Talking tough love on Tuesday, Minister Leon Schreiber urged speed in the digital transformation of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), warning that if there was a failure to do so urgently, “the repercussions for national security will be on all of our hands.
“If we do not take bold steps now to turn Home Affairs into a digital-first department that closes the gap for human intervention, we will be wasting each other’s time for the next five years,” Schreiber told MPs in his first address to Parliament’s portfolio committee on home affairs.
“Incidents of identity theft, long queues, visa fraud and corruption will keep happening, over and over and over again, forever, if we fail to digitally transform Home Affairs.”
He added that the role of the committee in holding him, Deputy Minister Njabulo Nzuza and the department to account “will be rendered nearly impossible in the absence of the digital transformation we are proposing.
“For as long as we fail to use technology to make up for the capacity shortfall and close the gaps for human discretion, it is not a question of ‘if’ abuses will be exposed. It is only a matter of ‘when’.”
The digital overhaul of Home Affairs, to help speed up applications and root out corrupt practices, has been a long time coming. It has been on the agenda of former home affairs ministers for years.
In August 2022, then home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced a R2.4-billion project to digitise more than 35o million civic paper records between November 2022 and October 2025.
Motsoaledi, at the time, acknowledged that insufficient progress in the department’s digitisation efforts had contributed to interminable queues at Home Affairs offices.
Read more: Queue, the beloved country – Welcome to Aaron Motsoaledi’s dysfunctional Department of Home Affairs
The dire need to modernise the DHA’s systems was also highlighted in a 2022 report by the former director-general in the Presidency, Cassius Lubisi, which reviewed all permits and visas issued by the department from 2004 to the end of 2020 to identify irregularities.
The report exposed the rot within the department, detailing evidence of fraudulent visa applications first being rejected and then accepted after reconsideration, and the department’s system being used illegally in certain instances.
It found that “ongoing and protracted delays in finalising the modernising of systems and the non-decommissioning of old systems” created the opportunity “to have staff operate with multiple hats, and weaknesses involved in system integrations due to versioning”.
It exposed the security vulnerabilities of the department’s antiquated system and recommended its urgent modernisation.
On Tuesday, Schreiber and Nzuza acknowledged that the digital transformation of the department would require more funds from the National Treasury.
“If we want a digital transformation, we must commit resources to it,” said Nzuza, who added that the department was experiencing financial constraints.
The DHA has a budget of R10.49-billion for the 2024/25 financial year — a slight increase from R9.75-billion in the previous financial year.
Schreiber described the department as being “gutted financially, to the point where it has only 40% of the staff members it requires to do its job”.
The department has struggled for years with staff shortages and budget cuts. According to the department’s latest 2022/23 annual report, the “total approved functional organisation structure and post establishment for the department provides for 18,456 posts, of which 7,398 are filled. This translates to a department capacitated at 42.37%”.
‘Systemic crisis’
On Tuesday, department officials and Border Management Authority (BMA) briefed the committee on the 95 Libyan nationals who were arrested during a law enforcement raid at a suspected military training camp in Mpumalanga last month, and the ongoing investigation about the mother of former Miss South Africa contestant Chidimma Adetshina.
Before the presentations, Schreiber said these were “not isolated incidents”, but were “symptoms of a systemic crisis that threaten the national security interests” of South Africa.
“To paraphrase Shakespeare in Hamlet: something is rotten in the state of South Africa.
“The number one lesson from these cases is that the lack of a modern digital system to process all applications, adjudications and communication at Home Affairs is the root cause of the national security threat we face in this sector.
“The common denominator you will see in all of these presentations is that Home Affairs systems are vulnerable to fraud, corruption and discretion because they are outdated, antiquated, paper-based, manual and therefore open to subversion,” he said.
Read more: Corruption at Joburg’s Harrison Street Home Affairs office: Paying your way to the front of the queue
Last week, the 95 Libyan nationals were deported after charges were dropped against them following their arrest on suspicion of receiving military training at a camp in White River, Mpumalanga.
Schreiber said the visas obtained by the Libyan nationals “were written by hand”, which could easily be forged, and the “visa applications were processed even though they did not contain all of the requisite documentation”.
A presentation by the DHA director-general, Tommy Makhode, revealed that a Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) official in Tunis, Tunisia, was responsible for issuing the handwritten visas to the 95 Libyan nationals.
“The official indicated that the systems at the mission were offline at the time of issuance, hence the handwritten documents,” said Makhode.
According to the presentation, the DHA wrote a letter to Dirco on 30 July seeking clarity on the issuance of visas and was awaiting a response.
A preliminary investigation by the DHA found several irregularities in the documents, including:
- The application forms used were outdated and did not comply with the forms prescribed by immigration regulations;
- There was no indication on some forms that the applicants were applying for study visas, but the Dirco official granted study visas; and
- Critical information was omitted from the applications.
Miss South Africa investigation
The department also provided further details about its investigation into the alleged identity theft involving Adetshina’s mother. This came after the DHA issued a statement on 7 August, confirming it was investigating whether the former Miss South Africa contestant’s mother had committed fraud in 2001.
In its initial statement, the department said prima facie reasons existed to believe that fraud and identity theft “may have” been committed by the person recorded in Home Affairs as Adetshina’s mother, and as a result, a South African mother, “whose identity may have been stolen as part of the alleged fraud committed by Adetshina’s mother”, suffered because she could not register her child.
A presentation by the head of the department’s counter-corruption unit, advocate Constance Moitse, stated that the department had “relied on its records to establish that the South African mother whose identity may have been stolen was registered by her mother in 1982, and as a result she entered the national population register”.
Her birth was registered in Tshwane, and in 1995 she applied for an ID, said Moitse.
“Three months after the application, she returned to Home Affairs to collect the ID. On her return to Home Affairs, she learnt that her ID was issued in Johannesburg at an office where she had not applied for [it],” said Moitse.
“She then gave birth in 2001. When she went to register her child at Home Affairs, she discovered that there was a child registered under her ID number. The child that was registered was Ms Chidimma Vanessa Onwe Adetshina.”
Moitse said the DHA had identified officials who registered the birth at the Home Affairs office in Johannesburg and that one of the officials had since died.
“The department is investigating two other officials who may have been involved in the alleged fraudulent scheme,” she said.
According to Moitse’s presentation, the department’s investigation was at an advanced stage and now involved the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks). Adetshina’s mother was issued a Promotion of Administrative Justice Act letter on 7 August.
“Her response to this letter will determine the final decision that the department will take in relation to the ID she is currently carrying,” said Moitse.
Schreiber said the incident occurred 23 years ago, and that “it is only possible for someone to steal an ID number or engage in fraudulent activity, like swapping out photos, because the system has gaps that allow for human intervention.
“Yet here we are, dealing with the ramifications of something that is alleged to have happened 23 years ago, while the same thing continues to happen every day through the syndicates that treat our South African citizenship as something to be stolen, abused and trampled upon.” DM