The home affairs department this week came clean and finally revealed that it had run out of passport booklets.
However, the damage has already been done and could be irreversible. Some Basotho who work or study in South Africa and even further afield, have had their lives disrupted after their passports expired and they could not get new ones. This forced them to stay put in the county because they could not travel without a passport.
This raises a serious argument of whether owning a passport is a right or a privilege. That is a debate for another day. Either way, passports play a major role in international mobility.
Passports are an official document for international travel issued by the respective authority, indicating the nationality of the bearer, serving as an identification document, and entitling the bearer to leave, to return and to claim the diplomatic protection of the issuing state.
It has been argued that passports are still a privilege in many countries in the world in which people do not have access to them. States should not arbitrarily deprive their subjects of owning a passport.
What about travel? Is it a right or a prerogative? An individual’s right to freedom of international travel has been overwhelmingly linked to his possession of a passport in the recent past. The passport has thus become an increasingly important document since it was first introduced. Its importance has been further enhanced by the technological innovations which have considerably decreased the time element in travel to the point where man can virtually span the globe in a matter of hours.
The good news, according to home affairs, is that passports will be easily available by December 30. Let’s wait and see!
