Date: 08/09/2003
Source: Ministry of Home Affairs
Title: Buthelezi: Parliamentary Media Briefing, September 2003
PARLIAMENTARY MEDIA BRIEFING, INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI, MP, MINISTER OF HOME AFFAIRS AND PRESIDENT OF THE INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY, Cape Town, 8 September 2003
Members of the media and representatives of the Diplomatic Corps
It is a great privilege for me to address you on some of the issues currently being addressed in the Department of Home Affairs and, more importantly, to afford you the opportunity to raise questions regarding issues within the ambit of the activities of the Department which may be of interest to you.
I would firstly like to mention that my Department strives to fulfil its mandate with respect to its two main line function activities Migration and Civic Services, within the context of the vision of Government, to continually improve on the delivery of services to citizens and visitors to our country and to contribute to a better life for all.
I have been the Minister of Home Affairs for more than nine years. For many years, whenever I have spoken to the media or in parliament on departmental matters, I have pointed out two chronic and intertwined problems, which impair my Department from performing its functions to my satisfaction and the satisfaction of our citizens. Such problems are our dramatic under-funding and our inadequate staff complement. Simply put, we are dramatically under-resourced and we need more money and more people.
For years you have heard me observing that my Department is absolutely critical to the service delivery agenda of government, because it provides the enabling documentation that allows our people to access, not only the services of government, but also those of the private sector. My Department is the window, for citizen and visitor alike, through which our government and country are seen. Yet, for years you have heard me stating that the Department is severely under-resourced and that such under-resourcing affects three strategic areas, namely people, infrastructure and technology.
In the first three years of my tenure I pointed to the need of providing the Department with more money so that we could allow the outstanding vacancies to be filled and procure access to the lacking resources. However, I soon realized that within the budgetary constraints of our government I could not gain a substantially larger budgetary allocation for my Department. I have not given up negotiating for a better financed baseline for my Department. My new Director-General will carry forward the efforts we have made in the past in this respect. However, since 1996 I have stressed the need of trying to do more with the same. We have achieved greatly in this respect but the situation still remains critical and unacceptable.
For this reason, since 1998 I developed a strategic vision for the Department, which could address its structural problem within the constraints of the present budgetary framework. The first element of this vision was a reform of our system of migration control based on two tenets. First, the simplification of our permit requirements and second, the shifting of capacity from our permitting to our law enforcement to address the fact that our Department has thus far been unable to provide any degree of effective enforcement of its migration control laws in respect of people who are not within the system. The second element of this strategic vision was centred around the devolution of civic affairs functions to municipalities, traditional authorities and other entities capable of carrying them out effectively and safely. The development of a strong and reliable IT backbone around the HANIS project would make such type of devolution feasible and reliable.
In 1999 I submitted this vision to Cabinet. Since then certain aspects of this vision have come to fruition whilst others still remain to be fulfilled. In the meantime our problems have remained the same and in certain aspects, actually worsened. My new Director-General has now become acquainted with the situation. In the past three months, since his appointment, he has chosen to acquaint himself with the status of our Department by visiting our regional offices. I have not yet received an assessment from him of how he sees the situation and whether he has a contribution to make on the strategy aimed at solving our problem. However, it is crucial that in the absence of better or new ideas, which I am always open to consider, hindrances are now removed so as to implement the strategic ideas which have been on the table for a very long time, and the implementation of which has been impaired and delayed in spite of my constant pressures.
For many years you have heard me stating that my Department currently has an approved establishment of 7,505 posts. This establishment was approved in 1995, at a time when it could not have been possible to fully comprehend the effects of the birth of democracy on the demands for the services of the Department. Millions of our people were brought into the mainstream of citizenry at that time, and the growth of visitors to our country has been exponential. Nonetheless, of these 7,500 posts, nearly 2,000 are vacant. Of these vacancies, we only have funding to fill around 370 posts. This has compelled the Department to utilise the services of hundreds of volunteers, merely to try to provide at the least the most basic of services. This surely cannot be right.
In order to partially address this problem, my Department is in the process of finalising an in-depth scientific study on the required personnel strength and organisational structure to enable optimal service delivery. It is intended to finalise this process in the next two months. This study has been long overdue and I hope that it reflects the Department's strategic vision. I am told that the indications of this study are that the Department will need an establishment of over 11,000 posts. The bulk of the new posts will be in the provinces. The location of offices and service points has also been determined scientifically on the basis of population, distances and infrastructure, using the latest census statistics.
My Department is aware of the persistent inadequate reach of its services in rural and marginalised urban communities. The study looks at the way in which services to such disadvantaged communities are being addressed. The scientific formula designed to determine the location and staffing of offices, in fact, contains a built-in bias towards these areas, compensating in particular for distance in sparsely populated areas and taking into account, as well, the availability of public transport.
