Ladies and gentlemen of the media:
Later this afternoon, the Home Affairs Budget Appropriation
Debate will take place in the National Assembly. During my
introductory address, I shall indicate the direction in which my
Department is moving within its line functions. From this, one
fact will clearly emerge, which I intend to bring to the
attention of the Members of the House. That fact is that the
Department of Home Affairs is severely and untenably
under-funded.
I reported in detail at last year's Home Affairs Budget
Appropriation Debate on the insufficient funding in every sphere
of activity of my Department. Unfortunately, the situation this
year looks no different. In fact, for the 2001/2002 financial
year the budget allocation for the Department, personnel
expenditure and transfer payments excluded, has decreased by 5,9%
when compared to the previous year. This situation is untenable.
The severe under-funding of this Department impacts negatively on
all its activities and, consequently, on the level of service
delivery.
The lack of funding has impaired the fulfilment of a number of
the Department's identified priorities, such as the upgrading of
the Population Register and the Movement Control System, and the
taking over of 14 border posts from the South African Police
Service, at their request. Legal cases, mostly arising out of
deficient legislation, that my Department regularly has to
defend, resulted in expenditure of over R3 million last year. Yet
the current budget allocation makes only R1 million available for
this purpose.
Moreover, although the computerisation of Departmental offices
and linking them to the Departmental mainframe in order to
optimise service delivery has been identified as a strategic
goal, the practical implementation of this will be seriously
hampered by insufficient funding.
National Treasury has already indicated that the Department
should consider Public/Private Partnerships for funding of these
priorities.
Due to the budget constraints, the Department has had to place a
moratorium on the filling of all vacancies since 1998. As a
result of this moratorium and the vacancies created by a number
of personnel taking voluntary severance packages, the Department
had a vacancy rate of 19,2% on its establishment for almost the
whole of 2000.
The effect of this can be seen in a statistical decrease in
almost all the services being rendered by the Department of Home
Affairs. During the latter part of 2000 a stage was reached where
the Department, with its existing personnel, could no longer
render a professional, efficient service to its clients.
Consequently, through a process of critical analysis, no less
than 231 posts were identified for filling. These posts were to
be funded from savings accomplished by extreme belt-tightening
efforts elsewhere in the Department. The process of filling these
231 critical posts commenced in November 2000 and will be
completed within the foreseeable future.
However, despite this exercise, the Department still had a
vacancy rate of 16,1% on its establishment on 31 March, 2001. To
render world-class services while operating with 84% of a staff
establishment determined on the basis of the needs six years ago
is just impossible.
If the upward adjustment of the baseline allocation of my
Department is not addressed urgently, it will become almost
impossible to render the kind of service members of the public
expect and deserve.
Within our line function of migration control, we have grown used
to administering migration control in terms of the Aliens Control
Act and often we fail to accept that, from the point of view of
our clients, the function of migration control has become
inadequate and ineffective in sustaining present pressures and
satisfying future challenges, and is preventing our country from
acquiring the skills and human resources it needs to grow and
prosper.
After four years of intense policy formulation, a new vision for
migration control in the 21st century has been developed, which
has been embodied in the Immigration Bill to be tabled in
Parliament this week. The main thrust of this new piece of
legislation will be that of simplifying the processing of
temporary and permanent permits, so as to attract the required
skills to our country and move administrative capacity towards
law enforcement and the prevention, detection and investigation
of illegal aliens and their removal from the country.
In his State of the Nation Address, the President mentioned the
urgent review of immigration laws and procedures as one of the
priority actions to stimulate the economy of the country. Cabinet
has recently held a workshop in which uncertainties regarding the
Immigration Bill were clarified. The Bill has received wide
support in civil society in spite of being part of what will
always remain a controversial field, and I trust that this Bill
will pass through the parliamentary process in the current year.
1 April 2001 marked the first anniversary of the entry into force
of the Refugees Act, 1998, (Act 130 of 1998) and its Regulations,
and the implementation of the new refugee status determination
procedure. The Act increased the structure of the Refugees Appeal
Board from one person to three persons and broadened the scope of
the Board. Furthermore, the Act requires that the powers of the
Standing Committee on Refugee Affairs be delegated and
decentralised to the Regional Directorates of the Department of
Home Affairs. Five Refugee Reception Offices were consequently
established at Braamfontein, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Pretoria
and Durban.
Recently my Department has implemented a number of measures that
will enhance the situation of refugees and asylum seekers in
South Africa.
The exercise to clear the backlog of asylum applications which
were active and pending at the date of entry into force of the
new refugee status determination procedures, which was undertaken
with the assistance of the United Nations High Commission for
Refugees and the Human Rights Commission, was completed on 31
March 2001.
The conversion of the Section 41 permits issued in terms of the
Aliens Control Act, 1991, held by asylum seekers who applied
under the old procedure, into Section 22 permits issued in terms
of the Refugees Act, 1998, was completed by 30 April 2001. To
respect acquired rights of former Section 41 permit holders, the
Section 22 permit will be endorsed to enable the holders to
continue working or studying, as they have done hitherto. Of
course, under normal circumstances asylum seekers are not allowed
to work, in terms of the provisions of the Refugees Act, 1998.
As from 1 May 2001, my Department has commenced with the issuance
of new Refugee Identity Cards to all recognised refugees, which
will enable them to fully exercise their rights and comply with
their obligations in South Africa.
The Movement Control System, that records the movement of persons
through the border posts of the country, was developed and first
implemented in 1989. The programme had an estimated useable life
of five years but has now been in use for twelve years. It is
completely outdated and can no longer cope with the volume of
data. The system no longer satisfies the needs of the various
user departments and requires a complete rewrite. This would cost
approximately R20m to kick-start the process in the current
financial year, but funds have not been made available for this
purpose. As the programme is so outdated, new technology cannot
be used on it. Consequently, it is becoming progressively less
efficient and will soon be unusable.
