Thousands of people cannot access healthcare or education after Home Affairs decided in 2012 to block their ‘suspicious’ identity documents.
In 2012, the Department of Home Affairs embarked on a mass drive to block South African identity documents in a bid to address fraud and misrepresentation, which had resulted in duplicate IDs on the National Population Register.
What initially started as 29,000 IDs having markers placed against them quickly escalated to more than one million by 2020.
It resulted in people like Khanyi Mkhwanazi having their dignity and citizenship stripped from them, propelling them into statelessness.
“What is happening is so unfair. My father was a South African and I am married to a South African, but now Home Affairs is telling me that I am an illegal immigrant,” Mkhwanazi said in an emotional interview.
Mkhwanazi is a 50-year-old mother and grandmother whose troubles with Home Affairs started in 1990.
Although she was born and raised in Eswatini, her father was a South African who hailed from Mbuzini, a small village bordering Eswatini and Mozambique.
When apartheid was coming to an end, Mkhwanazi’s father took her to a makeshift Home Affairs office in Mpumalanga to apply for her ID, which was never issued.
Mkhwanazi spent time going back and forth between Swaziland and Mbuzini, but she permanently relocated to South Africa in 2002 when she got married.
She applied for permanent residence and citizenship, both of which were granted.
But later, when she went to register her business, she discovered that she could not because Home Affairs had blocked her ID, claiming she was an illegal immigrant.
“I can’t do anything. I literally can’t do anything. I’m stateless because I can’t open a bank account. I can’t start a business,” Mkhwanazi said.
“I’m working as a chef now, but if the Department of Labour comes to my [place of work], I fear I will be fired and arrested.”
Mkhwanazi said she dreamt of starting several businesses, from an early childhood development centre to a small takeaway shop, but these dreams had been dashed because Home Affairs had rendered her stateless.
As we speak now, my daughter is suicidal. She cannot get a job because of this ID mess.
“All that has been shattered because of one thing. I do not want to work for someone else for the rest of my life, but my life is stagnant. How would I move forward? Because to do anything in South Africa, you need an ID,” she said.
Desperate to have her South African ID unblocked and having exhausted every other avenue, Mkhwanazi said she was willing to take a DNA test to prove that she is indeed South African.
“My father passed away, rest his soul, and my aunt is gone too. I have no one I can turn to but my [half-]brother, so if they want DNA, they can match my brother’s DNA with mine.
“But besides that, I’ve been married to a South African for more than 20 years. Does that not count for something?” the mother of two asked.
Generational curses
The consequences of Mkhwanazi having her ID blocked are not felt by her alone, but extend across three

generations.
She brought her daughter, Mai Bvutula, to South Africa when she got married in 2002. However, because Mkhwanazi’s ID was blocked, Bvutula has not been able to obtain an ID herself.
“As we speak now, my daughter is suicidal. She cannot get a job because of this ID mess. She can’t even get Sassa [grants] to support herself and her children,” Mkhwanazi said.
“So now I am stateless and my daughter and grandchildren are too, and it’s all because Home Affairs cannot be straight with us.”
Bvutula’s state of despair has driven her to consider the unthinkable.
“She once said to me: ‘You know what, Mama, when I’m with my kids, I feel so overwhelmed because I’m alone and I’m not working. I can’t get any social help. I feel like I can kill my kids.’
“That’s the damage this whole situation has done to my kids,” Mkhwanazi said.
Actually, I’m just useless because there’s just nothing that I can do to progress or to make my kid’s life better.
“This has affected my four grandchildren so badly. Because my daughter doesn’t have an ID, their births have never been registered. They cannot be accepted into school because they don’t have birth certificates.”
Mkhwanazi explained that all but the oldest grandchild had been excluded from obtaining an education.
Thanks to the intervention of a social worker, Sinethemba Skylar Bvutula started attending school for the first time in 2023 at the age of eight. Missing the foundation phases of early childhood development, Sinethemba went straight to Grade 2, which Mkhwanazi said could not be good for a child’s development.
Hope for the future
Though Home Affairs had unblocked more than one million IDs by 2023, hundreds of thousands of people are still affected by the practice and cut off from the system, rendering them un¬¬able to access healthcare services and education, to get a job or even open a bank account.
The High Court in Pretoria brought relief to thousands of affected people when it handed down a landmark judgment on 16 January declaring the practice unconstitutional.