We will need to work out a detailed strategy which balances long-term strategy with short and medium-term solutions. There is no doubt in my mind that in a country such as ours, which is huge, and with population scattered around its most remote areas, it will not be possible to open Home Affairs offices wherever people need Home Affairs services. We could only do so by opening as many Home Affairs offices as there are municipal offices, which would be astronomically expensive and highly inefficient. The long-term solution lies in devolving the delivery of civic affairs functions in their entirety to municipalities, traditional authorities and other public and private entities which can safely and reliably deliver them with the assistance of the IT backbone provided by the HANIS. I was informed that in preliminary discussions with the Department of Local and Provincial Government, my Department officials reached agreement on this project being marked amongst the list of intended central government functions to be devolved to municipalities. However, as I have indicated in prior press conferences, no progress has been made in carrying the matter forward with the Department of Public Service and Administration.
However, we cannot wait for final solutions to deal with the present dramatic situation, especially when the finalisation of such an obvious solution has been so delayed. We need to draw a delicate balance between addressing the needs of the present by means on interim solutions and avoiding removing the need to change thereby allowing bureaucratic inertia to transform interim solutions in permanent ones. Therefore, in the interim we are considering having areas with a population of less than 5 000 be serviced by a fleet of mobile units that will be significantly increased in size and quality. In areas where the population exceeds 5 000, temporary service points will be opened, servicing those communities according to need on predetermined days. Where the population exceeds 40 000, permanent service points ought to be present, and where it exceeds 80 000, district offices should be established.
It is also proposed to introduce a dedicated personnel contingent attached to mobile units and service points. At present the staff of already understaffed district offices have to go out with mobile units and to service points, an arrangement that seriously impedes service delivery at district offices. This development will have a tremendous overall positive effect on rural operations of the Department. This approach should take into account that when civic affairs are devolved to municipalities and other entities, decentralised Home Affairs offices and capacity will need to be direct towards migration control, or transferred along with the powers devolved to other entities or absorbed by other organs the national Government.
I must also mention that the process of filling a number of senior management posts in the Department is in an advanced stage. The Department has also recently advertised two posts of Deputy Director-General - namely Corporate Services and a Government Information Technology Officer. This, I believe, will strengthen my Department's organisational capacity to deal with the current challenges facing it.
The Department of Home Affairs has at present representation in 20 South African missions abroad. In the remainder of the 92 foreign missions the Department of Foreign Affairs performs Home Affairs' functions on an agency basis. As a result of discussions with the Department of Foreign Affairs, and in view of the implementation of the new Immigration Act, it has become imperative that the Department of Home Affairs' functions at Foreign missions be performed and managed by Home Affairs officials. This implies that wherever possible, the Department needs to place its own personnel at missions. Bearing in mind the financial constraints, an implementation programme stretching over ten years for the placement of Home Affairs officials in all South Africa's foreign missions has been agreed upon with Foreign Affairs.
At present my Department provides its services through a network of regional, sub-regional, district offices and services points throughout the country. These offices are, in an important sense, the window through which our clients see government. As I have stated for years, the reality is that, with some exceptions, these offices are often poorly located, in a serious state of disrepair, poorly equipped, understaffed and in some cases downright uninhabitable. My Director General, who is new to such a reality, on returning from his visits to the provinces, expressed to me his shock at some of the things he saw, offices without toilets, without water, without electricity, without telephones, which are things that I have highlighted for years.
As part of an attempt to address this situation over the medium term, pending the implementation of effective devolution of civic affairs functions, we have recently introduced the notion of "exemplary offices" that are a nucleus of centres for service excellence in all regions, from which our vision of a modern, efficient and customer-orientated new Department will be rolled out. This project is dovetailed with the introduction of the Department's new corporate identity that will clearly identify our office locations to the public and provide a people-centred modernised interior for enhanced service quality.
A number of these exemplary offices have already been established and others are in the advanced stage of planning. These offices are not only exemplary in terms of their construction and appearance, but also in terms of the business processes and flow of clients through the system that they employ. The reality is that the high standards we demand of ourselves dictate that such offices should be the rule and not the exception. The Department must have the resources to make this dream a reality.
In the short term, however, we must find a way of addressing the most glaringly inadequate offices. My Director General has informed me that he has already given instructions for emergency plans to be put in place to address the most serious cases. In addition, we are planning to launch in the next few months a volunteer campaign in which members of the Department - myself, my Deputy and my Director General included - will, together with members of communities throughout the country, arm ourselves with paint, screwdrivers, hammers and whatever tools are necessary to at least give a facelift to the worst of our offices. We will certainly inform the media well in advance.
Absolutely critical to the Department's ability to deliver effective services is our use of modern information and communications technology. Such technology enables us to deliver efficient, quick and reliable services, such as in the issuing of birth and death certificates, and the processing of ID, visa, permit and other applications, and it is what will make the effective management of migration control and the devolution of civic affairs possible. As you have heard me say for years, my Department has a number of exciting IT projects on the go. These include the Home Affairs National Identification System, known as HANIS, the Electronic Document Management System, the re-write of the Population Register and the redesign of the Movement Control System. There is nothing new in this respect. However, you must now know that HANIS, as the topmost project aimed at modernising the management of civic services, has achieved new milestones during the previous year with the basic system commissioning and this system became operational in August 2002. As of last week, 1 312 075 identity application records had already been captured electronically on the system.
