Members of the media and representatives of the Diplomatic
Corps.
It is a privilege for me and my colleague, the Deputy Minister,
to once again address you on some of the salient 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. My colleague the
Deputy Minister will also address some of the issues, which fall
under those line functions specifically assigned to her,
including the Film and Publication Control Board and the
Government Printing Works.
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 as embodied in the
President's State of the Nation Address and as confirmed at the
Cabinet Lekgotla. We strive, within the constraints of limited
resources, to continually improve on the services we render and
to contribute to a better life for all.
My strategic vision for the reconstruction of the Department of
Home Affairs within the context of the overall transformation
imperative of Government, is based on three pillars, namely the
establishment of a modern migration management system, now
encompassed in the new Immigration Act, in the process of
implementation; the Home Affairs National Identification System
(Hanis), currently under construction, and the modernisation and
redesign of the delivery of civic services to the citizenry in
line with Batho Pele principles.
Civic services, including identification, citizenship, the
Population Register and travel document matters, are by far the
most utilised Home Affairs services. In this area, the Department
can make a great impact on service delivery improvement and can
enhance the quality of life of all South Africans. Yet, it is in
this functional sphere where chronic delivery inadequacies and
the spatial inaccessibility of services still plague the
Department. Limited resources and infrastructure, exacerbated by
the historical legacy of their unequal distribution, aggravate
the situation. This is notably apparent in deeply rural and
marginalised urban communities where the need for civic services
is the greatest.
With a view to extending the reach of our services and optimising
the deployment of scarce state resources, I have come to the
conclusion that devolving the delivery interface of Home Affairs
services to third tier government provides the most rational,
economic and functional way of confronting the future. This
approach is not only fully aligned with the Government's notion
of integrated governance but also provides a workable strategy
towards achieving service excellence. Coupled with the benefits
of Hanis, that has in fact positioned Home Affairs at the cutting
edge of e-governance advances, the devolution option presents the
only viable strategic direction whereby the interests of all
stakeholders and customers will be best served. Moreover, many
other countries have introduced systems of devolved and
decentralised civic services delivery with great success.
I am aware that the devolution vision is even greater in reform
than was the case with migration. The implications thereof extend
far beyond the traditional operational sphere of Home Affairs and
will profoundly impact on a wide range of governmental structures
and their interrelationships. A broadly consultative and
collaborative effort must result in the positioning of the Home
Affairs devolution initiative at the centre of national,
provincial and local intergovernmental structures and their
inter-relationships, as envisaged in Chapter 3 of the
Constitution, dealing with co-operative governance.
In the light hereof, I have already solicited the support and
co-operation of Cabinet and its relevant sub-structures.
Moreover, within my Department I have commissioned an in-depth
scientific investigation into all matters pertaining to this
issue and appointed a task team to drive the process of
establishing such a new dispensation. It is with great urgency
and utmost dedication that we are moving ahead and I am confident
that our efforts will be enthusiastically supported throughout
the governmental fraternity and by other stakeholders - as well
as, above all, by the South African citizenry at large, who stand
to benefit most from the outcome of this process of reform.
Within the Migration sphere the most significant development over
the past months has undoubtedly been the enactment of the new
Immigration Act, Act 13 of 2002. The Immigration Act is an
enormous improvement on the present uncertainty and levels of
discretion. It contains innovative solutions, which place South
Africa ahead of many other countries that are struggling with
issues of migration. The Act brings immigration control into
compliance with the highest standards of human rights protection
and administrative and judicial review, while placing South
Africa on a par with many other countries in respect of many of
its provisions, especially in respect of investors' and
intra-company transfer permits. We believe that as implemented
through regulations, the Immigration Act will become far more
user-friendly, without losing any of Government's control
responsibilities regarding the movement of people.
