Working better will enable ambitious IT transformation plan, says home affairs minister
Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber plans to do better with the resources his department already has, rather than hold out the begging bowl for more, as it works to roll out electronic systems that will make it faster and easier to obtain a visa.
He said in an interview on Friday that he believed his department could manage with the roughly R1.3bn capital expenditure budget it receives each year, and should do so given SA’s fiscal constraints.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has made it a priority to reform SA’s visa system to make it easier to attract the skills the economy needs to grow tourism.
He said in his recent state of the nation address that the department had now cleared more than 90% of its backlog of 300,000 visa applications, and would this year launch an electronic travel authorisation (ETA) system to enable a secure, fully digital visa application and adjudication process.

Schreiber told Business Day the department was looking closely at its IT budget and he had insisted it be far more efficient with existing resources.
“There is a lot of work going on in the background to reprioritise internally and use our existing resources more efficiently,” he said.
“I am absolutely convinced that we can go a long way in dealing with our IT problems by just working better with what we already have, managing contracts better, being more on top of blockages and so on.

“We understand the fiscal constraints and we as home affairs are not going to add to the debt burden,” Schreiber said.
We understand the fiscal constraints and we as home affairs are not going to add to the debt burden.
Leon Schreiber
The rollout of the ETA is one of the major projects for the coming year. The system will be driven by AI and machine learning. Schreiber said the department aimed to roll out the ETA for tourist visas within 12 months as well as vastly expanding the department’s presence in banks. It would aim to ensure naturalised citizens and permanent residents could get smart ID cards instead of the green ID books they get now.

The ETA would eventually underpin the trusted tourism operator scheme, the digital platform for which went live last week. Sixty-five tour operators from SA, India and China have been approved in the first phase of the scheme which allows for the speedy processing online of tour group visa applications.
The scheme is expected to increase the number of tourists from these source markets by overcoming long queues, red tape and the inconvenience of physically visiting an SA mission abroad for visa applications.

Schreiber said the first applications were processed within two hours, without the necessary vetting checks being compromised. The first group of 15 tourists approved under the scheme arrive from China in SA on Saturday.
Some improvements to the system were being worked on.
The minister said that the trusted employer scheme, which allows for the speedy processing of visa applications for skilled staff by approved employers, was working well and would be expanded to include more employers when other essential automation projects had been completed.

“The feedback we have got from Busa (Business Unity SA) is that the scheme has made a massive difference,” Schreiber said. “Registered corporates are getting access to skills in a much more effective way than before.
“We want to get the trusted tour operator scheme working at the same level of the trusted employer scheme. It is very much modelled on that.”
Schreiber said he wanted to expand the footprint of home affairs by using banks as a conduit for biometric information for home affairs documents and for their collection points to include hundreds or even a 1,000 bank branches. Thirty bank branches have been involved in the project for the past decade.

According to Motsoaledi, Mpofu and his lawyers were informed as 'far back as 23 June 2023' that his permit was illegal.
The Mmabatho Magistrate’s Court has denied bail to former North West Development Corporation CFO Kudakwashe Mpofu.
The 33-year-old Zimbabwean national appeared in court on Thursday on charges of fraud.
During the bail application, the state opposed Mpofu’s release on bail, highlighting concerns that he is a flight risk and might evade trial if released because he is allegedly in the country illegally.

Mpofu was denied bail, and the case was transferred to the Specialised Commercial Crime Court sitting in Mmabatho on 19 March 2025 for the accused to make his first appearance.

Kudakwashe Mpofu arrest
Mpofu was arrested by Hawks’s Serious Corruption Investigation members on 28 January 2025. His arrest followed investigations into allegations of using a fraudulent South African permanent residence permit.
In March 2021, the North West Development Corporations advertised the position of Asset Manager based in the Head Office in Mafikeng.

