My 13-year fight with Home Affairs to regain my identity

Drum – 01- 04 -2022

 

As Thami Swartbooi fought to get back her stolen identity, her life stood still. She wasn’t able to get her driver’s licence and wasn’t able to vote in any post-2006 elections. She also wasn’t able to marry her partner after he had paid lobola.

In 2019, Thami Swartbooi spoke to Drum about her battle that had stretched for well over a decade to get her identity back after it was stolen. This is her story.

She lived a full life, with a promising career at a bank and a happy home. She and her partner had big dreams – they were looking forward to a future together as husband and wife and her little girl was growing up fast.

But Nomathamsanqa Swartbooi’s dreams were snuffed out in a heartbeat when she learnt she was “married” to a man she didn’t know from a bar of soap. Her identity had been stolen – and so began over a decade of frustration and heartache for the Johannesburg woman.

Thami, as everyone calls her, discovered the shocking news when she went to cast her vote in the 2006 municipal elections. To her dismay officials told her that her surname had been changed on the voters’ roll. Thami Swartbooi was now Thami Nofemeli.

For the next 13 years she became locked in a standoff with home affairs in a desperate effort to reclaim her identity and prove she wasn’t married. And for 13 years the door was slammed in her face. It was only last month she managed to get her identity back when the new minister of home affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi, intervened after her story started making waves in the media.

“How do you explain the fact that after fighting for 13 years, this matter gets resolved just three days after appearing in the media?” she says angrily.

“All of a sudden they have answers.”

It’s been a long and trying journey for Thami (43). While she’s glad the matter has finally been resolved, she can’t help feeling betrayed by the department whose mission it is to safeguard the identity of citizens.

After the shock at the voting station Thami, who lives in Finetown, Joburg South, wasted no time reporting the matter to home affairs. Officials told her she’d supposedly tied the knot in 2005 and that the union was valid.

“They asked me to give them six months to a year to resolve the problem because the matter was ‘difficult’.”

Months passed and still she remained without an identity. Thami hasn’t been able to get her driver’s licence and wasn’t able to vote in any post-2006 elections. She also wasn’t able to marry her partner, John Tshiwo (45).

He’d paid lobola but because she had no valid ID they couldn’t take matters any further.

“You just live a meaningless life. It’s like you don’t exist,” she says.

The crisis deepened when Thami discovered she no longer qualified for credit. The mystery woman who stole her ID, who’s being sought by home affairs and believed to be married to Thami’s false husband, was running up debt in her name, opening accounts and getting loans.

“I was blacklisted,” Thami says. “Every time I wanted to open a clothing account I was refused.

“At Foschini I was told I had a lay-by. I was so shocked.”

The administrative complications of Thami’s situation caused untold problems. In 2008 she gave birth to her son, Lwando, and was excited that her daughter, Masibulele (now 18), had a sibling. But the little boy’s arrival only brought more stress as she was unable to register his birth.

“I was told if I wanted to register him, he’d have to take the surname I was fighting to free myself of,” Thami says.

She couldn’t claim any maternity benefits either.

When Lwando was two, the family discovered he had speech problems and took him to hospital in the hope of getting him examined. But mother and son were turned away because the little boy had no birth certificate. “And we didn’t have the money to take him to a private hospital.”

When the time came for Lwando to go to Grade R she was relieved that a school in the Joburg CBD where they were living was prepared to overlook the fact that he didn’t have a birth certificate and accept him. His mom could fill in the requisite paperwork once she’d sorted out her nightmare, they said.

“They were gracious,” Thami says.

In 2014 the family was forced to move from the city centre to Finetown because they could no longer afford rent. They wanted to enrol Lwando in a local school but he was refused because of the birth certificate issue, so Thami now has to spend R40 a day on transport and R940 a month on school fees for him.

Money has been tight since she lost her job at Absa, where she was a promising temporary employee, having started as a call-centre agent and then moved to the administration department. She was on track to being appointed permanently but her prospects plummeted when the company checked her credit record.

“What’s most painful is that I started the department with the manager. Six people were hired after me and I trained them. “They were taken on permanently, and I was left out in the cold.”

She went to job interviews but was rejected at every turn because of her credit score.

“It became the story of my life.”

Thami hasn’t been able to work for eight years and the family survives on what her partner makes as a technician. Without work Thami redoubled her efforts at trying to solve the problem.

“I saw it as my job to now go to home affairs. The staff knew me there. When they saw me they’d say, ‘Here comes trouble’.

“Some of them would tell me, ‘Don’t make your problem our problem’, or they’d just tell me to stand there and I’d wait for hours.”

There were times when she broke down and wept in front of them. “That place was hell. They don’t care.”

Thami sent emails to former home affairs ministers but nothing helped.

“I even tweeted [ former home affairs minister Malusi] Gigaba until he blocked me.”

