Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Njabulo Nzuza says the department will soon move into a remote system in efforts to secure the country’s national security and speed up services.
In efforts to speed up services and clamp down on a regular offline system, the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Njabulo Nzuza, reiterated the department has plans to digitise its system.
This comes after the department announced that Home Affairs operating hours were extended to Saturdays from September 21 until October 12, for matriculants to apply and collect their IDs in time for their final examinations commencing next month.
Home Affairs offices will be open for five hours, operating between 8am to 1pm.
“Mainly, we are targeting matriculants before examinations commence. We are going to have about 2,800 staff members up until October 12 every Saturday, and 321 offices across our country. Another major issue is collection of IDs; we have about 600,000 uncollected IDs, including 140,000 (IDs) which are first time issuances. We want people to collect and apply for their IDs,” said Nzuza.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, he said Home Affairs offices operating on Saturdays was not new as it has been implemented in the past years.
The digitisation Home Affairs was the department’s commitment to speed up services in order to beat the constant long queues and backlog of uncollected and unissued IDs.
Among other plans to revitalise services in the department, Nzuza said a digitised Home Affairs would eventually pilot a remote system, where people apply for their IDs and other documents in the comfort of their homes.
He added that technological infrastructure is currently on the cards, improving the department’s systems.
“We are trying to build a digital Home Affairs. We want people to apply for their documents from home now, it is what we are working hard on for people to use apps and apply for their IDs.
“We are investing a lot in technology to improve the speed in which the level of our offices connect. We are having various projects which deal with various biometrics, which makes it easier to operate our offices. That commitment and investment in infrastructure is there, especially in Information Technology.
“We are now moving to the digital space, which we call the ‘Home Affairs from home’, by digitising the paper records to a digital space. The minister is very passionate about it. We want to deliver services at your doorstep- very exciting announcements are on the way,” said Nzuza.
Media outlets reported that the Minister of Home Affairs, Leon Schreiber, said digitising the department would also secure South Africa’s national security, clamping down on illegal immigration.
Speaking at the RMB Morgan Stanley Investor Conference last week, Schreiber emphasised digitising his office would boost the economy and stabilise ‘law and order’ in the country. The minister’s utterances is amid the validity of controversial pageant queen Miss Universe Nigeria Chiddima Adetshina’s citizenry.
Adetshina’s mother is under fire for allegedly committing fraud and identity theft. The department discovered in July that the mother may have stolen the identity of a South African woman from Tshwane, who entered the national population register in 1982.
Additionally, the Labour Department has recently been raiding restaurants in the province, following discoveries that these eateries were allegedly underpaying workers and hiring illegal immigrants.
“The only way to turn Home Affairs into a department that supercharges economic growth, delivers dignified civic services and secures national security, is by urgently embracing automation and digital transformation,” said Schreiber, according to Polity.

The Department of Home Affairs has reacted to rumours that the green barcoded ID book will no longer be valid from April next year.
In yet another legal victory for those whose ID documents were illegally blocked by Home Affairs, the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, has once again ordered the department to unblock the IDs of 142 clients of Lawyers for Human Rights.
The court gave the ruling last is week and ordered that Home Affairs had 20 days in which to to do so.
The Lawyers for Human Rights said the ruling underscored the broader impact on thousands of individuals suffering under the flawed administrative system.
The judgment, handed down by Judge Elmarie van der Schyff, in the matter of Phindile Philile Mazibuko and others, follows months of the department’s non-compliance with a previous court order in the Mazibuko case, issued in January.
Since January, Home Affairs has failed to comply fully with the orders to investigate and unblock the IDs of hundreds of individuals, effectively stripping them of their constitutional rights and dignity, the Lawyers for Human Rights said.
Many have been left unable to access essential services, work or conduct basic transactions. The January judgment confirmed that the department’s actions were unconstitutional.
The latest ruling came after the Lawyers for Human Rights return to court because of the department’s non-compliance.
While the court did not find the department in contempt, it confirmed that Home Affairs had failed to unblock IDs by the deadline.
The court also addressed a crucial issue of inconsistency, as Home Affairs said it had unblocked some of the IDs in July this year. However, the LHR said the numbers kept changing, causing confusion and concern.
As a result, the court has demanded an affidavit from the department by September 27, explaining exactly which IDs had been unblocked and when that had been done.
In a parallel development, Home Affairs published a notice on August 16, threatening to cancel IDs unless affected individuals submitted written representations within 30 days.
While Judge Van der Schyff ruled that the notice did not apply to the Lawyers for Human Rights’ clients, the notice remained a looming threat for thousands of others who could lose their IDs without a fair administrative process.
The Lawyers for Human Rights said the case was not just about it’s clients; it was about the thousands of individuals whose rights were being violated by arbitrary and unconstitutional actions. The failure to unblock IDs impacted the most vulnerable members of our society, exacerbating poverty, inequality and exclusion, it said.
The Lawyers for Human Rights called on the department to urgently comply with the court’s order and to address the broader crisis by reviewing and reforming its administrative processes.
“The thousands of individuals facing the threat of having their IDs cancelled under the department’s recent directive must be afforded fairness and proper administrative processes. A just and transparent system is essential to ensure that no one’s rights are violated, and that every individual can access justice and their basic constitutional rights,” the organisation said.