Of particular interest is that the system issues strictly unique identity numbers. Using complex biometric-reliant technologies, the system forbids a situation whereby anyone could, as in the past, have two identity numbers or two persons have the same identity number. This will assist significantly to curb fraud, which is a central overall objective of the system. Already the system has enabled us to pick up duplicate ID applications and attempts by foreigners or asylum-seekers to acquire IDs fraudulently.
The Department is currently engaged in projects to attend to the conversion of all its paper records, which are over 30 million of them, onto the system, as well as the introduction of live capture technology that will enable us to capture electronically at the point of service the fingerprints, photographs and application of citizens directly onto the system. We are also making advances in developing the on-line verification of identity. The Department has recently engaged a transaction advisor to assist it in exploring the options of a public/private partnership in rolling out the new ID card, which will be one of the key deliverables of HANIS.
You will remember that in my last press conference I had given certain deadlines for the finalisation of the smart card component of the HANIS project indicating that my team had identified new approaches and technological solutions which could cut the cost of the new identity card dramatically, creating major savings for the State. You also know that Cabinet has decided that a decision of the identity card component of HANIS must be finalised by the end of this year. However, when he was appointed three months ago, my new Director General requested me to place a halt on the development of this project to enable him to familiarise himself with the technical, policy and economic aspects of this important government expenditure so as able to make a contribution. Considering that he is the new Accounting Officer and must be familiar with all aspect of the matter, I agreed to halt the process and not much progress has taken place. However, I hope that now new emphases can be placed in finalising this matter, which has been on our agenda for many years now.
The key decisions, which remain to be finalised, are two. First what type of card and second how should it be acquired. On the first count, the choice is about a card with a large capacity microchip, the so called fat smart card which carries a small data back in it over and above what is required for sure identification, or one which operates as a connector between a reader of any type and the relevant data bank, containing only the relevant biometric and identity information of the bearer. This second type card is either one with a small capacity microchip, the so-called thin smart card, or one with a large capacity digitalized bar code, the so-called astute card. The modalities of procurement will reflect our choice of technology, and may include a private-public partnership. As I indicated previously, I am not inclined to favour a solution which leads government to do what the private sector can perform better, and, as you know, such was also the recommendation of the Heysom Commission. There have been many delays in this process, but I feel that I must carry the responsibility of completing decision making in this matter before the next elections, as this is a project, which I started, and I feel the responsibility of completing it. It might be the case that some people think that a project of this nature should not carry the memory of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and ought to be delayed until somebody else could sign it off.
My Department is also urgently looking at developing and improving our systems for refugee management, passport issuing, and the management of illegal foreigners. However, it is ironic that, while the Department is responsible for one of the most ambitious IT projects in government, on the continent and in the world - HANIS - inside the Department our IT systems are antiquated and totally inadequate to the demand we place on ourselves for service delivery. Although we have made some progress in the computerisation of our offices around the country and abroad, many of our offices remain without computers, and many of those that do have computers have very old equipment and are constantly faced with the problem of the system going down with a critical effect on our clients - many of whom can least afford it - having to come back at another time to complete the processes they came to us for.
In order to address these problems, I have decided that a workshop in October this year shall be convened to totally review the IT strategy of my Department and to produce a plan that will ensure an integrated, comprehensive approach to the development of information technology in the Department. In the meantime we have established an Information Systems Management Board in the Department which is responsible for overseeing and co-ordinating all IT planning and projects in the Department.
As you will know, one of the key developments in the recent period has been the introduction of the new immigration dispensation in South Africa. The new Immigration Act is now in force. The Immigration Advisory Board has been functioning since May this year, and it has already provided me with invaluable advice on various aspects of migration. I am in the process of finalising the draft Immigration Regulations that I published in April this year and expect this to be concluded this month. The conclusion of this process indicates many of the unwarranted criticism, which were labelled against me. I call public attention on this process of regulation making which has indeed been unique in the history of our country and ought to form an example for many other departments. Never before in making regulations a minister was bound by law to take into account public input, to the point of having to summarise those which he rejected and give reasons for his rejections, while receiving the advice over statutory body with the prestige, expertise and inter governmental presence of the Immigration Advisory Board.
It is normal that the introduction of new legislation, such as the Immigration Act, is accompanied by teething problems. The Department, in consultation with the Immigration Advisory Board, is evaluating its experience of implementing the new immigration dispensation over the past months, and a number of process and capacity initiatives are underway to make the necessary adjustments to improve its service delivery in this area. However, we must remember that the reform of migration control was predicated on three subsequent steps as I have often indicated. The first was a legislative reform, which was completed amidst great difficulties, many which were really unwarranted. The second was the completion of the regulation making process and establishment of the Immigration Advisory Board, which will be complete before the end of the year if we are to include in it the evaluation of how well the law is being implemented.
