Motsoaledi: If you know you don’t qualify to be in a country, why stay?

The Citizen – 01 April 2022





'It can't be that Zimbabweans and Basotho have got a different law to rule them when everyone else is under immigration laws,' says Motsoaledi.

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has slammed claims ZEP holders will not qualify for any other visa and will be forced to leave the country as a result.

This as Cabinet decided to no longer issue extensions with the ZEP, which ended on 31 December, and further decided on a 12-month grace period.

During the grace period, ZEP holders must apply for other permits appropriate to their particular status or situation.

Those who are not successful will have to leave South Africa or be deported.

Speaking to Newsroom Afrika on Wednesday, Motsoaledi said the government had systems in place to ensure all the applications sent during this period are processed.

The government was working with the UN to process the applications, he said.

“They’ve helped us with money and we’ve hired people to help, even Treasury has given us extra money to hire more people,” said Motsoaledi.

He further slammed claims that all ZEP holders would not qualify for any other visa.

“Who said they don’t qualify? How do they know they don’t qualify? If you know that you don’t qualify to be in a country, why do you stay? They can’t force me to work outside the law, this country is not run on feelings of people, it is run by the law. We’ve got the constitution which must be respected by all.”

Motsoaledi denied allegations that the ANC government was playing to the public gallery by not renewing the Special Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP) ahead of the 2024 elections.

With the rise of Operation Dudula and other movements calling for undocumented foreign nationals to leave the country, the government has been accused of using the migrant crisis as a scapegoat for its failures.

But Motsoaledi says that’s “rubbish”.

“I’ve never once scapegoated any migrant, when we started planning ahead for the ZEP, there were no masses who were doing what they’re doing. There was no Operation Dudula. We started at the beginning of 2021 in January knowing the ZEP was going to expire in December. We’re not pandering to anybody, we’re just trying to manage our situation for our democracy. People are just making wild statements without understanding how the situation is.”

He said while the government knew just how many asylum seekers and refugees were in the country, no one knew how many undocumented foreign nationals were in the country.

“We do have the number of people who are refugees in South Africa and those are under international protection. We have he numbers because we even give them IDs. We do have the number of asylum seekers in the country. We know the number of people who are on a work visa, and the number of permanent residents because we report their names to parliament every year.

“What we don’t know is the number of people who are illegal, if we knew them then they wouldn’t be illegal. They’re hiding, and don’t want to come out. They just arrived. We believe it is normal for any human being when you arrive in any country to announce yourself and say I’m here, and tell us what you’re looking for and we see how to help you. Those who are illegal, how do we know their number because even organisations in SA, including StatsSA are just doing estimates. Some are saying the estimate is between 3.5 and 5 million people who are here illegally, but we don’t have such figures, how can we have them because somebody who is illegal is exactly that. They’re doing something illegally and did not report themselves to anyone. Many of them don’t even want to be known.”

‘Laws rule the country, not emotions’

Motsoaledi said the end of the ZEPs had nothing to do with emotions and xenophobia, but the laws of the country.

“I’m not going to be blackmailed into that because if I allow myself to be blackmailed, we’ll never be able to run the state. The special permit was not only given to Zimbabweans, it was also given to Basotho and Angolans,”

“In 1998 only 11,000 people came to South Africa to ask for asylum, all of a sudden in 2008, the number changed to 207,000 and most people were from Zimbabwe, and the following year another 227,000. Within two years, we were faced with more than 400,000 people asking for asylum. The system was not designed for that, it was overrun and Home Affairs decided to give them special payments in order to deal with the situation,” said Motsoaledi.

“We said the time has arrived that normal immigration laws must apply, so we’re not changing any law, immigration laws have always been there. We’re saying they must apply like every other person who comes here. It can’t be that Zimbabweans and Basotho have got a different law to rule them when everyone else is under immigration laws.”

www.samigration.com

 

 

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