Mpofu applied for the said position.
“As part of applying, he attached all the necessary documents, including his permanent residence permit, which is alleged to be fraudulent,” said NPA North West spokesperson Sivenathi Gunya.
“He was successfully appointed to the position on 1 May 2021. Subsequent to that appointment, he was later appointed as the entity’s Chief Financial Officer on 1 June 2023.

“The state alleges that Mpofu submitted a fraudulent South African permanent residence when applying for the North West Development Corporations job. It submitted that the permanent residence permit the accused person has was never issued by the Department of Home Affairs.

“The state further presented an affidavit from an official of the Department of Home Affairs which confirmed that the permanent residence permit of the accused was never issued by Home Affairs and is fraudulent.”
He was allegedly paid more than R3 million in salaries.

Permit doesn’t exist in Home Affairs system
Mpofu’s arrest followed his fight with the Department of Home Affairs last year over his potential deportation back to Zimbabwe.
According to then-Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, Mpofu and his lawyers were informed as “far back as 23 June 2023” that his permit was illegal.

“Mr Mpofu has been waxing lyrical about how the Department [of Home Affairs] never responded to his court and court orders. In a way, Mr Mpofu was trying to demonstrate that the department was guilty and he is innocent,” he said during a media briefing last year.
“We can confirm that the permanent residence permit reference number appearing on Mpofu’s document does not exist within the Home Affairs system. We can further confirm that the control number appearing on Mpofu’s document does exist, but it was legitimately [issued] to somebody else and not to Mr Mpofu.”

The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies has said it is looking to amend SITA regulations to allow for procurement outside of government's IT agency

The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies is looking to amend regulations governing the State Information Technology Agency (SITA).
•    This would allow for national and provincial government departments to procure IT services and equipment themselves.
•    This is after complaints from departments who said that procurement through the agency was lengthy and costly.

The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) has said it will likely amend the responsibilities of the State Information Technology Agency (SITA). This comes after faulty service delivery processes meant that equipment such as iPads could take up from three to six months to be delivered to government departments. 

The agency is currently responsible for maintaining and providing IT services to the government and all its departments and procuring IT-related equipment.  

However, lengthy delays have caused immense frustration for Department of Home Affairs, the South African Police Service, the Department of Basic Education, and the Department of Home Affairs, who have asked the department to procure outside of SITA.  
Speaking to Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies on Wednesday, DCDT director-general Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani confirmed that Minister Solly Malatsi had reviewed the legislation that currently governs the IT agency.   
"The Minister [Malatsi] issued proposed amendments to the regulations last year. We have received extensive complaints from departments about delays impacting service delivery and escalating costs. The review of these regulations will be [similar to] the process of devolvement [of SITA's power]," she told MPs. 

According to Jordan-Dyani, the review will investigate whether a threshold will be introduced for IT services and equipment that could be procured by individual departments and not via the government's IT agency. This move would also mean that the IT agency focuses mainly on cybersecurity and IT services. 

A similar proposal had been previously discussed under the leadership of former Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, who said that departments should be responsible for procurement valued under R10 million.  
Jordan-Dyani said the threshold would reduce "numerous delays" on smaller IT projects and equipment. However, she said there is no time frame for when Malatsi will introduce these amendments.

The act clearly states that you need to source through or from SITA, national and provincial. It becomes tedious when you need to source an iPad or introduce new staff complement in your department. You experience huge delays. You must wait three, even four to six months for the service and equipment to be delivered.
Meanwhile, SITA has been subject to intense parliamentary scrutiny in recent months due to leadership instability, alleged irregular appointments, and dodgy procurement processes. 

Last year, MPs also received a report from Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr into an irregular R1.2-billion tender for the Western Cape Education Department, which had been awarded to Blue Networks Consortium.  
An oversight visit by the committee in December at the agency's head office had also exposed in-fighting between members of the board and executive management, which had also impacted service delivery. 

