Crossing borders in Africa as a South African traveler is easier in Africa. The South African passport may not be the golden key that magically opens the doors to countries worldwide, but it definitely is your easy ticket to much of Africa.

As many South Africans may well have experienced, travel as a South African national can be a bureaucratic process involving much paperwork and many different sometimes expensive visas. This is not the case for travel on the African continent, where South Africans are largely free to roam without visa hassles.

According to travel experts at Overlanding Africa and Rainbow Nation citizens of South Africa are exempt from visa requirements for:

• Benin
• Botswana
• Gabon
• Kenya
• Lesotho
• Malawi
• Mozambique
• Namibia
• Senegal
• Seychelles
• Swaziland
• Zambia

Zimbabwe issues a free visa to South Africans at the point of entry. To visit Tanzania a traveler from South Africa will be issued a visa on arrival. Both Rwanda and Ethiopia issue SA nationals with a visa on arrival or at their border crossings. For the Ethiopian visa SA tourists get it cheaper than visitors from outside of Africa and for travel to Rwandan the document is free for South African passport holders.

It certainly is encouraging to know that overland and multiple-country travel is made easier for South Africans in some parts of the world, like the continents of Africa and South America that welcome the green book.

Also see the South African passport holder information on the Rainbow Nation site’s visa guide page and this Africa Travel guide.

The Africa Visa Requirements and Travel Documents page of Overlanding Africa offers useful information for both South African nationals and other passport holders.

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