The sudden end to years of crippling power outages and a decision to allow private participation in the country’s electricity, freight-rail and ports are seen as a chance to reignite growth in Africa’s most-industrialised economy.
The formation of South Africa’s business-friendly coalition government has triggered a wave of investment announcements and positive sentiment not seen in years, spurring hope that Africa’s biggest economy may finally be finding its footing after a lost decade-and-a-half.
Within days of the coalition agreement in early July, ArcelorMittal SA reversed a decision to shutter two steel plants that support 80 000 jobs.

Read: GNU marks 100 days

Soon after, Qatar Airways bought a stake in South African airline SA Airlink Pty Ltd. A R1.1 billion auto-parts facility to supply Toyota Motor Corp., which just three years ago said it might leave the country, has since opened and Anglo American Plc announced a $625 million iron-ore investment.

“This has been a difficult 10 to 15 years, but there’s a much more positive outlook,” Kobus Verster, chief executive officer of the steelmaker’s local unit, said in an interview at Vanderbijlpark Works, Africa’s biggest steel mill that opened in 1952 south of Johannesburg.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, rampant corruption, erratic lawmaking and hostile relations between business and the state deterred investors — and in the May election helped cost the African National Congress its majority for the first time since the end of Whites-only rule in 1994.

Economic expansion averaged less than 1% over the past decade, outpaced by population growth.

Now, the new government, the sudden end to years of crippling power outages and a decision to allow private participation in the country’s electricity, freight-rail and ports are seen as a chance to reignite growth in Africa’s most-industrialised economy.

“We are in a significantly better space,” said Cumesh Moodliar, CEO of Investec South Africa.

The country has a chance to become “more economically inclusive and potentially better placed to seize some of the opportunities,” he said.

Still, while the mass power outages that have plagued the country since 2008 ceased more than five months ago, rail tonnages remain a third lower than in 2018, limiting exports. Crime is rampant and there have been few prosecutions of politicians involved in corruption.

The country has a full house of junk credit ratings and is on a dirty-money list. Government debt that the Treasury expects to stabilize at 75.3% of gross domestic product in 2026 is unsustainable, the economy grew just 0.7% last year and a third of the workforce is unemployed.

When President Cyril Ramaphosa took office in 2018, he rode a wave of investor enthusiasm dubbed “Ramaphoria.” But he moved too slowly on economic reforms and tackling corruption — growth stagnated, businesses limited investment, crime worsened and infrastructure deteriorated.

“The fear of failure is going to be an important asset for us as South Africans, because we are going to benefit from politicians who want to get things done so they can go back and say, ‘we made the right decisions, you can trust us,” said Khulekani Mathe, the incoming CEO of Business Unity South Africa (Busa), the country’s biggest business lobby group.

“It’s providing this enormous opportunity for the country to really pull itself up.”

Markets have reacted positively. The rand has rallied since the government’s formation, the benchmark stock index hit a record, government bonds are offering world-beating returns and the premium investors demand for holding South African debt instead of US Treasuries dropped to a five-year low in early September.