This prompted an investigation by the Public Protector and the Public Service Commission into irregularities at the agency.  
Currently, SITA is in the process of appointing an interim board after the previous board's term had expired on 31 January this year. The agency has also appointed SITA executive, Gopal Reddy, as its acting managing director, after former managing director Simphiwe Dzengwa's term came to an end on 4 February. 

Following the meeting on Wednesday, the Portfolio Committee said it had put forward several recommendations as part of its oversight report to Malatsi. This included ensuring that there would be no leadership vacuums and referring the Cliffe Decker Hofmeyr report to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU). 

It also said it had spoken with Parliament's legal services to invoke a parliamentary inquiry into SITA.  
In a statement, the committee said the inquiry would look into the concerns of organised labour, high staff turnover, and governance and operational inefficiencies, which led to considerations from government department departments to find alternative services to SITA.

Tagline has quickly become the subject of derision, with some critics likening it to a clearance sale slogan
A New Zealand tourism campaign targeting Australian visitors has been ridiculed for sounding like a clearance sale slogan and for being tone-deaf amid widespread public service job cuts and record numbers of New Zealanders moving overseas.

The government launched its “Everyone must go!” campaign on Sunday, in a bid to encourage Australian holiday-makers to visit New Zealand. The NZD$500,000 campaign will run on radios and social media in Australia between February and March.
“What this Tourism New Zealand campaign says to our Aussie mates is that we’re open for business, there are some great deals on, and we’d love to see you soon,” said Louise Upston, the tourism minister.

But the tagline – set against photographs of people sightseeing – quickly became the subject of derision inside New Zealand, with opposition politicians and social media users likening it to a clearance sale advertisement, a marketing campaign for the apocalypse, or a desperate plea for access to the lavatory.

The Green Party’s tourism spokesperson, Celia Wade-Brown, told national broadcaster RNZ the tagline “might refer to the need for toilets in some of our high-tourist spots. I mean, the queues are ridiculous”.
Responding to the criticism, a spokesperson for the minister told the Guardian that Upston was “very pleased” with the campaign and said it had attracted positive feedback from tourism operators and a marketing expert.

The tourism campaign is the latest in the government’s attempt to attract tourists, digital nomads and overseas investors to New Zealand to boost the economy. Prior to the pandemic, tourism was New Zealand’s largest export industry and delivered $40.9bn to the country. The most recent figures show those numbers are creeping back up, with tourism bringing in $37.7bn in 2023.
Australia is New Zealand’s largest tourism market, making up roughly 44% of international visitors a year. Visitor numbers are sitting at roughly 88% of pre-pandemic rates.

“The number of Australian arrivals in New Zealand increased by more than 90,000, up from 1.27 million to 1.36 million over the past year, but we know there’s more room to grow,” Upston said in a release.
New Zealand’s overseas tourism campaigns have a long history of attracting both praise and criticism. The award-winning 100% Pure New Zealand promotion - now one of the world’s longest-running tourism campaigns - is lauded for its catchiness but often scrutinised against New Zealand’s inconsistent environmental credentials.

Labour’s tourism spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel told RNZ while she broadly supported growing tourism, the latest tourism tagline was tone-deaf at a time when the coalition government is disestablishing thousands of roles across the public sector in a major cost-cutting drive.
“The irony of that messaging is: that’s how Aotearoa New Zealanders are feeling right now – there have been so many cuts,” Tangaere-Manuel said.

Some critics said the tagline was tactless for sounding like a directive to New Zealanders to leave the country amid record high departure rates.
“If I was in a [government] seeing record emigration I simply would not pick “everyone must go” as a slogan,” said one social media user.

Others took the opportunity to turn the campaign back on the government.
“The upside of the gormless “everyone must go” slogan is that by rights it should be easy to invert for election posters and protest signs …. Done. Dusted. And their own fault,” wrote a BlueSky user

The green South African ID book is being phased out in favour of a digital ID system.
We should be clear about what we want and what we don't want from a digital ID - about what data is being collected, from whom and how both government and third-party vendors will use it.

