Yep, I did it, I lost my passport… its somewhere on oprchid island. Is there any South African that haws gone through the same ordeal? What must I do to get a new one? Is it a big mission 
I managed to wash my passport once.
I called teh police, who told me to get another one, which I did at my country’s rep office.
I then took it to the police, who duly filled the new passport no. into my ARC and put a re-entry permit into the new passport.
Not too hard.
I guess that if you were a short term visitor, something similar could be done with a temporary passport.
I was thinking you’d need to have a photocopy somewhere for ease of getting the passport numbers. I photocopied mine and left the copies with my parents. But if you have an ARC the passport numbers should be on that personal card, so that should, in theory, speed up the process of getting a new one.