The third step is perhaps the most difficult and still remains to be begun. That is beginning to enforce our immigration control laws to ensure that those who are outside the system and live illegally in our country can be brought within the system or dealt with. I have given instructions to my Director-General to present me with a program for the establishment of the Inspectorate, which is contemplated in the Immigration Act, and to take other measures to take effective responsibility of border control. However, these are not matters which can be finalised with a stroke of pen as they require shift of capacity from permitting to enforcement, in a context in which our Department is dramatically under resourced. However, this aspect highlights how all challenges of our Department are indeed inter related and, for the planned evolution of civic affairs delivery functions also has a bearing on what we can do to shift capacity towards immigration control. In fact, it will remain meaningless to have such great debates about the criteria for the issuance of temporary or permanent residence permits when so many people are in our country illegally without any such permits and we even don't know how many such people there really are and whether they pose a threat to our stability or prosperity.
Moreover in compliance with the new Act and in order to deal effectively with the problems of illegal immigration, people smuggling and trafficking, it will be started to determine the magnitude of these problems in our country. I have instructed my Director General to personally driving a process to review the organisation, capacity, staffing, equipping and training of our Immigration Services to ensure we create an effective immigration law enforcement capacity.
On 12 June this year I have launched the national ID. Campaign in preparation for next year's Election. I made the announcement then that the Department have decided to waive fees for ID. re-issues and that the Department will bear the cost of the photographs up to the closure of voter registration for the election, with the intention to further encourage eligible voters to apply for the necessary documentation. We have launched a massive campaign throughout the country to ensure that everyone entitled to vote in next year's Election has the necessary ID's to do so. This is being done in partnership with National Government Departments, with provincial governments, with local government and traditional authorities, with political parties and with the IEC.
Special attention has been given to rural areas, informal settlement, farms and traditional authorities by way of mobile units. Often due to unemployment and poverty, members of such communities were not able to reach Home Affairs offices in the Department. So far in this the campaign the Department has received over two million I.D. applications and nearly one and a half million ID's have been issued. We continue to increase our capacity to make this campaign an effective one.
As the Minister of Home Affairs I have a residual responsibility to deal with electoral matters over and above what the IEC is required to do. Therefore I must express a personal word of concern for the limited time for voter's registration and the fact that there does not seem to be a sufficiently strong campaign to urge people to register and explain to them that it is their civic duty to make their voice heard in the next Election. I regretted it in 1999 that no voter's education was conducted for those General Elections. Also in this case there is no intention to conduct voter's education. Therefore, I must urge the private sector and NGOs to take up this responsibility. Voter's education is much more than merely explaining to people how to vote and how to fill out a ballot paper. Voter's education is mainly about explaining to people why they vote and that they indeed have the power with their voting to choose the next government and hold their electoral representatives accountable for what they have done or have not done. I urge the media to become part and parcel of this necessary process of voter's education.
My Department is a prime target for criminals and criminal syndicates because we provide the enabling documentation that they need to badly to commit their crimes. Because they are not entitled to this documentation they seek actively to corrupt our staff. We are quite aware of the serious problem of corruption in the Department and are engaged in an intense effort not only to root it out, but to put measures in place to make it difficult to gain any benefit for those who seek to corrupt out officials. We believe that the fight against corruption must be holistic one.
We need to urgently speed up the modernisation of our IT systems and business processes in order to make it more difficult to misuse our systems for staff and clients alike. We need too to drastically improve our service delivery in order to make it unnecessary for clients to seek to grease the palms of our staff in order to get quicker service.
We need to put measures in place to combat not only the corruption of our staff, but also to bring to book the corruptors. And, of course, we need to intensify our efforts to detect and act against acts of corruption in the Department. I have instructed my Director General to establish the anti corruption unit which is contemplated in the Immigration Act which is unique in that it operates within our Department but through the secondment of specialised personnel from the Department of Safety and Security. As soon as the new regulations come into force the Director General will have the necessary legal backing to take this important step forward.
In July this year, my Director General, in line with a decision of the January Cabinet Lekgotla, convened a meeting of his counterparts in the Department of Justice, SAPS, SARS and Intelligence in order to develop and interdepartmental strategy to deal with corruption in Home Affairs. This meeting laid the basis for a comprehensive review of the nature and causes of corruption in the Department and this in turn will lead to the convening of a workshop to develop strategies and plans to take the corruption bull firmly by the horns.
In conclusion I need to state that this is an exciting and challenging time for the Department of Home Affairs. We know what our weaknesses are, we have plans and are developing further plans for dealing with them, and we are well on the way to putting in place a leadership for the Department that is committed and capable to put these plans into action. However, the long-term solutions to our problems will not materialise unless progress is made in finalising the strategic vision, which are tabled before cabinet, parliament and the public opinion for the past four years.
In spite of many delays I remain optimistic. To succeed we need the support of our partners in all tiers of government. We need the support of the public. We need your support. And most importantly, we need the support of government as a whole to ensure that once and for all we make a decisive strategic intervention to ensure that the Department has the resources to realise its objectives.
I must convey through you my heartfelt thanks to the leadership and staff of the Department for their commitment above and beyond the call of duty to work against all the odds to ensure that we begin to build the world-class service that is our vision and our dream.
