New Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber’s report card after picking up the poisoned chalice of 'Hell Affairs’

Leon Schreiber, like many officials in the national executive, inherited a poisoned chalice when he was sworn in as Minister of Home Affairs on 3 July.

Crippled by years of corruption, capacity constraints, political paralysis, budget cuts and other issues, the Department of Home Affairs has been stuck in a dejected state of nonstop crisis. It’s no wonder that Daily Maverick coined the phase “Hell Affairs” for this defective department.

The Government of National Unity (GNU) will soon reach a milestone: the first 100 days of its existence.

Since Schreiber delivered his inaugural budget speech, he has made attention-grabbing statements about digitising Home Affairs, tackling network issues and cracking down on corruption.

He has given numerous media interviews. One can argue that Schreiber has so far been more available to the public than his predecessor, Aaron Motsoaledi.

In a recent interview at Parliament to discuss his first 100 days in office, Schreiber spoke to Daily Maverick about his digitisation agenda, and his plans to counter corruption and deal with long queues and network failures at Home Affairs offices across the country.

“I think one of the risks in this portfolio, maybe in many others, is that you end up trying to run fast on the hamster wheel,” he said. “It’s great to be able to fix problems, but you must also identify the right problems at the right level.

“I think that’s where we’re getting it right in Home Affairs. We’ve identified problems at the highest level.”

Schreiber is contending with systemic challenges that have few quick solutions.

Although he has championed the digital overhaul of Home Affairs as the solution to the problems his department faces, there is little concrete evidence of interim measures being put in place to improve service delivery on the ground.

Daily Maverick visited three Home Affairs offices – two of which have been covered extensively in our “Hell Affairs” series – and found there is still a great deal of work to be done to shorten queues, alleviate staff shortages and get branch officials to treat people with dignity.

“I’ve said it from day one; there is simply no magic wand,” Schreiber told Daily Maverick. “If there was one, I would’ve waved it and we would’ve fixed all those things overnight.”

Read more: Hell Affairs

Reducing backlogs (9/10)

Arguably, Schreiber’s most visible achievement has been to reduce the backlog in the processing of visas and permit applications, which has been increasing for more than a decade.

In November 2023, Motsoaledi revealed in a response to Parliament that the processing backlog of visas and permits had been 118,253 in August 2023. Motsoaledi had a target of clearing the backlog by November 2024.

In his budget speech this July, ­Schreiber said the department had already reduced 30% of the backlog, which had ballooned to about 306,000 applications.

This week, he announced that 62% of the backlog had been cleared. He told Daily Maverick the department was “on track” to have a backlog-free Christmas.

“We’ve made major progress … We’ve done it through a combination of things,” he said.

Read more: After the Bell: A tale of two backlogs at Home Affairs and Mineral Resources offers a revealing light on GNU governance

These include prioritisation, a partnership with Business Unity South Africa, which has provided training and resources for the visa backlog team, a dedicated visa backlog team that is working overtime, and daily reports and monitoring, according to Schreiber.

Schreiber announced last week that the department had also cleared a backlog of 247,500 identity documents (IDs) that had begun to accumulate in November 2023 following a change in IT service providers.

Reactivating the Immigration Advisory Board (9/10)

In his budget speech, Schreiber announced that he would be reactivating the Immigration Advisory Board.

South Africa has been without such a board for more than a decade, in breach of the Immigration Act. The board provides for role players to engage with the department about problems affecting the sector.

Importantly, the minister said the board would provide him “with evidence-based advice on tackling issues such as the court-ordered process of consultation on the future of the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP)”.

“That’s where we can have – we must have – conversations around the ZEP; we must talk about all those policy things … in a space that is more inclusive than what has been the practice before,” Schreiber told Daily Maverick.

“We’ve got hundreds of applications [to the advisory board],” he said.

He added that the process of appointing applicants had been delayed because all the applications had to be compiled, but the department would now move to short-listing candidates.

Read more: New Home Affairs Minister Schreiber off to a promising start – but challenges remain

Digitisation project (7/10)

The digitisation of Home Affairs is the top priority for the department. It has been on the agenda of former ministers, but was hobbled by budget cuts and capacity constraints.

Asked by Daily Maverick if he believes he can achieve the digital transformation of Home Affairs in his five-year term, Schreiber responded with a resounding yes. “That’s because it’s the only priority,” he said.

Schreiber said that one of the outcomes of a recent strategic planning session was that employees’ performance would be measured entirely by their contribution to the digital transformation project.