Pohl is receiving more inquiries from companies seeking to invest, but “the economy still needs to deliver, we need stronger GDP growth,” she said.

ArcelorMittal’s change of heart

A big part of ArcelorMittal’s decision — which saved 3500 steel jobs and bolstered employment security at the company’s 2500 suppliers and 550 customers — is the newly stable power situation.

This year, the company has been asked maybe twice to reduce its electricity consumption by the state power utility, compared with as many as 60 times annually in recent years, Verster said.

Rail services, to bring ore to plants and take products to market, has also improved.

That’s because relations between the government and business have improved, said Mpumi Zikalala, the CEO of Anglo unit Kumba Iron Ore Ltd.

Last year, the company fired workers because the state rail company couldn’t keep pace with its production. It ran out of space to store 8 million tons of ore stranded 535 miles from a port.

“What I do like is that all parties understand that we need to do this together.”

The company is tripling the quantity of high-quality iron ore it can produce with a project due for completion in 2028.

In a speech on 28 August in Johannesburg to Busa, Ramaphosa praised the deeper relationship between business and government and said it was “far too important to fail.”

It could have been very different.

Following the collapse of the ANC’s vote share, it considered teaming up with populist parties advocating nationalisation. Instead, it formed a broader coalition in which its biggest partner is the market-oriented Democratic Alliance.

“We would have immediately seen the rand weaken quite significantly, foreigners would have dumped our bonds, our debt repayments would have rocketed,” Jeremy Gardiner, a director at Ninety One, the country’s largest private investment firm, told clients last month.

“Investment would have collapsed, jobs would have been lost.”

The rosy relations between business and the state and the privatization pledges need to be translated into action if the positive sentiment is to last.

“It’s really pleasing, the sense of urgency, priority in turning things around,” but concrete results are now needed, said Kuseni Dlamini, chairman of Walmart Inc.’s local unit and the American Chamber of Commerce in South Africa, which says its members account for 10% of national economic output.

“We are in a competitive race with other nations to attract and retain the investment needed for the economy.”

In a groundbreaking judgment on December 4, 2023, the Constitutional Court of South Africa in Rayment v Minister of Home Affairs [2023] ZACC 40 addressed the constitutional challenges posed by the Immigration Act, Act 13 of 2002, in the consolidated cases of Rayment and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others; Anderson and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others. This article delves into the core issues raised, the court’s findings, and the resulting recommendations, shedding light on the far-reaching consequences for foreign nationals, particularly those with children who are South African citizens or permanent residents.
The requirement for foreign nationals to cease working or leave the country upon the expiration of their spousal visas is at the heart of this constitutional challenge. The affected applicants, who had been dutiful and supportive parents, found themselves in a vulnerable position, with their children’s rights and their own rights to dignity compromised. The court’s recognition of the lack of a legitimate purpose for such limitations underscores the unconstitutionality of the Immigration Act and its regulations.
Unconstitutionality of the South African Immigration Act
The essence of the legal battle revolves around the contention that the Immigration Act inadequately addresses the predicament of foreign nationals whose spousal visas expire upon the dissolution of marriages or good faith spousal relationships. This lapse in the law renders their stay in South Africa illegal, especially when children are part of the equation. The Constitutional Court identified specific sections of the Immigration Act, including 10(6), 11(6), and 18(2), along with regulation 9(9)(a), as inconsistent with the Constitution and thus declared them invalid.
Findings and recommendations of the Constitutional Court
The court’s ruling emphasises the undue burden placed on foreign nationals, particularly parents of South African children, by requiring them to cease working or leave the country when their spousal relationships end. The identified sections of the Immigration Act were found to unjustifiably limit fundamental rights, including the right to dignity of the foreign national, the South African citizen or permanent resident spouse, and most critically, the child’s rights under sections 21(3) and 28(2) of the Constitution.
As a remedy, the court suspended the declarations of invalidity for a period of 24 months. During this time, affected foreign nationals are permitted to continue working and residing in South Africa while applying for new visas. This interim measure provides breathing room for Parliament to amend the Immigration Act to align with constitutional principles and rectify the identified defects.
Conclusion
The cases of Rayment and Anderson underscore a common narrative where foreign nationals, having built lives and families in South Africa, face legal limbo upon the termination of their spousal relationships. The court’s intervention acknowledges the intricate intersection of immigration laws and family dynamics, particularly concerning the rights of children. It is imperative to explore the implications of this ruling, especially for affected parties navigating the revised provisions during the 24-month suspension period.