I thank you
Issued by Ministry of Home Affairs
8 September 2003
Source: Ministry of Home Affairs
Title: Buthelezi: Parliamentary Media Briefing, September 2003
PARLIAMENTARY MEDIA BRIEFING, INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI, MP, MINISTER OF HOME AFFAIRS AND PRESIDENT OF THE INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY, Cape Town, 8 September 2003
Members of the media and representatives of the Diplomatic Corps
It is a great privilege for me to address you on some of the issues currently being addressed in the Department of Home Affairs and, more importantly, to afford you the opportunity to raise questions regarding issues within the ambit of the activities of the Department which may be of interest to you.
I would firstly like to mention that my Department strives to fulfil its mandate with respect to its two main line function activities Migration and Civic Services, within the context of the vision of Government, to continually improve on the delivery of services to citizens and visitors to our country and to contribute to a better life for all.
I have been the Minister of Home Affairs for more than nine years. For many years, whenever I have spoken to the media or in parliament on departmental matters, I have pointed out two chronic and intertwined problems, which impair my Department from performing its functions to my satisfaction and the satisfaction of our citizens. Such problems are our dramatic under-funding and our inadequate staff complement. Simply put, we are dramatically under-resourced and we need more money and more people.
For years you have heard me observing that my Department is absolutely critical to the service delivery agenda of government, because it provides the enabling documentation that allows our people to access, not only the services of government, but also those of the private sector. My Department is the window, for citizen and visitor alike, through which our government and country are seen. Yet, for years you have heard me stating that the Department is severely under-resourced and that such under-resourcing affects three strategic areas, namely people, infrastructure and technology.
In the first three years of my tenure I pointed to the need of providing the Department with more money so that we could allow the outstanding vacancies to be filled and procure access to the lacking resources. However, I soon realized that within the budgetary constraints of our government I could not gain a substantially larger budgetary allocation for my Department. I have not given up negotiating for a better financed baseline for my Department. My new Director-General will carry forward the efforts we have made in the past in this respect. However, since 1996 I have stressed the need of trying to do more with the same. We have achieved greatly in this respect but the situation still remains critical and unacceptable.
For this reason, since 1998 I developed a strategic vision for the Department, which could address its structural problem within the constraints of the present budgetary framework. The first element of this vision was a reform of our system of migration control based on two tenets. First, the simplification of our permit requirements and second, the shifting of capacity from our permitting to our law enforcement to address the fact that our Department has thus far been unable to provide any degree of effective enforcement of its migration control laws in respect of people who are not within the system. The second element of this strategic vision was centred around the devolution of civic affairs functions to municipalities, traditional authorities and other entities capable of carrying them out effectively and safely. The development of a strong and reliable IT backbone around the HANIS project would make such type of devolution feasible and reliable.
In 1999 I submitted this vision to Cabinet. Since then certain aspects of this vision have come to fruition whilst others still remain to be fulfilled. In the meantime our problems have remained the same and in certain aspects, actually worsened. My new Director-General has now become acquainted with the situation. In the past three months, since his appointment, he has chosen to acquaint himself with the status of our Department by visiting our regional offices. I have not yet received an assessment from him of how he sees the situation and whether he has a contribution to make on the strategy aimed at solving our problem. However, it is crucial that in the absence of better or new ideas, which I am always open to consider, hindrances are now removed so as to implement the strategic ideas which have been on the table for a very long time, and the implementation of which has been impaired and delayed in spite of my constant pressures.
For many years you have heard me stating that my Department currently has an approved establishment of 7,505 posts. This establishment was approved in 1995, at a time when it could not have been possible to fully comprehend the effects of the birth of democracy on the demands for the services of the Department. Millions of our people were brought into the mainstream of citizenry at that time, and the growth of visitors to our country has been exponential. Nonetheless, of these 7,500 posts, nearly 2,000 are vacant. Of these vacancies, we only have funding to fill around 370 posts. This has compelled the Department to utilise the services of hundreds of volunteers, merely to try to provide at the least the most basic of services. This surely cannot be right.
In order to partially address this problem, my Department is in the process of finalising an in-depth scientific study on the required personnel strength and organisational structure to enable optimal service delivery. It is intended to finalise this process in the next two months. This study has been long overdue and I hope that it reflects the Department's strategic vision. I am told that the indications of this study are that the Department will need an establishment of over 11,000 posts. The bulk of the new posts will be in the provinces. The location of offices and service points has also been determined scientifically on the basis of population, distances and infrastructure, using the latest census statistics.
My Department is aware of the persistent inadequate reach of its services in rural and marginalised urban communities. The study looks at the way in which services to such disadvantaged communities are being addressed. The scientific formula designed to determine the location and staffing of offices, in fact, contains a built-in bias towards these areas, compensating in particular for distance in sparsely populated areas and taking into account, as well, the availability of public transport.