The Immigration Act will need to be implemented by means of a
broad range of regulations, which are currently being finalised,
to ensure that we can make the Immigration Act work at its best
and as intended. Once regulations define the elements of the new
system of migration control, new forms will need to be designed,
printed and supplied to all our offices, while training our
officials in their use. Therefore I am not in a position to
indicate a clear commencement date for the new system of
immigration control, but it is believed that this will take place
either at the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
In the meantime, to give effect to a Constitutional Court ruling
in this regard, my Department has amended its policy relating to
lodging work and study permit applications. Foreigners currently
legally residing in South Africa on valid temporary residence
permits, e.g. holiday permits, may now lodge applications for
work or study permits from within the country. Such applications
provided of course that they meet all the requirements, can be
finalised at regional offices of the Department. In line with the
intentions of the Immigration Act we have also started delegating
the finalisation of permit applications, inter alia applications
for study permits, intra-company transfers and secondments to
various Missions abroad, rather than continuing with the
time-consuming practice of referring all such applications to
Pretoria.
The Immigration Act also does away with the Immigrants Selection
Board, which was tasked to adjudicate immigration applications.
The period of office of the Board in any event expired on 30 June
this year. In future, officials of the Department will adjudicate
all applications. This will provide for a speedier adjudication
process in view of the rapid increase in the numbers of
immigration applications that we have received in recent years.
It will also reduce, if not eliminate altogether, the recurring
backlogs that we experienced with regard to immigration
applications. There are currently a number of applications that
await finalisation and I have now authorised that these
un-finalised applications can in the interim be adjudicated until
the Immigration Act becomes operational.
It is interesting to note that due to the increased co-operation
between the Department and the SAPS, the number of deportation
warrants issued in respect of foreign persons who have been found
guilty of serious crimes, have increased dramatically. Whereas
the total number of deportation warrants for the year 2001 was
760, the number for the period 1 January to 31 July 2002 already
stands at 630. It must further be noted that despite this
increase, the section concerned has, through more efficient
practices, been able to cope with a personnel strength that
decreased from seven persons four years ago to three at the
moment. This is the attitude that the Department needs in its
drive to become more efficient.
The removal of illegal foreigners remains a serious problem, and
will carry on being a problem as long as South Africans continue
to employ illegal foreigners as cheap labour, rather than
employing South African citizens. It must be recognised that the
current drought and food shortages in our neighbouring countries
also have an impact in this regard. In this process the number of
illegal foreigners removed from the RSA for the first months of
2002 was 75 572 in comparison to 68 492 for the corresponding
period in 2001.
There often seems to be a tendency in the average South African
to regard illegal aliens and refugees or asylum seekers in the
same vein. This has led to the media referring to various
incidents of violence against refugees as indicative of
xenophobia amongst South Africans. My Department has been working
towards ensuring that asylum seekers and refugees lead a life of
dignity. In fighting xenophobia, the Department seeks to ensure
that nobody anywhere is subjected to the insult and offence of
being despised by another or others because of his or her race,
colour, nationality or origin. In ensuring that xenophobia is
eradicated within the Republic, the Department is committed to
realising the objective that every human being should enjoy human
rights and be considered equal, with every right and possibility
to build a national home, which they can truly call home. My
Department has further committed itself by establishing a working
group to deal with xenophobia and produce a document that assists
in vigilantly fighting xenophobia, as mandated by the Immigration
Act.
Within the other main line function responsibility of my
Department, namely Civic Services, the implementation of
electronic systems to replace time-consuming manual processes is
receiving priority attention as part of our efforts to improve
service delivery. Significant progress has been made with two
major such projects, namely the Hanis project and Electronic
Document Management System (E-DMS).
The Hanis Project comprises three main pillars, namely the
Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), the Identity
Card component and the System Integration components. AFIS is a
fingerprint database system that uses complex formulas and
algorithms to store the digitised fingerprint data on the
database and manipulate it in accordance with the needs of the
Department. System Integration sees to the coherence and
concerted effort of the various sub-systems, which ensures that
they work together to produce the desired results.