We struggle to secure payslips or a schedule – and in an 11-hour shift I barely have time for a bathroom break
There is no one at reception when I arrive at the hotel in a small town about 50km from Dublin, so I go to the bar and, as instructed, ask for the duty manager. “Miša, do you know where James is?” the young waiter calls to a passing colleague – in Slovak.
I had been interviewed online for the hotel cleaning job I applied for through an agency back in my home country, the Czech Republic. Did I mind that the hotel was in a secluded location with nothing to do in the evening, they’d asked me in the interview. I’d said no, that I like solitude. Now I am being shown around the hotel and the kitchen, where I meet the cook and two other guys – all of them Slovaks. Just as I was surrounded by Poles while on the farm in Germany, here I feel I could be in Slovakia. The cook, taking a break, tells me that it is his last day. I ask if he is leaving because of the low pay. He breathes in slowly and says that he’s leaving because of the stress.
Speak English!
At 8.30am the following day, I am teamed up with two female colleagues, Nina, 19, and Veronika, 20, to start work on the bedrooms.
I go to the second floor to help Veronika, who is also my roommate in the cramped staff hostel. Veronika tells me more than once not to spend so much time on bed-making, that the beds look nice already. “It’s not your bed. It’s good enough,” she says.
At one point during our shift I manage to lose both Nina and Veronika. On finding them again I blurt out, in Slovak: “I couldn’t find you!”. “In English!” one of the managers, who is in the vicinity, shouts so loudly that I jump. Considering Veronika knows even less English than I do, it seems completely absurd to communicate in English.
Hotel cleaner in Ireland (Limits of Europe, dir Apolena Rychlíková, Hypermarket film) – video
In the back yard, after her shift, Veronika sighs: “I shouldn’t have come back here.” She worked at the hotel for five months last year, and she got talked into returning. The hotel promised to pay her more than the minimum wage, but that promise was broken. And the workload didn’t get better, it got worse. “There used to be five people in housekeeping here, we could handle it, but you can’t do it with two people,” she complains. She says she came back “because of the money” as she can’t make any in Slovakia and doesn’t want to be a burden on her parents.
I work for 11 hours, but it feels like 20
I ask my colleagues about contracts. “They won’t give you a contract. I had to pressure them for two and a half months to give me one. And I couldn’t get a PPS number the entire time, so they kept taking 40% of my earnings [in tax]. The first pay cheque was €315!” Veronika says. Until a worker has an Irish personal public service (PPS) number the state takes emergency tax and social insurance, which you claim back later. But you can’t get a PPS without a contract.
I meet Sára in the back yard. She is a quiet 21-year-old from central Slovakia. She had wanted to work in the kitchen, but the management put her on reception because her English is good.
As shifts go, today is terrible, really terrible. Nina is off so I end up working for 11 hours, but it feels like 20. I barely stop for a second, I don’t go to the bathroom, I don’t have time for a drink of water, nothing. Before now, I never would have believed it was possible to create such a hell in which we feel compelled to work as hard as this the entire day, even without a supervisor watching us.
From 9 am we are going: cleaning the toilets next to reception, then we each get our bedroom lists. I start on the first of my rooms: clean the bathroom; change the beds; dust the furniture; refill the soap, body wash and shampoos, tea, coffee, milk; wash the cups. Veronika, working on the second floor, keeps texting me on WhatsApp, which we are supposed to monitor all the time: come on, come on, just do it, we have a lot to do.
There’s less than 10 minutes for us to eat lunch.
Back on duty, Veronika is yelling at me for not going fast enough or making mistakes in the rush. Lifting the heavy mattresses, I cry tears of rage and exhaustion. She is totally stressed that we aren’t keeping up, and she curses the hotel for putting us under such pressure.
When we eventually finish the bedrooms we are told to clean the dining room, then set the tables for breakfast.
