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Home Affairs officials are “selling South Africa to foreign nationals” out of greed, says Minister Aaron Motsoaledi. In an exclusive interview with The Witness on Thursday, Motsoaledi said 182 department officials were dismissed for fraud and corruption between 2018 and 2024. Among those dismissed was a chief director who was implicated in assisting a foreign national in getting a permanent residence permit in the country, at a fee. Those who bear the brunt of the corruption are mostly drug addicts, whose personal information is used by Home Affairs officials to create fake IDs and passports for foreigners. Motsoaledi was commenting on the recent arrest of a Pietermaritzburg department employee by the Hawks for allegedly selling passports to foreigners. The man, according to Hawks provincial spokesperson Simphiwe Mhlongo, has since appeared at the Durban Commercial Crimes Court and was remanded in custody until Monday. Selling identity documents and passports is quite big in SA because the country is in demand. Many people around the world want to come to SA. They are prepared to pay money to get those documents. Even rich foreign people from unstable countries are prepared to get citizenship illegally. To mitigate the problem, Motsoaledi said the department has a counter corruption unit, which is headed by the department’s deputy director general. The unit comprises, among others, officers who have worked for the Hawks and are employed for their experience. “If they have 10 foreigners, these crooked officials will round up 10 SA nyaope (drug) addicts and go to a Home Affairs office at night, depending on the area they are based in, and process the documents. “Every detail of the addict will be accessed and when it comes to the photo, the foreign national will be the one who poses for the photo and in that manner, the SA citizen has lost his identity to the foreigner. This damages our citizens’ livelihoods because at a later stage the locals will realise that they do not exist in our system. Their names are there, but a different person has taken the identity. He said this was a lucrative business for unscrupulous employees, as among those who were dismissed were post-level 6 employees. “They perform clerical tasks but they own more than one luxury vehicle and you ask yourself: where do they get the money to afford such a wealthy lifestyle? It’s through selling their country to foreigners. We are clamping down on them and we have pending court cases and disciplinary proceedings,” Motsoaledi said. The Witness reported last month that a multi-disciplinary task team comprising the Mountain Rise police station, a community policing forum, a security company, and immigration officers swooped on a flat in Raisethorpe, where a sophisticated syndicate of undocumented immigrants was arrested. The syndicate was illegally producing fake identity documents, bank and fuel cards, passports and driving licences. While conducting a search of the flat after arresting the undocumented immigrants, officers discovered a locked room that contained about 300 bank cards from various financial institutions, 20 cellphones that were used to transact from some of those bank accounts, printing equipment commonly used for forgery, and fraudulent driving licences, identity documents, visas, and passports. Opposition parties in parliament were scathing of the department’s system. DA Shadow Minister of Home Affairs and parliamentarian, Angel Khanyile said the greed displayed by some Home Affairs officials was equivalent to selling the country to foreigners. This removes SA citizens from the national population register and also erases fingerprints, which results in locals being declared non-existent in the system. “Dismissing rogue elements is not enough because it’s a long process before the victims get their documents back. Since department employees use biometric systems to access information from computers, it therefore should be easy to catch the corrupt individuals.” IFP’s Liezl Van Der Merwe said the department was riddled with corruption, infiltrated by syndicates, and that the immigration system had collapsed. Our position with regards to the immigration crisis is that all foreign nationals who have South African documents, whether IDs, passports or permits, should have these revalidated. “Our manifesto proposes a six-month amnesty period wherein all foreign nationals should come forward to revalidate their permits and regularise their stay. This will allow us to root out all fake documentation or documentation obtained fraudulently,” said Van Der Merwe. |