Look, the answer to why our passport is called the ‘green mamba’ is pretty straightforward.

It’s green.

It seems to follow the same logic as that friend that everyone has who named their red car ‘the red devil’.

As for why it’s green – nobody knows. It just is. Judging by many of our national sporting teams, green seems to be the go-to colour, so maybe that has something to do with it.

The long and short of it is that much like our politicians’ attempts to pretend to care about Women’s Month, the colour and name of the passport is irrelevant and doesn’t add anything to it, or what we can use it for.

Some countries were a little more thoughtful with their colour choices – Brazil’s blue passport, for example, was chosen to represent liberation.

If you’d like to explore the various shades of passports worldwide, there’s a pretty cool interactive website, The Passport Index, that you can visit.

Here’s what it says about the SA passport:

Excellent.

For more on what the Passport Index says about how we fit into the world passport rankings, go here.

The SA passport serves two purposes in South Africa. Firstly, it’s one of those things that forces you to spend time at Home Affairs.

I have a theory that if there is a hell, it’s probably an eternity at Home Affairs.

The second thing it does it that it allows you to travel to a number of countries, some of which you don’t need a visa to enter.

Here’s that list:

And now you know.

[source:passportindex]