We will need to work out a detailed strategy which balances long-term strategy with short and medium-term solutions. There is no doubt in my mind that in a country such as ours, which is huge, and with population scattered around its most remote areas, it will not be possible to open Home Affairs offices wherever people need Home Affairs services. We could only do so by opening as many Home Affairs offices as there are municipal offices, which would be astronomically expensive and highly inefficient. The long-term solution lies in devolving the delivery of civic affairs functions in their entirety to municipalities, traditional authorities and other public and private entities which can safely and reliably deliver them with the assistance of the IT backbone provided by the HANIS. I was informed that in preliminary discussions with the Department of Local and Provincial Government, my Department officials reached agreement on this project being marked amongst the list of intended central government functions to be devolved to municipalities. However, as I have indicated in prior press conferences, no progress has been made in carrying the matter forward with the Department of Public Service and Administration.
However, we cannot wait for final solutions to deal with the present dramatic situation, especially when the finalisation of such an obvious solution has been so delayed. We need to draw a delicate balance between addressing the needs of the present by means on interim solutions and avoiding removing the need to change thereby allowing bureaucratic inertia to transform interim solutions in permanent ones. Therefore, in the interim we are considering having areas with a population of less than 5 000 be serviced by a fleet of mobile units that will be significantly increased in size and quality. In areas where the population exceeds 5 000, temporary service points will be opened, servicing those communities according to need on predetermined days. Where the population exceeds 40 000, permanent service points ought to be present, and where it exceeds 80 000, district offices should be established.
It is also proposed to introduce a dedicated personnel contingent attached to mobile units and service points. At present the staff of already understaffed district offices have to go out with mobile units and to service points, an arrangement that seriously impedes service delivery at district offices. This development will have a tremendous overall positive effect on rural operations of the Department. This approach should take into account that when civic affairs are devolved to municipalities and other entities, decentralised Home Affairs offices and capacity will need to be direct towards migration control, or transferred along with the powers devolved to other entities or absorbed by other organs the national Government.
I must also mention that the process of filling a number of senior management posts in the Department is in an advanced stage. The Department has also recently advertised two posts of Deputy Director-General - namely Corporate Services and a Government Information Technology Officer. This, I believe, will strengthen my Department's organisational capacity to deal with the current challenges facing it.
The Department of Home Affairs has at present representation in 20 South African missions abroad. In the remainder of the 92 foreign missions the Department of Foreign Affairs performs Home Affairs' functions on an agency basis. As a result of discussions with the Department of Foreign Affairs, and in view of the implementation of the new Immigration Act, it has become imperative that the Department of Home Affairs' functions at Foreign missions be performed and managed by Home Affairs officials. This implies that wherever possible, the Department needs to place its own personnel at missions. Bearing in mind the financial constraints, an implementation programme stretching over ten years for the placement of Home Affairs officials in all South Africa's foreign missions has been agreed upon with Foreign Affairs.
At present my Department provides its services through a network of regional, sub-regional, district offices and services points throughout the country. These offices are, in an important sense, the window through which our clients see government. As I have stated for years, the reality is that, with some exceptions, these offices are often poorly located, in a serious state of disrepair, poorly equipped, understaffed and in some cases downright uninhabitable. My Director General, who is new to such a reality, on returning from his visits to the provinces, expressed to me his shock at some of the things he saw, offices without toilets, without water, without electricity, without telephones, which are things that I have highlighted for years.
As part of an attempt to address this situation over the medium term, pending the implementation of effective devolution of civic affairs functions, we have recently introduced the notion of "exemplary offices" that are a nucleus of centres for service excellence in all regions, from which our vision of a modern, efficient and customer-orientated new Department will be rolled out. This project is dovetailed with the introduction of the Department's new corporate identity that will clearly identify our office locations to the public and provide a people-centred modernised interior for enhanced service quality.
A number of these exemplary offices have already been established and others are in the advanced stage of planning. These offices are not only exemplary in terms of their construction and appearance, but also in terms of the business processes and flow of clients through the system that they employ. The reality is that the high standards we demand of ourselves dictate that such offices should be the rule and not the exception. The Department must have the resources to make this dream a reality.
In the short term, however, we must find a way of addressing the most glaringly inadequate offices. My Director General has informed me that he has already given instructions for emergency plans to be put in place to address the most serious cases. In addition, we are planning to launch in the next few months a volunteer campaign in which members of the Department - myself, my Deputy and my Director General included - will, together with members of communities throughout the country, arm ourselves with paint, screwdrivers, hammers and whatever tools are necessary to at least give a facelift to the worst of our offices. We will certainly inform the media well in advance.
Absolutely critical to the Department's ability to deliver effective services is our use of modern information and communications technology. Such technology enables us to deliver efficient, quick and reliable services, such as in the issuing of birth and death certificates, and the processing of ID, visa, permit and other applications, and it is what will make the effective management of migration control and the devolution of civic affairs possible. As you have heard me say for years, my Department has a number of exciting IT projects on the go. These include the Home Affairs National Identification System, known as HANIS, the Electronic Document Management System, the re-write of the Population Register and the redesign of the Movement Control System. There is nothing new in this respect. However, you must now know that HANIS, as the topmost project aimed at modernising the management of civic services, has achieved new milestones during the previous year with the basic system commissioning and this system became operational in August 2002. As of last week, 1 312 075 identity application records had already been captured electronically on the system.