In the State of the Nation address last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa promised South Africans a new digital identity system to help "transform the relationship between citizens and government".

Whether the new ID system delivers on this promise depends on how it is designed, implemented and governed. Although digital IDs present genuine opportunities, the risks they pose are just as great, especially in countries such as South Africa, with its extreme inequality, mirrored in high digital inequality.
There is a sense of shared community among those who have stood in a queue at Home Affairs. The institution has become something of a cultural touchstone - a place we go for the collective ritual of bureaucratic frustration.

While a trip to Home Affairs is taxing for most, it is unquestionably worse for those who have never had the required documents, such as a birth certificate, and who are facing economic distress. So, in this light, it is rather exciting to hear that we will receive a new digital ID system that promises to make government services "accessible to every person at a touch".

Foundational digital ID systems convert paper-based legal identities (like South Africans' green identity books, or green mambas) into digital data for processing. They have demonstrated compelling efficiency gains across the globe, including in developing nations. The World Bank, which runs a digital ID for development (ID4D) initiative, estimates that Uganda saves around $7-million a year by using a national identification database to verify the identities of its civil servants. Malawi reportedly saved $44-million by merging its voter registration and national ID systems.

But there are also troubling implications of digital IDs that surpass efficacy gains measured by the dollar, rand and cent.
Some of these issues are inherent to ID systems - the Nazis' census, South Africa's dompas, and Rwandan identity cards serve as stark reminders of the enabling role identification tools can play in systemic oppression. Whether paper-based or digital, ID systems determine where a government or even another party (like a bank or a medical aid company) turns a blind eye and how it uses the knowledge it has to make decisions about a population.
Simply digitalising the system is not a silver bullet solution and indeed may amplify existing inequities while introducing new vulnerabilities.
Of particular concern are the threats of increased surveillance and a loss of accountability raised by some contemporary digital ID implementations. As more of our daily activities become digitised and mediated by technology, each of us is generating more data.
Digital IDs, which can consolidate this data, offer the government increased visibility of its citizens and other residents. This includes greater oversight of the status and activity of historically marginalised populations like migrants and refugees.

Essential services access
Perhaps most troubling is an emerging tendency for digital IDs to become gatekeepers to essential services, while introducing privacy concerns. Across sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 470 million people lack official identification.
Where digital IDs become prerequisites for accessing healthcare, banking and telecommunications (as was the case in Ghana), such systems risk deepening existing marginalisation.

Uganda's Ndaga Muntu digital ID system offers a cautionary tale here, having reportedly locked out swathes of women, elderly persons and other vulnerable groups from accessing public services. While India's Unique Identity Scheme (Aadhar) has enabled the country to overcome significant identification problems, it has also excluded parts of the population and has raised important concerns over both private and public sector surveillance.
Closer to home, the South African Social Security Agency's introduction of a biometric verification system in its grant system last year mistakenly prevented hundreds of the country's most economically distressed from accessing lifeline funds, purely on account of technical barriers to using the online verification process.
Like all technologies, digital IDs aren't neutral and can come with both promise and peril. The potential outcomes of these technologies are shaped by factors such as how they are designed and implemented and, further, by unresolved underlying colonial histories and foreign aid agendas.
In these complex environments, a growing collection of state and non-state actors also act together to put on a compelling show of technology theatre: a tendency to brandish flashy technology to divert attention from serious policy problems. As yet, we have limited information on South Africa's proposed new system, and we need to make sure we are not setting the scene for another such theatrical display.
As a nation, we should be clear about what we want and what we don't want from a digital ID; about what data is being collected, from whom and how both government and third-party vendors will use it.

South Africa has strong constitutional and administrative justice governance frameworks and a highly regarded Information Regulator. We have the makings of adequate guardrails that can help harness the opportunities and mitigate the risks of a new digital ID system.
The challenge now is to leverage these protections to ensure that digital identification enhances rather than undermines our democratic values.