To call South Africa an ineptocracy is too kind. The bungling government bureaucrats dealt a body blow to one of the few remaining industries that was functioning.
The Immigration Amendment Act  of 2011 became effective on May 26, four days after it was gazetted.  It leads the charge in anti-trafficking legislation, so much so that it would have shut down travel and tourism.
Overseas tour operators started scrambling to look for alternative destinations as it soon became clear that nobody in either the Department of Home Affairs or Tourism had realised the implications of what their government had just done when it insisted that people under 18 crossing the border must have an unabridged birth certificate in their possession.
The Department of Home Affairs then clammed up not willing or able to comment on their roll out plans. 
South Africans planning a trip to family destinations like Mauritius and Mozambique were gobsmacked when they heard the day before this edition went to press on 11 June that implementation would be delayed until 1 July. 
With Home Affairs taking six to eight weeks to process applications for unabridged certificates, Airlines started issuing refund policies on Travelinfo.  
It became clear that July and August peak season for outbound and inbound travel was about to turn into the world’s greatest denied boarding fiasco as airlines were compelled to police the new rules.
A spokesman for Home Affairs finally spoke to us and told us that they had communicated the new requirements to the world by advising foreign missions.
Airlines tried to get a 12 month postponement and by the end of the day we heard that Home Affairs granted a further extension to September 1.
There are so many questions when South Africa takes the lead in becoming the first major country to insist on such documentation. Once again the government has proved it has no idea about the tourism industry. A brave step indeed and an incredibly foolish one if not accompanied by an effective communication strategy. 
Lets hope Home Affairs now has the sense to postpone it until they can issue an Unabridged Certificate online in 20 minutes as they do in countries like Canada. That will look after the South African traveller. Then they need to devise a communication strategy so that not one overseas visitor, even those that buy flights directly online, is denied boarding on their last leg into South Africa because they did not know.