Eventually she approached the Wits Law Clinic, which took Thami’s plight to the media and finally action was taken. She received her smart ID card recently and home affairs has said it will give her an official letter to present to debtors explaining that someone had been impersonating her. This should lift the blacklisting.

Lwando has finally received a birth certificate, 10 years after his birth, which has overjoyed his mother.

“I am genuinely happy for my son. It really touched my heart, even more so than when I received my ID.”

But Thami remains bitter. “Home affairs may think they have resolved this, but I’m left with scars.

“The phone still rings nonstop from people saying I owe them money. Others are looking for my so-called husband. “Home affairs destroyed my life.”

Minister of home affairs Aaron Motsoaledi has apologised “profusely” to Thami for her years of hell.

“I don’t know whether she can ever find it in her heart to forgive [us]. What she went through was terrible. The issue I’m apologizing about is that it took too long.”

The department of home affairs is continuing its investigations into the circumstances surrounding Thami’s case.

www.samigraton.com

 

 

Abandoned Asylum Seeker Status – What does it mean and what can I do

SA – Migration – 1 April 2022

Home Affairs implemented the Refugees Act and certain provisions of new regulations (both implemented on 1 January 2020), which sought to return asylum seekers back to their home country, simply for being a month late in renewing a visa where they could face detention without trial, rape, torture or death,

This had the effect that if you did not renew your asylum in 30 days under the new Act you could no longer pay a fine for being illegal and simply continue with your asylum . This is a huge problem so for example if you expired during lockdown you could in theory be deported as there was no provision for a fine .

Home Affairs has been interdicted from implementing certain provisions of the Refugees Act and new regulations (both implemented on 1 January 2020), which sought to return asylum seekers back to their home country, where they could face detention without trial, rape, torture or death, simply for being a month late in renewing a visa.

The Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town, represented on a pro bono basis by Norton Rose Fulbright and advocates David Simonsz and Nomonde Nyembe, sought to prevent the short- and long-term operation of the abandonment provisions, as the provisions infringed on asylum seekers’ rights to life, freedom and security of person, dignity and equality; and prevented South Africa from fulfilling its international law obligations towards refugees, including the international law principle of non-refoulement. The suspended provisions are commonly referred to as the ’’abandonment provisions’’.

The suspension will operate until the constitutional attack against the impugned provisions has been adjudicated on by the Western Cape High Court and, to the extent necessary, confirmed by the Constitutional Court.

’’The abandonment provisions meant that in the event that an asylum seeker fails to renew their asylum visa timeously, their applications for asylum are deemed abandoned. Arrest and deportation would follow for individuals with valid and undecided claims for asylum. Only where an asylum seeker has a compelling reason (and proof thereof) for delaying to renew a permit following a lapse (such as hospitalisation or imprisonment), can the Department of Home Affairs pardon the late renewal.

’’This is deeply problematic as it means that refugees can be returned to face persecution, without ever having the substantive merits of their asylum application determined.

www.samigration.com

 

 

Home Affairs plans to expand smart ID and passport services to more bank branches – but there’s a catch

The Bharat Express News -  1 April 2022-

 

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) plans to expand its service offering through bank branches in the coming months to reduce growing queues at its offices.

However, the expansion was hampered by several logistical issues, including the lack of available personnel.

Responding to a recent parliamentary question and answer session, Home Secretary Aaron Motsoaledi said his department and the country’s major banks had not signed the necessary public-private partnership (PPP) due to a number of “relevant issues” that still need to be resolved.

These issues include:

• System support in banks;
• Assignment of dedicated officials from the Ministry of the Interior per bank;
• Training of certain banking agents;
• Lack of available staff.

“Currently, the Civic Services team is under capacity in Home Office branches nationwide, with no additional staff to send to banks. This issue applies to all potential banks for further deployment of the service in question,” Motsoaledi said.

He added that once the issue of PPP approval is resolved, it will pave the way for his department to initiate a rollout plan, including human resources, with banks that wish to participate.

Existing partnership

The department has an existing public-private partnership agreement with the banking industry, with 27 banks currently enrolled in a pilot project to offer home affairs services.

The list of branches and departments is expected to be expanded, which will lead to an increased footprint, the ministry said in its 2022/2023 annual report.

“These partnerships could play a key role in reducing long queues at home affairs offices, for example, using the banking sector to receive and collect smart ID cards and passports.

The public-private partnership process could also be used for the appointment of a business partner and the acquisition of a permanent DHA headquarters,” he said.

In a separate space presentation in parliament in February, the department said it was currently conducting a feasibility study on opening dedicated branches inside malls across the country.

