\n
\u201d\u2026 that issue has featured in our discussion of how do we move forward to allow the movement of goods and people to happen. Of course we have to deal with a lot of things that the President (Kenyatta) calls \u201cobstacles\u201d that we need to remove,\u201d Zuma said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are already steps that have been taken to allow people of specific categories who must not have problems to come into South Africa et cetera and we discussed some of the issues that need to be considered very thoroughly to allow that process to come in.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a matter in progress which is being worked on by the two countries taking into account the issues I raised so that when we reach the final understanding there are no loopholes that will be used by wrong people who might use that kind of opening for their own reasons,\u201d said Zuma.<\/p>\n
But he added that even within the African Union, it had been agreed that the \u201cissue of hard borders and the problem of visas\u201d had to be worked out carefully, and mentioned that both the five-member East Africa Community and the 15-member South Africa Development Community were working to integrate their individual blocs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is the broader agenda of the African Union, to soften the borders of the continent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Jacob Zuma got the full state visit reception in Nairobi, Kenya on Tuesday, including a 21-gun-salute and a guard of honour mounted by the country\u2019s military. Speaking about visa exemptions, cuts in visa fees and multiple-entry visas for business people to visit South Africa, Zuma said: \u201cThe matter is receiving attention.\u201d Despite his host, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[250],"tags":[256,3951,1750,259,437,5763],"class_list":["post-6999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kenya","tag-africa-news","tag-australians-killed-in-kenya","tag-jacob-zuma","tag-nairobi","tag-uhuru-kenyatta","tag-visa-exemptions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}