Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi outlined the customer satisfaction statistics in his response to a recent parliamentary question from Cope president Mosiuoa Lekota regarding the progress made in resolving the myriad issues faced by clients.
While a 2022/2023 Home Affairs survey showed generally high satisfaction scores from clients for the service they received at the department’s offices, opposition parties have said the statistics are misleading.
Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi outlined the customer satisfaction statistics in his response to a recent parliamentary question from Cope president Mosiuoa Lekota regarding the progress made in resolving the myriad issues faced by clients.
“Customer satisfaction score for each service channel was generally high with scores above 70%. However, harbours and airports had the highest satisfaction score of over 90% whereas refugee centres had the lowest score of 73%,” the minister said.
Motsoaledi said when all systems are working and the offices do not experience load shedding, which now affects network coverage in the offices, “the average waiting period for pre-booked services is seven minutes; for birth, marriage, and death services is 10 minutes and 15 minutes for walk-in services”.
He said queues were constantly being monitored to prevent people waiting in queues from being asked to come back on another day.
The minister said the objective of the survey was to assess citizens’ perceptions and satisfaction level with services, identify and document the main problems in service delivery, assess which areas need improvement and provide appropriate recommendations to the management to improve these services.
He said 96% of the customers surveyed endorsed the department’s pricing structure as affordable.
The minister added that most of the customers were serviced on the

same day; however, there were some who had to visit a Home Affairs office more than once for the same service.
Motsoaledi noted that the findings showed a general improvement in queue management, with an increase in the scores across the various customer interaction points.
He said the department was generally praised for effectiveness in terms of its capability to deliver expected output, but criticised for lack of efficiency.
“Inaccessibility, waiting in unmanaged queues for long hours, and unwelcoming staff attitude emerged as the most popular barriers to service excellence at Home Affairs offices. These also include the ability of staff to resolve queries, wait to get attention, and fair treatment,” said Motsoaledi.
In response to the statistics, IFP spokesperson on Home Affairs Liezl van der Merwe said the department was crippled by corruption, systems that were perpetually off-line, long queues, and a lack of staff and modern systems.
She said the IFP believed the department needed to be completely revamped into a modern, fit-for-purpose department, which would mean investing heavily in infrastructure and technology.
“The fact is, that many South Africans spend a day or more in a Home Affairs queue trying to access paperwork. Paperwork which is often desperately needed to access a grant or a job opportunity,” said Van der Merwe.
DA spokesperson on Home Affairs Angel Khanyile said it seemed like the minister was trying to use load shedding as a scapegoat for the system being offline.
“That information is very misleading. The Department of Home Affairs together with Sita (State Information Technology Agency) have not upgraded the network and this is an issue that we have been raising. V.5266

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
Click here for full article

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
Click here for full article

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
Click here for full article

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
Click here for full article

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
Click here for full article

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
Click here for full article

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
Click here for full article

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
Click here for full article

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
Click here for full article

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
Click here for full article