Of particular interest is that the system issues strictly unique identity numbers. Using complex biometric-reliant technologies, the system forbids a situation whereby anyone could, as in the past, have two identity numbers or two persons have the same identity number. This will assist significantly to curb fraud, which is a central overall objective of the system. Already the system has enabled us to pick up duplicate ID applications and attempts by foreigners or asylum-seekers to acquire IDs fraudulently.
The Department is currently engaged in projects to attend to the conversion of all its paper records, which are over 30 million of them, onto the system, as well as the introduction of live capture technology that will enable us to capture electronically at the point of service the fingerprints, photographs and application of citizens directly onto the system. We are also making advances in developing the on-line verification of identity. The Department has recently engaged a transaction advisor to assist it in exploring the options of a public/private partnership in rolling out the new ID card, which will be one of the key deliverables of HANIS.
You will remember that in my last press conference I had given certain deadlines for the finalisation of the smart card component of the HANIS project indicating that my team had identified new approaches and technological solutions which could cut the cost of the new identity card dramatically, creating major savings for the State. You also know that Cabinet has decided that a decision of the identity card component of HANIS must be finalised by the end of this year. However, when he was appointed three months ago, my new Director General requested me to place a halt on the development of this project to enable him to familiarise himself with the technical, policy and economic aspects of this important government expenditure so as able to make a contribution. Considering that he is the new Accounting Officer and must be familiar with all aspect of the matter, I agreed to halt the process and not much progress has taken place. However, I hope that now new emphases can be placed in finalising this matter, which has been on our agenda for many years now.
The key decisions, which remain to be finalised, are two. First what type of card and second how should it be acquired. On the first count, the choice is about a card with a large capacity microchip, the so called fat smart card which carries a small data back in it over and above what is required for sure identification, or one which operates as a connector between a reader of any type and the relevant data bank, containing only the relevant biometric and identity information of the bearer. This second type card is either one with a small capacity microchip, the so-called thin smart card, or one with a large capacity digitalized bar code, the so-called astute card. The modalities of procurement will reflect our choice of technology, and may include a private-public partnership. As I indicated previously, I am not inclined to favour a solution which leads government to do what the private sector can perform better, and, as you know, such was also the recommendation of the Heysom Commission. There have been many delays in this process, but I feel that I must carry the responsibility of completing decision making in this matter before the next elections, as this is a project, which I started, and I feel the responsibility of completing it. It might be the case that some people think that a project of this nature should not carry the memory of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and ought to be delayed until somebody else could sign it off.
My Department is also urgently looking at developing and improving our systems for refugee management, passport issuing, and the management of illegal foreigners. However, it is ironic that, while the Department is responsible for one of the most ambitious IT projects in government, on the continent and in the world - HANIS - inside the Department our IT systems are antiquated and totally inadequate to the demand we place on ourselves for service delivery. Although we have made some progress in the computerisation of our offices around the country and abroad, many of our offices remain without computers, and many of those that do have computers have very old equipment and are constantly faced with the problem of the system going down with a critical effect on our clients - many of whom can least afford it - having to come back at another time to complete the processes they came to us for.
In order to address these problems, I have decided that a workshop in October this year shall be convened to totally review the IT strategy of my Department and to produce a plan that will ensure an integrated, comprehensive approach to the development of information technology in the Department. In the meantime we have established an Information Systems Management Board in the Department which is responsible for overseeing and co-ordinating all IT planning and projects in the Department.
As you will know, one of the key developments in the recent period has been the introduction of the new immigration dispensation in South Africa. The new Immigration Act is now in force. The Immigration Advisory Board has been functioning since May this year, and it has already provided me with invaluable advice on various aspects of migration. I am in the process of finalising the draft Immigration Regulations that I published in April this year and expect this to be concluded this month. The conclusion of this process indicates many of the unwarranted criticism, which were labelled against me. I call public attention on this process of regulation making which has indeed been unique in the history of our country and ought to form an example for many other departments. Never before in making regulations a minister was bound by law to take into account public input, to the point of having to summarise those which he rejected and give reasons for his rejections, while receiving the advice over statutory body with the prestige, expertise and inter governmental presence of the Immigration Advisory Board.
It is normal that the introduction of new legislation, such as the Immigration Act, is accompanied by teething problems. The Department, in consultation with the Immigration Advisory Board, is evaluating its experience of implementing the new immigration dispensation over the past months, and a number of process and capacity initiatives are underway to make the necessary adjustments to improve its service delivery in this area. However, we must remember that the reform of migration control was predicated on three subsequent steps as I have often indicated. The first was a legislative reform, which was completed amidst great difficulties, many which were really unwarranted. The second was the completion of the regulation making process and establishment of the Immigration Advisory Board, which will be complete before the end of the year if we are to include in it the evaluation of how well the law is being implemented.