“At a senior level, we have one goal: Home Affairs at Home,” he said.

This vision for his term of office – “Home Affairs at Home” – was announced this week. The ambitious plan to turn the department into a digital-first organisation would mean that, over time, no one would have to visit its offices in person for routine services.

Schreiber’s announcement fleshes out his plan more, but is scant on details about how much the project is estimated to cost. It’s also unclear what the project would mean for the majority of South Africans who do not have access to data or Wi-Fi, and are un­­able to access online systems.

Read more: Schreiber beats the digitisation drum to transform Home Affairs and safeguard national security

Speaking to Daily Maverick, Schreiber kept his cards close to his chest when pressed for details on where the plan currently stands.

“I’m not going to tell you too much,” he said. “There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes to put in place the partnerships we need to test the technology that we’re going to require and to create a proof of concept; that’s the phase we’re in.”

Asked about funding, the minister was unable to provide estimated costs, but admitted “it will not be a cheap exercise”. The department has a budget of R10.5-billion for 2024/25 – a meagre increase from R9.8-billion the previous year.

Schreiber said the department would begin by reprioritising funds internally before requesting additional funding from National Treasury. “We’ve got a substantial IT budget,” he said.

Corruption, fraud and accountability (5/10)

Like all his predecessors, Schreiber has vowed to clamp down on fraud and corruption in his department. “Syndicates and mafia have infiltrated every sector of society and Home Affairs is absolutely no exception,” he told Daily Maverick.

A 2022 report by the former director-general in the Presidency, Cassius Lubisi, exposed the rot in the department, detailing evidence of fraudulent visa applications first being rejected, then accepted after reconsideration, and the department’s antiquated systems being used illegally.

Read more: Corruption at Joburg’s Harrison Street Home Affairs office: Paying your way to the front of the queue

In a recent parliamentary response, Schreiber revealed that 109 corruption cases had been reported to the department’s counter-corruption and security services branch for investigation since the beginning of the financial year in April 2024, News24 reported.

Schreiber said a strategy had been developed to manage fraud and corruption risks in the department.

However, of the 109 cases, it’s unclear how many were reported after Schreiber took office.

Speaking to Daily Maverick, Schreiber maintained that the department was tackling fraud and corruption in a “systematic way”. After pressing for tangible evidence of this, Daily Maverick was told that Schreiber’s spokesperson would provide us with figures on arrests and convictions. No response had been received by time of publication.

Network failures (6/10)

In his budget speech, Schreiber announced that he would prioritise solving the problem of offline systems, saying he intended to be the “minister of ‘system online’”.

The department has in the past been hamstrung by system outages, often blamed on the State Information Technology Agency (Sita), which have caused interminable queues at its offices.

Read more: How Sita was captured (Part One)

According to the department’s 2022/23 annual report, Home Affairs depends on Sita for all its information technology, but the department “has long advocated a separation from Sita in order to reduce its dependency” on the agency.

Speaking to Daily Maverick, Schreiber indicated that steps were under way to ditch Sita.

“What we need to do, under the existing model, is chase Sita every day, and we’re chasing them as effectively as we can, but it remains a losing battle,” he said. There was a “severe bottleneck” relating to Sita.

“We cannot wait for Sita to one day magically become an effective institution, which is not going to happen.

“I’ve spoken to the Minister of Communications to say Home Affairs cannot implement our plans if you are going to constrain us with this monopoly, and so we are doing a lot of legal work in the background with the Auditor-General and others to understand what is re­­quired for us to actually move our network on to a reliable space,” he said.

Queues and capacity constraints (4/10)

Day-long queues have become permanent features outside Home Affairs offices around the country. In 2022, Daily Maverick reported how people at the Stellenbosch Home Affairs office and the main Barrack Street office in Cape Town waited in vain for a whole day to apply for IDs or passports.

Read more: Queue, the beloved country – Welcome to Aaron Motsoaledi’s dysfunctional Department of Home Affairs

Last Tuesday, 1 October, Daily Maverick visited the two offices again.

We also visited the office in Epping, Cape Town, which is implementing a pilot project that takes only online bookings, and where processes such as photographs and cashier payments are integrated.

Daily Maverick found that all three offices were heavily understaffed.

When we arrived at the Stellenbosch office at 9.30am, we saw only four officials at work. There were about 20 people inside the office and two long queues outside. The queue for those who had booked online appeared to be moving relatively quickly compared with the stagnant queue for those who had not.

Several people who had not booked online said this was the second day that they were queuing for their documents, as they had not been attended to the previous day.

