Does my British baby need a South African passport?

[cleverbird]

My husband and I are both South African and in the process of applying for our British passports (dual citizenship) which we will have in the next couple of months. We are looking at moving back to SA as soon as we have these. We recently had a baby girl who obviously is automatically a British Citizen and for whom we can apply for a British passport easily.

My question is whether we need to register her and get her a SA passport BEFORE we move back to SA?

Can she enter the country on her British passport and then we just register her birth and apply for her SA passport once we are home (estimate she will be a couple of months old, no more than 6)?

Help! Im stressed becuase I read on the SA Embassy website that doing her registration/passport app here can take up to 6 months which is much longer than we were planning to stay?

Can anyone help or advise? Suggestions of who I can contact (other than SA Embassy) for further info would be great?

Thanks

[SgtBellPepper]

Hi there,

We had an identical situation 6 years ago.

Here is what we did, and what you can do too.

1. Get your baby a British passport for travel purposes.
2. Travel to South Africa.
3. At the border control the baby will get a Temp Residency Permit (6 months).
4. As soon as you get to South Africa apply for a Foreign Birth Registration.
5. Once that is processed (ours was 4 months) you can get a SA birth certificate which will have the baby's ID number.
6. Apply for SA passport for the baby.

That's it!

Any questions just ask.

Cheers.

[cleverbird]

Thanks SgtBellPepper -

I ended up going to the embassy for help and they've advised that I register baby's birth here and can get her certificate sent home to our nearest Home Affairs; then we need apply for an emergency travel document/passport which is valid for three months and which I can get on the spot at the embassy when I apply Will then just have to apply for an SA passport for her when we are back in the motherland...

Your way sounds like a good solution too, appreciate the response.

So much admin before the big move, so little time!

[SgtBellPepper]

IMHO, I would ignore that so called advice as longwinded, and possibly fraught with hidden dangers.

Going my route is much easier and you will have dual passports sorted out for travel back and forth for all 3 of you.

As I said, that's IMHO! At the end of the day its up to you.

Cheers.