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.
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