Alison Malgas had arrived at the Stellenbosch office just after 6am to apply for a new ID. At 10am, she was still in the queue. She said she had tried to book online, but the first available date was 23 October.

Malgas said that, shortly after she arrived, a security guard had come around and written down people’s ID numbers, but since then there had been no communication.

“I’m even considering going home because I’m getting very cold,” she said.

In February 2022, in a parliamentary response to Schreiber, who was the DA constituency head for Stellenbosch at the time, former minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the Stellenbosch office was supposed to be staffed by 41 officials, but only had six.

The situation at the Barrack Street office was no different. At 19 counters, Daily Maverick could spot only three officials. With about 40 people waiting inside the office and about 50 people in queues in the street at 12.30pm, it was difficult to see how they would all be served by closing time.

Faiek Williams of Manenberg opted to visit the Barrack Street office after the online system offered dates that did not suit him. He faced a wait of more than an hour to collect his ID.

“For collection purposes, I don’t think it should take that long,” he said.

Schreiber, in his interview with Daily Maverick, said the department would be opening an office at the Cape Town Civic Centre to alleviate the pressure on Barrack Street. But a new office, which will require more staff and resources, does not solve the capacity shortages at Barrack Street.

Problems with the online system were recurring concerns during our conversations with people in the queues at Barrack Street and Stellenbosch. These included limited availability of bookings and the system’s inaccessibility to those without internet.

At the Epping office, the queue moved swiftly, and people who spoke to Daily Maverick were generally pleased with the service they received. “Our booking was for 10am … We were sitting outside for about five to 10 minutes and then we went inside,” said Hendricks Samson.

“There are only two counters for passports and ID applications. The rest is collections. But when they work, they work fast. They are very professional.”

Schreiber said he would be rolling out the Epping model to other offices. However, pressed about when this would happen, he responded: “It’s in the strategic plan.”

According to the latest Home Affairs annual report, the department has only 42.37% of the staff it should have.

Schreiber told Daily Maverick that the department was in the process of filling three senior management vacancies.

“So that’s three DDG [deputy director-general] positions; it’s basically IT, human resources and immigration,” he said.

He added that the counter-corruption and security services branch was operating at a staffing level of 28%. “[State-owned enterprise] bailouts are a moral disgrace when Home Affairs has 28% of the anti-corruption officers it needs,” he said.

Mixed reviews from public representatives

As Schreiber approaches the 100-day milestone on Friday, 11 October, we gathered reviews of his performance.

The spokesperson for the Public Servants’ Association of South Africa (PSA), Reuben Maleka, said it was “troubling” that Schreiber appeared “to be riding on initiatives and plans set in motion by his predecessor”.

“The minister has only managed to re­iterate all known challenges of staff shortages, lack of digital transformation needs, network failures and the dilapidated state of offices…

“The PSA has yet to see tangible progress in addressing these pressing issues.”

The parliamentary coordinator for the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Matthew Parks, said it was too early to assess any minister.

However, he said Cosatu was pleased that Schreiber had, since his appointment, agreed with many of the key issues Cosatu had been raising – including that the department cannot be expected to operate optimally at 40% capacity; queues cannot end when Sita is often offline; and IT systems need to be “overhauled and modernised”.

“We need the government to work with labour at Home Affairs to turn it around … workers should not be made to queue for days on end when applying for IDs. This robs them of their daily wages and disrupts the economy,” said Parks.

ActionSA’s chief whip in Parliament, Lerato Ngobeni, said the party was concerned about the shortfall of R4.35-billion for the Border Management Authority.

“Without a clear plan to address this, South Africa’s borders will remain porous and inadequately managed,” said Ngobeni.

Political analyst and professor of political studies Mcebisi Ndletyana said reducing the backlog of visa and permit applications, and reactivating the Immigration Advisory Board, were clear indications that Schreiber had “hit the ground running”.

“He seems to have tackled [the backlog] within a matter of a few months. But that programme was started before he was appointed, so it is a programme that preceded him. It’s very important to note.

“Nevertheless, it doesn’t take anything from him; he seems to have accelerated it,” said Ndletyana.

Build One South Africa (Bosa) leader Mmusi Maimane described the work the minister and officials at Home Affairs had done as “commendable”.

“It has demonstrated ruthless focus on eradicating backlogs.

“Now is an opportunity to focus on giving more access to South Africans who are undocumented, regularising our im­migration processes and ensuring that with the new budget cycle Home Affairs is able to improve the digitisation process,” he said. DM - Additional reporting by Lisakanya Venna