The Department of Home Affairs spends approximately R35m annually
on repatriations of illegal aliens and deportations. This amount
does not include salaries of staff involved and their
accommodation costs.
As is the case with all the activities of the Department of Home
Affairs, the Department's task in the tracing and removal of
illegal aliens is being hampered by the lack of manpower and
financial resources. This has resulted in the Department placing
more emphasis on the prosecution of persons who employ, or
provide accommodation or education to aliens in contravention of
the Aliens Control Act. Nonetheless, the Department repatriated
170 317 illegal aliens to their countries of origin last year.
A concern in this regard is the fact that the so-called
'marriages of convenience' where illegals enter into marriages
with South African partners either by fraudulent means or by
arrangement with a South African accomplice in an attempt to
legalise their stay in the country, are on the increase.
Administrative procedures are constantly being reviewed in an
attempt to curb further increases of this modus operandi
Within its civic affairs line function, my Department likewise
suffers the burden inadequate funding.
A major challenge that the Department has embarked on is the Home
Affairs National Identification System (HANIS) of which most of
you are aware by now. This project, which consists of the
automation of the Department's manual fingerprint system and the
issuing of a new smart card identity card should be seen as more
than just a new identity card project - it is in fact the advent
of electronic governance in South Africa, as this card will
eventually become the key to accessing government services and
other social services.
The Department of Home Affairs has been working very closely with
a number of other departments in the arena of smart cards and
e-governance. A Request for Information (RFI) was published in
this regard in July 2000 with a closing date of 31 August 2000.
The outcome of this RFI, requesting inputs from the information
technology industry and other stakeholders, was then used to
undertake a thorough investigation into the viability of
implementing smart cards as the national identity card. A
recommendation to the Cabinet in this regard is now being
prepared. The possible implementation of e-governance will be
closely coupled with the envisaged identity card. This follows
the international trend of many countries moving towards
e-governance and accepting digital signatures for all forms of
transactions.
The technical interdepartmental team is also considering how the
proposed identity card can be used to assist other departments in
improving services to the citizens of the country, by using the
identity card as a key enabler to various systems.
The new identity card will form part of the Home Affairs National
Identification System (HANIS), currently being implemented by the
Marpless Consortium. The HANIS will, through fingerprint
technology, ensure that a person will only qualify for a single
identity number. Once the system has ensured a person is not
already registered with different personal particulars, it will
initiate the personalisation of an identity card. The identity
card will contain visual particulars together with encoded data
of the person. This encoded data will be used by various systems
to assist in the delivery of services once the person's identity
has been successfully verified.
It is also envisaged that the card will eventually be used by a
number of private organisations such as banks, insurance
companies, medical aid schemes and many more, to combat fraud.
The benefits of the reduced fraud in these practices should
result in substantially higher profits and therefore increased
revenues to the State through taxes.
The envisaged uses of the smart ID card will offer state of the
art technology and utility to the citizenry and also enable South
Africa to leapfrog most of the world's technology competitors.
The smart ID card will be the new face of Government services,
reinforcing the Batho Pele principles that we subscribe to. It
will enhance Government services by making them more efficient
and bringing them closer to citizens.
Cabinet has recently approved the establishment of a commission
to monitor each stage of the development and implementation of
the HANIS project and the related procurement. This commission
will be headed by Prof Fink Haysom, who has chosen two additional
commissioners with expertise in contracts, accounting and
information technology, and whom I have appointed.
My Department is also embarking on the implementation of an
electronic document management system. The current manual records
system of approximately 60 million records has reached the point
where it has become almost unmanageable. An electronic system
will greatly enhance service delivery, but will also address the
current fraud gap that exists due to the excessive manual process
requirements. Computerisation of the records environment will
also remove the current need for physical storage space and
reduce the disaster impact risk.
Following the national and provincial elections of June 1999, new
municipal councils were elected for the whole of South Africa on
5 December 2000. In the local elections of 1995 and 1996, votes
were weighted as the number of ward councillors were equally
divided between the so-called statutory and non-statutory areas.
The elections of 5 December 2000 were therefore the first in the
municipal sphere where the principle of one person, one vote,
fully applied.
The turnout for the municipal elections was high by international
standards. Once again the faithful were queuing before sunrise to
cast their votes and early indications were thus of a high
turnout. A significant number of voters eventually, however, did
not participate and that is a cause for concern. This is a matter
that the Electoral Commission will study and analyse in the
coming year and will further comment on when it submits its
report on the elections.
It has now become imperative that the Electoral Act, 1998 and the
Local Government: Municipal Electoral Act, 2000 be consolidated
into one electoral act. It was announced that Cabinet had
approved the formation of a task team in this respect, comprising
of one representative appointed by the Minister of Justice and
Constitutional Development, one representative appointed by the
Minister of Provincial and Local Government, one representative
appointed by the Chairperson of the IEC, two representatives
appointed by myself, and the Chief Director of Legal Services of
the Department of Home Affairs. The task team, to be chaired by
Dr F van Zyl Slabbert, is to be appointed to draft the electoral
law on the basis of interdepartmental co-ordination and a
consultative process with relevant role players and stakeholders.
Electoral regulations must also be reviewed and consolidated.
Ladies and gentlemen, a full copy of my Budget Debate Address
will be made available to you after this briefing. Of course you
will understand that the information contained therein is
embargoed until the actual delivery of the address later this
afternoon.
I thank you.