South Africa's Department of Home Affairs issued Immigration Directive 7 of 2026 on Wednesday 1 April 2026, extending the lawful stay of foreign nationals with pending visa, waiver or appeal applications until 30 June 20271. The same directive granted waiver applicants permission to leave and re-enter the country from that date, reopening movement for the cohort that had been pinned in place by the 30 March stay concession.
The earlier concession had been an emergency patch with a short horizon. The new directive converts it into a fifteen-month formal cover. Lawful presence is preserved; a final decision on the underlying application is not. Two days later the Cabinet approved the points-based reform white paper, an order of operations that put the patch in writing before the future architecture went to print.
Immigration specialist Jaco Brits told EWN (Eyewitness News, a South African newsroom) that DHA is processing applications, but "outcomes are often rejected for unclear or nonsensical reasons, creating a new backlog of appeals"2. The implication is that even the cohort whose papers come back in time may face a second cycle through the system.
The Helen Suzman Foundation and the Scalabrini Centre continue to litigate DHA delay before the Constitutional Court. Their cases set the procedural backstop that Directive 7 implicitly concedes: the department cannot meet statutory processing deadlines for the cohort the directive covers, and that fact is now in the litigation record. The fifteen-month horizon is the price of avoiding a Constitutional Court order that would force tighter compliance.
