Two more people caught over IDs-for-sale scam

Duo`s arrests follow that of home affairs office cleaner
Office cleaner Rhandzu Chauke with family and lawyer outside the Pretoria magistrate’s court, this after appearing on the charge of theft of home affairs stamp.

The arrest of two undocumented Mozambican nationals in connection with the selling of fake IDs has lifted a lid on an alleged documents-for-cash scheme believed to be happening at the home affairs office in Centurion.
Police have confirmed that the men were part of a syndicate involved in the selling of the documents.
“I can confirm that two more suspects have been arrested linked to this syndicate. They were linked through information received during investigation and information followed up on,” said Gauteng police spokesperson Col Noxolo Kweza.
Fresh details in this case have emerged of how a Mozambican man was going around looking for undocumented migrants who want to buy fake IDs to legitimise their stay in SA.
A home affairs cleaner would then send names of undocumented migrants to someone who prints fake birth certificates and then marks them with a stamp stolen from her office.
Buyers of the fake documents would deposit the money for them into the cleaner`s bank account and she would then give everyone involved in manufacturing the fake documents their share.
The revelations about the work of the alleged syndicate comes at a time when the selling of fake documents is under the spotlight.
I can confirm that two more suspects have been arrested linked to this syndicate. They were linked through information received during investigation and information followed up on.
On Friday, home affairs minister Leon Schreiber published in the Government Gazette a call for the over 700,000 people whose IDs were blocked to provide written reasons and representations within 30 days for why their documents should not be cancelled.
Schreiber said through this move, home affairs aims to both resolve the decades-old issue of wrongfully blocked IDs while reducing the number of fraudulent documents in circulation.
Though unemployed, the arrested men, aged 35 and 47, are said to be driving Audis, have expensive watches as well as pricey luxurious furniture at their Sunnyside and Moreleta Park homes in Pretoria where they were arrested.
Their arrest on Tuesday came just a day after Rhandzu Chauke, who works as a cleaner at the department`s Centurion office, was granted bail over allegations that she was involved in the same fraudulent practices of selling documents.
Speaking to Sowetan on a condition of anonymity, a source close to the case said allegations were that the men, who came to SA illegally a few years ago and managed to get fake documents bearing Nguni names, work with Chauke in selling fraudulent documents.
The men allegedly got their own fake documents from a home affairs official who no longer works at the Centurion office.
`They only started working with Chauke last year after that official left,` the source said.
Chauke, who is alleged to be the middleman in the entire operation, was arrested last week Thursday and charged with theft over a stamp that went missing last year April.
It was linked to her when a 24-year-old undocumented Mozambican man wanting to apply for an ID arrived at the home affairs Centurion offices with a fake birth certificate bearing the missing stamp from August last year, four months after it went missing.
Kweza said when the man was asked where he got the fake birth certificate from, he said he had bought it for R6,000 from a cleaner working there.
Investigations were then done and the cleaner turned out to be Chauke.
Telling Sowetan how the alleged scam worked, the source said one of the arrested men, who is 47 years old, would act as a runner by looking for undocumented Mozambicans and Zimbabweans who wanted to buy SA identities.
Upon finding the `clients`, the man would refer them to Chauke. From there, Chauke would get the details of the person and give them to the 35-year-old man.
This 35-year-old man has connections to a man in Johannesburg who prints birth certificates.
The Johannesburg man would then print fake birth certificates and legitimise them with the stamp that was stolen from one of the home affairs officials working at the Centurion offices with Chauke.
After the documents have been printed, the 35-year-old man would then take them to Chauke.
`The buyers would then deposit the money into Chauke`s bank account.
`She would then make sure that everyone gets their cut and she give it to them via cash send,` said the source.
It is not yet known just how long these men have allegedly been involved in this scam but it is believed to have been years.
The source said the men were arrested after Chauke told police about them after her arrest over the stolen stamp.
The two men were expected to appear in court on Friday


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


Minister Leon Schreiber described the arrest of 95 Libyan nationals at a suspected military training camp and the ongoing investigation of the mother of a former Miss South Africa contestant as ‘symptoms of a systemic crisis’ at Home Affairs. His solution is digital transformation, but it’s been on the agenda before.


alking 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.

