The department of home affairs (DHA) has cleared 50% of its backlog of 306,000 visa and other permit applications in three months.
Minister of Home Affairs Leon Schreiber said the DHA had hit the milestone on Friday. He said the backlog had been accumulating since 2014.
Business has repeatedly complained about the long delays firms experience in obtaining work visas for senior personnel. It says this acts as a brake on economic growth.
“In three months, our people have reduced the backlog by 50%. That takes incredible teamwork and effort,” Schreiber said. “Our motto is 'no backlog by Christmas’.
“In a poetic act of good timing, we also received a letter from the department of public service & administration on Friday approving our request to enable the team to work additional overtime hours for the next three months to meet our target of fully eradicating the backlog by Christmas. This support by Minister [of Public Service & Administration] Mzamo Buthelezi for our project demonstrates the kind of constructive collaboration that is fast becoming the greatest asset of the government of national unity.”
Clearing this backlog is essential to creating the breathing space we require to undertake systemic reform and digital transformation ... to improve service delivery and attract the skills, investment and tourism we need to create thousands of new jobs
The project comprises a team of 60 home affairs officials working in an auditorium.
Schreiber said the outcomes of some of the applications still needed to be communicated to the applicants, but “146,524 of the outcomes have already been communicated to the applicants, with more to follow during the coming week”.
“This significant milestone demonstrates what [the DHA] can achieve when we work as a team to deliver dignity to our clients, guided by clear and focused priorities.
“Since I assumed office in June, I have worked to support and grow this project in every way I can, because clearing this backlog is essential to creating the breathing space we require to undertake systemic reform and digital transformation ... to improve service delivery and attract the skills, investment and tourism we need to create thousands of new jobs.
“I am grateful to the director-general and dedicated officials who are working hard and [spending] long hours on this project, as well as to our partners in the business community, who are supporting us with training and human resources.”
Schreiber said there was also a fightback against fraudulent IDs.
“Fake ID books and passports, long queues and corruption are symptoms of bigger problems. The corruption and mismanagement [became] entrenched in the DHA system over more than a decade. We will not be able to fix everything overnight,” he said.
“Our main issue at the moment is that there are far too many instances in our system where human hands are involved and human discretion is required. We urgently need to move towards digitisation.
“The so-called smart ID card is another possible answer. They are not being targeted by fraudsters. People must stop being sceptical about the ID cards just because they are sentimental about the green [ID] book. At the moment, we have about 700,000 ID cards lying unclaimed at branches nationally,” Schreiber said.
“We have 696,946 ID duplicates on the system which we have blocked. Our teams have already started working [on this issue] and have identified about 250,000 of these ... we see as high risk. We have gazetted our plan that people with blocked IDs will be able to come to us and explain their situation. If our officials are satisfied, the citizen’s ID will be unblocked.”
Arrests and convictions are ongoing. “Two weeks ago, a former home affairs official, Judy Zuma, was sentenced to an effective 12 years in prison for passport corruption.”
According to home affairs, Zuma was part of a syndicate supplying fraudulent passports to foreign nationals.
Schreiber said Zuma was found to have processed 192 fraudulent passports between May 28 and June 12 2021. She was paid R4,000 for each passport. Zuma left the department in December 2021 after an internal disciplinary process.
It is believed Zuma was recruited into this scheme by another former DHA official, Zima Shange, who was sentenced to an effective 10 years’ imprisonment in October 2023.
Just a week after Zuma’s sentencing, former DHA employee Tony Stout was sentenced to five years in prison on nine counts of fraud and nine counts of contravention of the Identification Act.
“He has already been dismissed from the department. He committed his crimes while he was stationed at the Cleary Park office in Gqeberha,” Schreiber said.
Our counter-corruption branch is doing incredible work, but I do not want to [go into] too much detail at the moment
On the same day, the DHA’s counter-corruption unit — in a joint operation with the Hawks’ Pretoria commercial unit, SAPS digital forensic investigations, crime intelligence and Akasia public order policing — pounced on a suspect manufacturing green ID books.
Schreiber said the suspect, Emanuel Baloyi, had told them he charged R1,000 for each fake ID book.
Last month, a Free State DHA official was arrested for passport fraud involving a Bangladeshi national.
“Our counter-corruption branch is doing incredible work, but I do not want to [go into] too much detail at the moment. It is dangerous work these people are doing,” Schreiber said.
He said another crucial issue was staffing.
“[The DHA] needs about 18,000 people to operate optimally. At the moment we have about 7,000. We also need to identify which people are going the extra mile to keep our department afloat in tough times. These employees and managers need to be celebrated and empowered, and their ideas given flight.”
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