Immigration in South Africa is run by the Department of Home Affairs, and almost everything routes through one number. The department does publish named officials for individual permit categories, but it prints the same call centre number beside them, which tells you where it actually wants the traffic to go. Home Affairs has also warned that scammers trade on the names and contact details of its senior officials, so the call centre is the safe route as well as the quick one.
Official contact channels
- Home Affairs Call Centre, the main route for all immigration queries: 0800 60 11 90
- Call centre email: [email protected]
- Port control: 0800 60 11 90
- Chief Directorate Permits at head office: 0800 60 11 90
The department keeps a contact directory covering immigration services, civic services, every province, refugee centres, ports of entry and deportations. The immigration entries in it are named officials with individual mailboxes and mobile numbers rather than departmental lines, and those are deliberately not reproduced here. Home Affairs has issued a scam alert about the fraudulent use of senior official contact details and states that its only official email domain is dha.gov.za, never a gmail or yahoo address. Anything reaching you from another domain in the name of a Home Affairs manager should be treated as fake.
What this organisation provides
The immigration side of Home Affairs administers admissions into the country, determines the residency status of foreign nationals and issues the permits that follow from it, acts as custodian of refugee affairs, runs an inspectorate and sets policy directives. In practice that resolves into four kinds of document:
- Visas
- Temporary residence permits, covering business, work, corporate, study, exchange, retired persons, relatives and medical treatment permits
- Permanent residence permits
- Refugee and asylum papers
The Chief Directorate Permits at head office covers the visa categories directly: Critical Skills Work Visa, Business Visa, General Work Visa, Intra-Company Transfer, Study Visa for universities and aviation schools, Treaty Visa, Exchange Visa, Corporate Visa and Crew Visa. Working out which category applies to you is the single most useful thing to do before calling, because the category determines the requirements, the supporting documents and which office deals with it. A call that starts with the category name goes considerably faster than one that starts with a description of your situation.
Address and operating information
- Head office: Pretoria, Gauteng
- Contact centre for head office: 0800 60 11 90 and [email protected]
Home Affairs lists its head office as Pretoria, Gauteng without a street address in its own contact directory, and that is closer to deliberate than to an omission, because permit applications are not lodged at head office. The department lists VFS Global Offices under its immigration section as the place where applications are submitted, with ports of entry and refugee reception centres listed separately again.
The same directory carries office listings for all nine provinces, and a separate set of listings for the bank branches that handle certain Home Affairs services. Those are the places to go for anything that has to be done in person, rather than head office. Gauteng, Limpopo and the Eastern Cape carry the largest numbers of listed offices, and the Free State and North West the fewest, so travel time is worth checking before you commit to a branch.
Support and escalation routes
The call centre is the published entry point for permits, port control and general immigration queries, and it is also the route to the specific directorate handling your category. Ask for the directorate by name once you know which visa category applies.
- Refugee and asylum matters: the department lists refugee reception centres separately, and the Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs is a separate statutory body from the department
- Corruption in the immigration process: Counter Corruption and Security is listed as its own category in the departmental contact directory
- Deportation matters and the Lindela holding facility: both listed separately from general immigration services
The department publishes a service delivery charter setting out what it commits to, which is the document to quote when a matter has stalled. Keep the reference number from every call, because the call centre is the only channel that generates one, and an escalation without a reference tends to start the process again from the beginning.
Sources
- dha.gov.za homepage, for the Home Affairs Call Centre number and its email address
- dha.gov.za contact directory, for head office, port control and the structure of the provincial and specialist listings
- dha.gov.za immigration services page, for the duties, document types and visa categories
- dha.gov.za scam alert on the fraudulent use of senior management contact details
All contact details on this page were read from the department own website and verified on 2 September 2026.