Involving chiefs in registering births

Source: Dispatch Live, 19/10/2016

A task team will be set up to look into how traditional leaders can
assist government to fast-track the early registration of children in
rural communities.


The team will comprise traditional leaders and senior officials in the
Department of Home Affairs and will investigate how traditional
council offices can be used to offer Home Affairs services to
communities.


South Africans don`t regard themselves as Africans according to Home
Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba


Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba proposed the task team, between
his department and traditional leaders, at a sitting of the National
House of Traditional Leaders (NHTL) in Bhisho yesterday.


He was addressing chairpersons of all provincial houses of traditional
leaders as part of consultations on the progress made towards the
adoption of the revised policy on international migration.


Gigaba said his department would like to work closely with traditional
leaders as they had plans to embark on a universal early child
registration programme.


"Early child birth registration will tell us who was born here and who
was not. It will help us establish the family tree and will be a
credible database that will be able to help the Department of Basic
Education to plan better.
"You cannot plan better while you are blindfolded. The biggest
loophole [the department has] is the late registration of birth
[certificates]."


Gigaba said the late registration of birth certificates was exploited
by people who arrived at the department claiming their parents had
died and that they no longer had relatives to prove that they were
South Africans.
Last week, provincial education MEC Mandla Makupula said his
department had spearheaded an initiative to verify the identity
documents (IDs) of pupils, a move which he claimed was the first of
its kind in the country.


He said at the time that the department was working closely with Home
Affairs and other security state organs.


Makupula said the department would allocate school resources, other
than the feeding scheme, to those pupils whose IDs had been
verified.


Gigaba said the department could use traditional council offices to
deliver services to communities.


Currently, people in urban areas enjoyed better services.


The department needed to improve services in rural communities.


The minister said skilled foreign nationals could be used by
communities. The planned policy was to teach South Africans that they
were part of Africa.


"We`ll never be anything else," he said after a comment by the Eastern
Cape House of Traditional Leaders deputy chairman Prince Zolile
Burns-Ncamashe that South Africans had lost their consciousness that
they were Africans.


Ncamashe said it seemed that xenophobia attacks were targeted at
non-European foreign nationals. "South Africans do not see themselves
as Africans."