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.

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


OR Tambo – check in early

SAA has informed the trade that the South African Border Management Authority (BMA) and Department of Home Affairs are in the process of rolling out the Biometric Movement Control Systems (BMCS) at all ports of entry before September 30.

The planned start date for the BMCS roll-out at OR Tambo International Airport is scheduled for this week (August 19-23).

“As we are all aware the BMCS takes longer to process customers, which will mean an increase per passenger processing time resulting in possible long immigration/emigration queues during peak operational periods. This will negatively impact international arrivals baggage collection and possibly result in passengers missing connecting flights,” SAA said in the notice.

Passengers have therefore been requested to check in early and proceed through security early, leaving sufficient time for immigration processes.

Travel News tried to contact the BMA for more information but the phones listed on its website went unanswered.


Visa backlog: Portfolio committee welcomes overtime approval for Home Affairs officials

The Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration has welcomed the approval of overtime for Home Affairs officials to reduce the visa backlog.

This comes after Minister of Public Service and Administration, Inkosi Mzamo Buthelezi and his department granted the overtime request from Homes Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber for the next three months to meet target and reduce the backlog.

“The committee understands and supports the interim measure of granting the Department of Home Affairs three months of overtime to the officials to reduce the visa backlog.

“These interventions will assist in ensuring the country attracts critical skills that businesses need to grow the economy and reduce the rising unemployment rate.

“The collaboration by the two departments clearly demonstrates ‘the spirit of commitment to a joint national effort to reconcile our nation and improve its well-being’ as mentioned by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his opening of the 7th Parliament,” chairperson of the committee, Jan De Villers, said.

In his first official act as the new Home Affairs minister, just one day after being sworn in, Minister Schreiber extended the temporary concession for foreign nationals currently awaiting the outcome of visa, waiver, and appeal applications.

The processing of some of these applications has been delayed as the department works on reducing backlogs. While Home Affairs has made progress in this regard since its previous communication, there is still a backlog in various visa and permit categories. Minister Schreiber has now moved to protect applicants while the backlog is reduced.

The department said the decision to avert adverse consequences for applicants who seek to obtain lawful visas in order to contribute to South Africa, either through their skills or as tourists, signals the minister’s commitment to improving the visa system to make South Africa a more attractive destination for international investment, tourism, and job creation.

At the time, Minister Schreiber committed to avoiding a repeat of the current situation that has seen the previous concession expires before the extension being announced.

“While the department is committed to eradicating the backlog as soon as possible, the minister undertakes that any further extension, modification or amendment to the terms of these concessions will be communicated in writing prior to the new expiry date of December 31, 2024,” the department said in a statement.

The backlog will assist those:

Applicants whose waiver application outcomes are still pending
Applicants whose visa applications are still pending
Applicants whose visa appeal applications are still pending
Short-term visa holders issued in terms of section 11(1)(a): Short term visas 90 days or less, who have applied for a renewal, but have not received their visa renewal outcome, must make the necessary arrangements to depart from South Africa within 90 calendar days from the date of expiry of the principal visa, to avoid being declared undesirable. The latter concession is in line with the provisions of section 11(1)(a) of the Immigration Act, 2002 which limits the duration of sojourn for visiting purposes to a total of 180 days.
The temporary concession applies only to foreign nationals who have been legally admitted into South Africa: This concession is also only applicable to applicants who have submitted their applications via VFS Global and who can produce a verifiable receipt for such application against the VFS Global tracking system.

De Villers said that Minister Buthelezi’s support to Minister Schreiber will directly contribute towards the building of improved professional state capacity in Home Affairs, which would have a positive effect on job creation and economic growth.