The Identity Card component is the unit that eventually emits the
identity card. I have announced in the past that we have
considered utilising the technique of smartcards. A great deal of
thought has been given to how smartcard technology should be
implemented. Certain proposals were put forward which I suspected
to be problematic in many respects. For this reason, with the
approval of Cabinet, I established a commission presided over by
Professor Fink Haysom. This Commission worked hard and consulted
extensively, and has now finalised its report.
At the same time, we opened an intense process of
inter-departmental consultation and we involved in it the
National Advisory Committee for Innovative Technology. We wanted
to make sure that we made the right technological decision in
respect of smartcards and secured the maximum value for money for
the State. This process has led to very substantive changes to
our original thinking and policies on the matter. These changes
will shortly be submitted to Cabinet for its consideration and
deliberation, and therefore it is premature for me to discuss
their features at this juncture. I merely wish to indicate that
this process has been completed and that a relevant announcement
will be made after Cabinet deliberations and on the basis
thereof.
By expanding the system's Remote Verification service to cater
for needs of the commercial sector, the Department is considering
rendering a very significant function. This will enable all
interested parties, from both the public and the private sector,
to query the Hanis database and do reliable verification of those
people approaching them for services. In pursuit of this goal,
the Department is also considering doing what is called back
record conversion, a process whereby all the existing fingerprint
data on the manual records will be captured on to the Hanis
database.
To obtain the desired volumes and thus ensure that the stress
levels of the system are according to requirements, the
Identification Subsystem should be upgraded to reach the record
intake capacity of 45 000 records per day. The process of
populating the Hanis database could start in September 2002. The
system must be capable of performing both output functions as
well as data intake functions, seven days per week, 24 hours per
day, with no down-time or shifting between input and output
functions.
Another need associated with Commercial Verification has arisen,
namely for the establishment of a Call Centre through which
stakeholders can contact the Department for enquiries. The Call
Centre will be operational in the third quarter of 2002.
By end of March 2002, R654.8 million had been spent on the
project since the signing of the contract in November 1999. Of
the R654.8 million, 85% was spent on equipment, 14% on services
and 1% on personnel, administration and inventories, whilst R
131.5 million (excluding VAT) has been spent on foreign exchange.
Most of the equipment and some of the services are imported and
these attract large foreign exchanges as the Rand continues to
deteriorate against the US Dollar and the Japanese Yen, being the
foreign currencies in which these items are priced.
My Department intends introducing to Parliament within 2002 the
Identification Amendment Bill. This Bill introduces the issue of
electronic data capturing and verification associated with Hanis,
for which the current legislation does not make provision.
Also within Civic Services the Department is implementing the
Electronic Document Management System (E-DMS), which will result
in effective, real-time, online automated document management
from capture to business transaction, thus significantly
improving efficient business processes. The system will make Home
Affairs records and archiving information available for immediate
access to any authorised employee at workstations in the entire
system, both nationally and internationally. This system will
eventually be integrated with the National Population Register.
It can indeed be regarded as the first step towards re-writing
the Population Register. The commissioning date for Phase 1 of
this project is 1 September 2002. This is a major project that
will largely do away with paper records and microfilming and will
significantly improve service delivery within the civic services
terrain. The magnitude of this project is evident from the fact
that, inter alia, 51 million microfilm records have to date been
converted into electronic records.
One of the main strategic focus areas of the Department of Home
Affairs is the deployment of information technology and systems
to improve service delivery to all stakeholders, and these two
mentioned projects are indicative of my Department's commitment
to realising this strategic goal.
Despite the severe financial and human resource restraints under
which we need to function, my Department and I are committed to
contributing towards improving the lives of the people of South
Africa, inter alia, through constantly improving access to and
the quality of services that we render. We will constantly work
towards our vision of " Rendering World-class Service".
I thank you.
Issued by Ministry of Home Affairs
22 August 2002