Although the court ordered the department to unblock IDs that have been unfairly blocked, many people are still waiting, living in limbo but eager to get on with their lives.
Mkhwanazi said she had hopes that Home Affairs will unblock her ID soon so that she, her daughter and her grandchildren could go on with their lives.
She said she fears the department will not fix the mess it created when it started to block IDs indiscriminately, but she will never give up hope.
“Some time back, I used to feel like I [was] stateless. Actually, I’m just useless because there’s just nothing that I can do to progress or to make my kid’s life better. There’s just nothing I can do.
“But as an adult, you come to a point like, no man, this is not the end of the road,” Mkhwanazi said. V.5218

DA MP says hours lost continue to result in persons being unable to collect their ID documents due to unmanageable queues The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. V.5314
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Home Affairs’ seemingly endless court battles set the department back more than R110-million between April 2023 and the end of February this year. This was revealed in a written parliamentary response by minister Aaron Motsoaledi. He said the department accumulated a litigation bill of R117 692 996.3, higher than the R72 637 944.51 spent the year before. V.5315
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Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) this week revealed that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) has achieved a ground-breaking milestone by processing more than 10 million passengers over a single financial year. This is the highest number of regional and international passengers processed since COVID-19 V.5316
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In recent years, South Africa has seen a significant influx of immigrants from various African countries, as well as other parts of the world. This has raised important questions about the country`s immigration policies and their impact on job creation for both locals and immigrants. The South African immigration system, like many other countries, is a complex and ever-evolving process that aims to balance the country`s economic needs with its social and cultural interests. Let`s take a closer look at how this system intersects with job creation in South Africa. The South African government implemented the Immigration Act of 2002, which outlines the country`s immigration policies and procedures. Under this act, foreigners are required to obtain a visa or permit to enter, work, or study in South Africa. The type of visa or permit required depends on the intended purpose of the individual`s visit and their country of origin. V.5312
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Due to system downtime and load-shedding, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) lost nearly 141,000 hours of Smart ID application and production time between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 financial years. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed this figure in a recent response to questions raised in Parliament by Democratic Alliance MP Adrian Roos. Motsoaledi provided a breakdown of smart ID production and application hours lost to technical difficulties and load-shedding per province for each financial year from 2019/2020. These disruptions hit home Affairs offices in the Eastern Cape the hardest, with over 34,000 hours to rotational power cuts and system downtime. Mpumalanga offices lost the next-highest number of hours at 17 V.5313
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Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has said the public has shown great support for the final White Paper on citizenship, immigration and refugee protection which appeared in the Government Gazette on Wednesday. Briefing the media, he addressed what he saw as a long-overdue need to replace an outdated Citizenship Act, as well as enact proposed changes to existing legislation. V.5306
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Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s indifference to the plight of those affected by his decisions is appalling In the tumultuous seas of immigration law, where uncertainty looms and families are left adrift in bureaucratic limbo, the department of home affairs has emerged as a sinking ship. As a director of a firm of immigration attorneys I’ve witnessed first-hand the dire consequences of the department’s negligence and incompetence. Today, I raise my voice not just as an attorney but as a concerned citizen, urging for a radical overhaul to salvage what remains of our immigration system. We have tirelessly fought battles in the courtroom against home affairs’ disregard for agreed-upon time frames. Countless cases have landed on our desks, each one a testament to the systemic failures plaguing the department. We’ve seen cases where contempt applications were the only recourse, as the department brazenly ignored court orders. V.5307
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Document proposes overhauling the Citizenship Act, the Refugees Act and the Immigration Act and a review of the international treaty on refugee protection Home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi says the cabinet has approved a white paper overhauling the country’s immigration laws after “robust engagements” that resulted in “wide support” of the document’s policy positions. V.5308
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The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. The lost hours are largely due to system downtime, surpassing load-shedding. In the 2022/2023 financial year, where we experienced extensive load-shedding, system downtime was the cause of 41 691 hours lost (17 years), whereas load-shedding caused around 9 322 hours lost (4 years) at DHA civic offices on the production of smart IDs. V.5309
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JOHANNESBURG - Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi said that while the White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection had been gazetted, there were amendments that needed to be made to the legislation before it could be passed into law. The White Paper is proposing an overhaul of the country`s migration laws, with the aim of tightening rules around allowing migrants into the country. V.5310
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