“We as the committee look forward to also playing our part towards supporting Minister Buthelezi and his department towards the goal of realising a professional, capable, ethical, and developmental state,” De Villiers said.


How stolen home affairs stamp led to cleaner`s bust

A year and four months after a stamp used to authenticate documents was stolen at a home affairs office, a 24-year-old man presented a birth certificate bearing the same stamp to apply for an ID.

The certificate, however, was found to be fake and was produced four months after the stamp was stolen.

This has now led to the arrest of a woman working as a cleaner at a home affairs office for allegedly selling a birth certificate to an undocumented Mozambican national for R6,000 after being linked to the crime by a bank statement.

The cleaner, Rhandzu Chauke, appeared at the Pretoria magistrate`s court yesterday. Two undocumented Mozambican nationals - Amerco Tibane and Lebogang Tibane also appeared in the high court.

Their arrests come at the time when fake and stolen IDs have been under the spotlight.

On Friday, minister of home affairs Leon Schreiber said the department has taken a decisive action against fraud involving identity books and cards. He said the move was to both resolve the decades-old issue of wrongfully blocked IDs while reducing the number of fraudulent documents in circulation.

Chauke, who lives in Atteridgeville, was arrested while knocking off at the department`s Centurion office on Thursday afternoon.

The 42-year-old woman appeared at the Pretoria magistrate`s court yesterday to face a charge of theft. Chauke is not a direct employee of home affairs but was hired through an independent contractor that has a contract with the department.



When she appeared in court yesterday, she kept her gaze on the floor and did not even look at her husband and other relatives who were in the gallery.

She was granted R1,000 bail.

Speaking to Sowetan after the court case, Chauke`s lawyer Adv Mkhacani Mashava said his client had revealed to police that she had been working with others at the Centurion home affairs office.

`We suspect that this woman is a middleman and everything is being blamed on her.

`She recently confessed to the police to working with other people at the same home affairs office. It seems she would be the one in which transactions are made through. The money would come from the people buying and would go through her to another person within the office.

`She seemed to be the one who would refer clients to the people in the office and obviously she herself was gaining something in this operation. So, there are more suspects that still need to be arrested. At this point it is not exactly clear whether the stamp was stolen by her or given to her by the workers there as part of the plan but that will need to be investigated.

`We expect that arrests would be made this week following her confession. That way all involved in the matter can make an appearance in court at once,` Mashava said.

Gauteng police spokeswoman Col Noxolo Kweza told Sowetan that earlier this month, a 24-year-old man went to home affairs in Centurion to apply for a smartcard.

The birth certificate he was using to apply for the smartcard bore a stamp that had been reported stolen at the office.

The home affairs official asked the man to return with his father.

Kweza said they then interviewed the man.

`It was established that he had purchased the said document from another lady who charged him R6,000 for it.

`The 24-year-old male was then placed under arrest for possession of fraudulent documents and also in relation to the Immigration Act for being in the country illegally. The father of the male suspect was also placed under arrest in terms of the Immigration Act for being in the country illegally.

`The detectives then followed up information regarding the seller of the document and were led to a female who is employed as a cleaner at the Centurion home affairs office. She, too, was placed under arrest for fraud and theft,` she said.

Sowetan understands that the stamp went missing in April 2023 and the man`s birth certificate was issued in August 2023.

The Mozambican man had gone to apply for a smartcard with that birth certificate bearing Tibane early this month when police were called.

A source said when Tibane went to apply for the smartcard, he went to the very same home affairs official whom the stolen stamp belonged to. The stamp was recognised by its unique quote.

During interrogation by the police, Tibane allegedly showed

police the account into which he sent the money and this led them to Chauke. .

Tibane and his father Amerco, who both live in Tembisa, also appeared at the Pretoria high court for their contravention of the Immigration Act charge and were denied bail.

Chauke was expected back in court on August 29.