The third step is perhaps the most difficult and still remains to be begun. That is beginning to enforce our immigration control laws to ensure that those who are outside the system and live illegally in our country can be brought within the system or dealt with. I have given instructions to my Director-General to present me with a program for the establishment of the Inspectorate, which is contemplated in the Immigration Act, and to take other measures to take effective responsibility of border control. However, these are not matters which can be finalised with a stroke of pen as they require shift of capacity from permitting to enforcement, in a context in which our Department is dramatically under resourced. However, this aspect highlights how all challenges of our Department are indeed inter related and, for the planned evolution of civic affairs delivery functions also has a bearing on what we can do to shift capacity towards immigration control. In fact, it will remain meaningless to have such great debates about the criteria for the issuance of temporary or permanent residence permits when so many people are in our country illegally without any such permits and we even don't know how many such people there really are and whether they pose a threat to our stability or prosperity.
Moreover in compliance with the new Act and in order to deal effectively with the problems of illegal immigration, people smuggling and trafficking, it will be started to determine the magnitude of these problems in our country. I have instructed my Director General to personally driving a process to review the organisation, capacity, staffing, equipping and training of our Immigration Services to ensure we create an effective immigration law enforcement capacity.
On 12 June this year I have launched the national ID. Campaign in preparation for next year's Election. I made the announcement then that the Department have decided to waive fees for ID. re-issues and that the Department will bear the cost of the photographs up to the closure of voter registration for the election, with the intention to further encourage eligible voters to apply for the necessary documentation. We have launched a massive campaign throughout the country to ensure that everyone entitled to vote in next year's Election has the necessary ID's to do so. This is being done in partnership with National Government Departments, with provincial governments, with local government and traditional authorities, with political parties and with the IEC.
Special attention has been given to rural areas, informal settlement, farms and traditional authorities by way of mobile units. Often due to unemployment and poverty, members of such communities were not able to reach Home Affairs offices in the Department. So far in this the campaign the Department has received over two million I.D. applications and nearly one and a half million ID's have been issued. We continue to increase our capacity to make this campaign an effective one.
As the Minister of Home Affairs I have a residual responsibility to deal with electoral matters over and above what the IEC is required to do. Therefore I must express a personal word of concern for the limited time for voter's registration and the fact that there does not seem to be a sufficiently strong campaign to urge people to register and explain to them that it is their civic duty to make their voice heard in the next Election. I regretted it in 1999 that no voter's education was conducted for those General Elections. Also in this case there is no intention to conduct voter's education. Therefore, I must urge the private sector and NGOs to take up this responsibility. Voter's education is much more than merely explaining to people how to vote and how to fill out a ballot paper. Voter's education is mainly about explaining to people why they vote and that they indeed have the power with their voting to choose the next government and hold their electoral representatives accountable for what they have done or have not done. I urge the media to become part and parcel of this necessary process of voter's education.
My Department is a prime target for criminals and criminal syndicates because we provide the enabling documentation that they need to badly to commit their crimes. Because they are not entitled to this documentation they seek actively to corrupt our staff. We are quite aware of the serious problem of corruption in the Department and are engaged in an intense effort not only to root it out, but to put measures in place to make it difficult to gain any benefit for those who seek to corrupt out officials. We believe that the fight against corruption must be holistic one.
We need to urgently speed up the modernisation of our IT systems and business processes in order to make it more difficult to misuse our systems for staff and clients alike. We need too to drastically improve our service delivery in order to make it unnecessary for clients to seek to grease the palms of our staff in order to get quicker service.
We need to put measures in place to combat not only the corruption of our staff, but also to bring to book the corruptors. And, of course, we need to intensify our efforts to detect and act against acts of corruption in the Department. I have instructed my Director General to establish the anti corruption unit which is contemplated in the Immigration Act which is unique in that it operates within our Department but through the secondment of specialised personnel from the Department of Safety and Security. As soon as the new regulations come into force the Director General will have the necessary legal backing to take this important step forward.
In July this year, my Director General, in line with a decision of the January Cabinet Lekgotla, convened a meeting of his counterparts in the Department of Justice, SAPS, SARS and Intelligence in order to develop and interdepartmental strategy to deal with corruption in Home Affairs. This meeting laid the basis for a comprehensive review of the nature and causes of corruption in the Department and this in turn will lead to the convening of a workshop to develop strategies and plans to take the corruption bull firmly by the horns.
In conclusion I need to state that this is an exciting and challenging time for the Department of Home Affairs. We know what our weaknesses are, we have plans and are developing further plans for dealing with them, and we are well on the way to putting in place a leadership for the Department that is committed and capable to put these plans into action. However, the long-term solutions to our problems will not materialise unless progress is made in finalising the strategic vision, which are tabled before cabinet, parliament and the public opinion for the past four years.
In spite of many delays I remain optimistic. To succeed we need the support of our partners in all tiers of government. We need the support of the public. We need your support. And most importantly, we need the support of government as a whole to ensure that once and for all we make a decisive strategic intervention to ensure that the Department has the resources to realise its objectives.
I must convey through you my heartfelt thanks to the leadership and staff of the Department for their commitment above and beyond the call of duty to work against all the odds to ensure that we begin to build the world-class service that is our vision and our dream.
I thank you
Issued by Ministry of Home Affairs
8 September 2003
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