To find out whether you need to authenticate and legalize your documents, you should determine the staus of the recipient country abroad. 

If you have South-African documents that will be used in another country which country is not an signatory to the Hague Apostille Convention, they will likely need to be authenticated and sometimes be embassy attested, also known as document legalisation or authentication. 

The reason for the process is to verify the signatures on your documents. By having the documents authenticated and legalised, the recipient abroad can rest assured that your documents have been properly processed. You can also contact our specialist staff to discuss your situation. We would love to hear from you! 

Legalisation describes the procedures whereby the signature/seal/stamp on a public document is certified as authentic by a series of public officials along a “chain” to a point where the ultimate authentication is readily recognised by an official of the State of destination and can be given legal effect there. As a practical matter, Embassies and Consulates of the State of destination located in (or accredited to) the State of origin is ideally situated to facilitate this process. However, Embassies and Consulates do not maintain samples of the signatures/seals/stamps of every authority or public official in the State of origin, so an intermediate authentication between the authority or public official that executed the public document in that State and the Embassy or Consulate is often required. In most cases, this involves an authentication by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State of origin. However, depending on the law of the State of execution, a series of authentications may be required before the document can be presented to the Embassy or Consulate for authentication. Then, depending on the law of the State of destination, the seal/stamp of the Embassy or Consulate may be recognised directly by the official in that State or may need to be presented to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of that State for final authentication.