Suddenly, Sára comes running over to say a guest has complained: his room has not been cleaned. I missed one. When I get back to the uncleaned room I find an angry Veronika, already on the case. She screams at me that I am completely stupid. Later, I go back to the dining area, realising that as my hours are not recorded anywhere (I am not yet logged in to the hotel’s fingerprint-based ID system) I am basically working for free. I finish after 8pm – two hours later than my official finishing time.
I am so tired that I don’t eat and instead of dinner I walk to the petrol station 2km away for a can of beer. We are not allowed to buy beer in the hotel. The bosses can see us coming and going via CCTV in the hallway of the shabby hostel where we sleep.
Later, Veronika sends a WhatsApp: “Sorry about today. I’m really sorry, I was just overworked. I hope you understand. I don’t want us to fall out.” And a smiley face.
If they want to screw me, they’ll screw me
I start to get used to the routine. But I do something to my shoulder lifting those heavy mattresses. Maybe I really am too old for this job, as the woman at the Slovak-run job agency had hinted when I was looking for hotel work. I’m 45. I could handle it if there was more time, but things are organised in such a way that it is impossible.
When it looks as if there won’t be much work on a given day, staff are told they can have it off. Not everyone is happy with that as we are only paid for the hours worked.
There’s a lot of ambiguity about payslips, and colleagues say if I leave the job early I won’t get paid at all. Nina has been crying because she got paid so little in the last round. She is exhausted but hasn’t kept track of her hours. No one here seems to keep a record of the actual hours worked. Mikuláš, a nice young waiter whose ambition it is to have an organic farm, says: “Why would I? If they want to screw me, they’ll screw me.”
The hours change all the time, but the system is clear: they pay us for as few hours as they can get away with
The next evening, I meet Sará in the back yard. She is totally down, saying she should have stayed in Slovakia and worked for €4 an hour there, rather than put up with what she has to do here in Ireland.
She has come here with her boyfriend Sebastian, who works as a cook, to pay off their debts. If they didn’t have the debt to pay off, or even if they had enough for their fare home, they would leave. But they have nothing.
Every employee has a right to one day off a week. But because there aren’t enough staff, some haven’t had a day off in weeks. In the schedule sent out, the hours change all the time, but the underlying system is clear to everyone: they pay for as few hours as they can get away with. Sometimes people work only from early morning until 11am, and then again late at night. The hours in between are completely unpaid.
My days off
I get a text to say I will have Monday and Tuesday off. On Monday morning, I sleep until 10, have a coffee and walk to the petrol station shop with Barbara. On the way, she recalls how when she was working in Slovakia, they had a Ukrainian who worked every day and never had a day off, and yet he earned less than she, a part-timer did. “For them, we are something like the Ukrainians are for us,” she said about the relationship Irish people have with Slovakian workers.
After a week, I text the duty manager a polite message to tell him that I’m leaving. I enjoy the last few evenings in the back yard and I’m very sad to leave this great group of people.
On the following Monday, he suddenly texts me, asking what my bank details are and wondering if I managed to get a PPS number. I assume the hotel has found out that I am a journalist because I told some of my colleagues before I left.
In a group chat on WhatsApp, the manager writes: “Hi all, please let me know if you did not receive a payment in your bank last week or if you have never received payment. Also let me know if you are not receiving your payslip. ” Payslips had not gone to anyone that I spoke to previously. I was told when I took the job that it paid the Irish minimum wage, then €10.50 an hour, before deductions of €62.40 a week for board and lodgings and €3 a week for use of the laundry facilities. I don’t know how much I should have earned, because after I left I couldn’t get a PPS number so too much tax was deducted. Eventually I got sent €369 for eight days’ work.
After leaving, I hear from Sára that she and Sebastian went back to Slovakia and planned to stay there. But they couldn’t find another job so they returned to Ireland. She writes: “It will be better now that we know what we are getting into. We have lower expectations.”