By Aneeqa du Plessis
Alhamdullilah! (All praises due to the Almighty God)
The South African Hajj and Umrah Council (SAHUC) has announced that 1 000 aspiring pilgrims from the ready-to-go list will be granted the opportunity to perform Hajj this year. According to a statement released by the authoritative body on Tuesday, only first-time applicants have been considered, as fard (obligatory) Hajj supersedes a nafl ibadah (optional act of worship).
Speaking on VOC’s Breakfast show on Wednesday morning, SAHUC President Shaheen Essop said successful applicants will be notified via SMS soon. Essop said over 2 000 applicants have applied on the ready-to-go-list.
“We will alert successful candidates in the next few days Insha Allah (God willing). We are sanitizing the list to ensure that there are only first-timers as we have indicated we are not accepting repeat Hajjis. We are also waiting for hajj operators to put their packages on the table because the grounds have shifted since they released initial packages in February 2023. So, we need to put a process in front of the Hujaaj to ensure an informed decision can be made swiftly,” described Essop.
Essop reminded aspiring pilgrims that have applied that they need to be swift in accepting to ensure a smooth hajj journey as logistics need to be tied up in Saudi too.
“When we talk about ready-to-go you need to ensure that your logistics are in place. You have the current finances available to travel to the Saudi Kingdom. We want to ensure that people understand there won’t be a large window of time for you to accept the accreditation. We expect that after 48 hours the applicants would have made their payments and contacted their respective travel operators as time is against us,” described Essop.
He further said several role-players have had a hand in ensuring the increase of the hajj 2023 quota.
“It is only through the grace of Allah SWT that this has been achieved but there’s a tremendous amount of work that was put in by the South African government and SAHUC to ensure we could elicit an increase for our aspiring pilgrims who long to stand on the plains of mount Arafat,” explained Essop.
VOC