The list of bank branches where you can get your Smart ID and passport in South Africa is available here.

www.samigration.com

Nightmare at Home Affairs bank branch — where the system also goes offline

Broadband – 1 April 2022

 

There is no guarantee that using one of the few Home Affairs branches located at South Africa’s major banks will offer a seamless experience.

Many South Africans, including MyBroadband’s journalists, have had relatively trouble-free excursions to apply for and collect their smart ID cards or passports at these offices.

These facilities offer an alternative to standing in snaking queues at large Home Affairs offices, which have become infamous for slow service and frequent downtime.

Bank-based Home Affairs units require that the initial application and payments are handled on the E-Home Affairs portal, cutting down the time spent at the branch.

They also don’t offer the myriad of other services available at main Home Affairs offices, reducing the volume of visitors.

But those benefits were not experienced by one Hillcrest resident and software engineer, who recently applied for a renewal of his passport via one of these branches.

While banks provide Home Affairs with floor space and reliable infrastructure, they do not operate them or provide their systems.

As the engineer’s ordeal illustrates, bank-based Home Affairs branches still rely on government systems and can suffer from similar problems as traditional offices.

My tale begins on 31 January 2022, when I was finally able to log into the Home Affairs e-services website to process an application for a new passport.

The site’s response times were generally slow, and I often struggled to get my one-time pin (OTP) to proceed with the application.

Miraculously, on one of my attempts, I finally did get my OTP and was able to log in.

The online process of applying for the passport and paying for it was relatively painless.

The difficult part was getting a booking at my nearest FNB branch that handles ID and Passport applications.

To do this, I had to manually alter the “from” and “to” dates when looking for an appointment.

I managed to get an appointment for about a month later, on 28 February at 09:00 AM.

My closest branch was at a Cornubia Mall close to Umhlanga, 45km from my home in Hillcrest.

I hadn’t dealt with Home Affairs in a while, but I had heard the horror stories of going to Home Affairs’ main offices located in Pinetown and Musgrave.

I did not want to go through that, so I reckoned it was worth the drive as I surely wouldn’t have to wait long with my appointment time.

A queue at first sight

On the day of my appointment, I arrived at Cornubia Mall and was greeted with a very long queue of more than 100 people outside the FNB branch.

It turns out that you will see this every day that the Home Affairs office operates, which are only weekdays.

After enquiring with other people waiting, I discovered there was a queue for collections, which was very long, and a queue for applications, which was not as long.

Despite being in the latter, I waited for about an hour as they had to do applications for people who didn’t get their applications done the day before, because the system had been offline.

After waiting for about an hour and a half, my ID number was called.

Inside the branch, I had to sit and wait in another queue as they only allowed a certain amount of people inside the bank and then processed them in batches.

Here, it took about another 30 minutes before it was my turn.

During this time. I observed what the actual process was to do a straightforward application.

These are applications that didn’t have any complexities with birth country or the like.

The process for a new passport application was as follows:

• Provide your ID
• Sign your name on an electronic device
• Scan thumbprint
• Sit down to take a picture

If done without any delays, this should not take more than two or three minutes.

The issue was that every time the Home Affairs employee had completed an application, the camera was no longer picked up by the system.

The only way to get the system to detect the camera again was to reboot the computer, which took about 10 minutes.

After it rebooted, there was a modal popup listing all the hardware devices linked to the system — like the fingerprint scanner and camera — with little check marks next to them to indicate that they were functional.

Whenever they rebooted, the camera would have a little cross next to it to show that the system did not pick it up, at which point the Home Affairs employee got up and turned the camera off and on again.

The system then picked up the camera and displayed a tick.

Unplugging the camera and plugging it back in or turning the camera on and off was not enough.

They had to do the whole reboot process to have the modal pop up and show the devices and their online status.

I think adding a button somewhere that could re-initialise all connected hardware without having to reboot the system every time, would most likely make this process much quicker.

My application was eventually processed successfully and I was out two hours after my appointment was booked.

I received an SMS confirming my application and was told Home Affairs would contact me when my passport was ready for collection.

Less than two weeks later, I got an email and SMS that said my passport would be ready for collection from 9 March. I finally had the time to go and collect it on 24 March 2022.

As I work from home, I tell my boss I’ll be online a bit late, and I take the 45km drive to Cornubia.

Because the branch opened at 08:30, I ensured I was there 10 minutes earlier.

Collection chaos

By the time I arrived at the branch, there were already about 20 people in the collections queue and many others with appointments for new applications.

Little did I know that a bunch of those people were there for collections after not getting their IDs or passports the previous day.

They had been added to a special list to be processed first thing on the day of my appointment. There were probably about 30 people on that list.

I started waiting, with the queue growing until there were more than 100 people behind me.

The branch only allowed six people into the bank at a time to be processed and that was going painfully slow. It probably took about 30 minutes per batch of six.

For reference, the process for the collection of IDs and passports was typically as follows:

• Show your ID
• Sign the electronic device that captures signatures
• Scan your thumbprint

In theory, that should take less than a minute.

As I listened to people talk, I learnt that some had been there two or three days without getting their IDs or passports.

I realised that I might be there all day and might still not get my passport.

At one point, a security guard brought out a book for us to make a list of our ID numbers to be processed and I was about 20th from the top of that list.

Around 10:30, after being there for two hours, I started getting worried that I would have to make a tough decision soon — either take a day’s leave and risk not getting processed or rather go home.

Surrender

At about 11:15, the lone Home Affairs employee who handled the collections came out and called the last six people on the list from the previous day into the bank.

He duly informed us waiting in the queue that he had bad news — the system was down.

At this point, I decided that it was not worthwhile to waste a full day’s leave standing in a queue, with the possibility of still not getting my passport.

I left and travelled the 45km home, having wasted three hours of my day.

I don’t know what to do now. How and when will I get my passport? Do I need to take two days’ leave to do this and will there still be a chance that I won’t get it?

I’m a software engineer, and for there to be any downtime in any production system that so many people depend on is unacceptable.

It would also help if there wasn’t just one person dedicated to handling collections at the Cornubia branch with that massive backlog.

They must have some fallback process in case the system is down, like offline processing or signatures on paper.

I’m hoping that Home Affairs fixes their systems and processes so that doing a collection is as it should be — quick and painless — and only then will I go back to try again.

www.samigration .com

R200 000 for refugee who is legally in SA but detained for 21 days

Pretoria News - 31 Mar 2022

Pretoria - The South African authorities failed to recognise the rights of a refugee who is legally in the country, the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court has found.

He had to spend 21 days in appalling conditions behind bars - simply because both the police and Home Affairs refused to look at his valid refugee permit.

Roy Kamushinda then instituted a R200 000 in damages claim against the police in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court.

A magistrate this week ordered that Kamushinda was entitled to the damages and ruled that the State entities had to pay him accordingly for his unlawful arrest and detention.

Kamushinda was stopped on May 6, 2015 by police in Johannesburg during a stop-and-search crime prevention operation.

He was asked to produce valid documentation that he was legally in the country.

Kamushinda informed the police officer that he was a recognised refugee, but that he was not in possession of his permit, which he had accidentally left at his home that morning.

He explained that he could fetch it as his home was about 15 minutes from where he was stopped. However, he was arrested and subsequently detained at the Johannesburg Central police station.

Upon arrival at the police station, he explained to different people that he was a recognised refugee and had a valid permit at his home. No one from the SAPS listened to him or attempted to assist him.

Six days after his arrest, Kamushinda was interviewed by Home Affairs officials for verification of his immigration status in South Africa. During this interview, he repeatedly explained that he was documented and had a valid refugee permit at home.

The officials, however, refused to discuss his documentation status with him.

About a week later, Kamushinda was able to phone his landlord for the first time and request that he bring his refugee permit to the police station, which he did.

Kamushinda subsequently presented his valid refugee permit to police officers, but they informed him that it was too late and they could not help him.

Later that day, he was transferred to the Lindela Repatriation Centre to be detained pending his deportation. Upon arrival at Lindela, Kamushinda presented his valid refugee permit to different officials, but no one assisted him.

A few days later, he again presented his refugee permit to a Home Affairs official who made a copy of his permit. It was only on May 27, 2015 after spending 21 nights in appalling conditions of detention that Kamushinda was released from detention following a letter of demand sent by Lawyers for Human Rights.

The organisation represented him in his claim for damages against the Minister of Police, where the court was required to assess whether the SAPS had acted wrongfully, thereby giving rise to a claim for damages.

In coming to its conclusion, the court considered whether the arresting officer had the prerequisite reasonable suspicion to conduct a warrantless search of Kamushinda and eventually held that he did not.

The court concluded that the stop-and-search crime prevention operation was thus unlawful, and that Kamushinda deserved to be compensated for his nightmare ordeal.

Lawyers for Human Rights said it welcomed this decision, especially as the country marks Human Rights Day on March 21, which is a reminder that the Constitution and legislation promotes and demands that there be equitable and non-discriminatory policing and immigration services to all, including non-nationals.

Nyiko Manyusa, the attorney who led the court case, said the law requires law enforcement officials to discharge their duties with care and diligence, taking into consideration people’s human rights and dignity.

“In Mr Kamushinda’s case, although he is a refugee in South Africa, the law still required the police and immigration officers to discharge their duties in a responsible manner, and not unlawfully search and arrest him.”

Manyusa said it was hoped that Kamushinda’s victory would be a reminder to all, especially those in authority, that they had to respect people’s rights as no one was above the law.

“That is what the Constitution and democracy demands from us,” Manyusa said.

www.samigration.com