CLAUDIA PIZZOCRI: The purge of custodianship

US President Donald Trump recently stated that many centenarians, allegedly aged from 100 up to 360, have been receiving social security benefit payments in the US. Though these have been revealed to be inaccurate and inflated numbers, evidence of any such payments over an extended period would be symptomatic of a defective population register.

Government efficiency can easily be undermined by a flawed population register. Accurate information about the population is vital for the public and private sectors to be able to make effective decisions and implement policies properly. Perfecting record collection, promoting and facilitating population interaction with those records and purging errors is rightfully a goal of any functioning democracy, but for some — including SA — implementation remains an ambition that faces many practical challenges. 

In its early stages of implementation (1950s-1990s) the SA population register was underpinned by racial panopticism, and today it remains encumbered by bureaucratic mismanagement and incompetence, fraud and the phenomenon of citizenry dissociation. The National Population Register thus remains highly inaccurate. The ripple effect of this, with a national census with an undercount believed to be 30% or more, should be cause of great concern.   

Under the auspices of the Identification Act of 1997 a more efficient management of the register was meant to be promoted and followed. Biometric smart-IDs are the latest, alas decade long, attempt to get things right once and for all. Though home affairs minister Leon Schreiber initially confirmed his department’s goal of phasing out green ID books by 2025, the challenges faced in achieving full implementation are magnified by the past mismanagement of the population register, which remains dogged by a history of fraud, “clerical errors” and missing records.    

Plenty has already been said about the underlying issue of fraud. Only last year 700,000 IDs were blocked by the department in its bid to clamp down on fraud. Two weeks ago it was reported that Anabela Rungo, mother of withdrawn Miss SA contestant Chidimma Adetshina, was being detained pending deportation. 

For decades many SA citizens have dissociated themselves from the register and its purpose. About 100,000 children born in SA every year are not registered at birth. To this number one must add all foreign-born SA children who were not registered at birth over the years. Unsurprisingly, late registration of births, which the department of home affairs wanted to stop entirely in 2015, remains a necessity in the SA landscape. 

Many South Africans who have married abroad have, over the years, failed to register their marriages in SA. This has led to a recent pattern of rejections of spousal visas and permanent residence applications, despite that in terms of the SA Immigration Act the definition of “marriage” includes “a marriage concluded in terms of the laws of a foreign country”.

The department has no way to know whether a citizen has married overseas, has had children, or has acquired another citizenship, unless the citizen stays proactively connected with the SA government. Citizenry dissociation is partly responsible for the impeachment of the population register. 

There are also far too many cases of “clerical errors” (read “institutional incompetence”), which over time affect many individuals who are unaware of the error until their identity is suddenly purged. It’s not just about numbers — behind each of these compromised or missing records are real people, their lives and stories. Each breach or lacuna affects the life of an individual and can jeopardise an identity, with no redress. Here is one of their stories. 

A tale of institutional incompetence

Zain (a pseudonym) was born in Cape Town in early 2015 of an SA permanent resident father, an accomplished global equity analyst and asset manager. His parents, both from Pakistan, registered Zain’s birth with home affairs and were issued a birth certificate. Home affairs officials told his parents that Zain had been born an SA citizen, and his SA birth certificate confirmed that Zain was registered in the National Population Register as an SA citizen against an identity number. 

The issuance of the birth certificate was the first of no fewer than three shocking “clerical errors” perpetuated for a full decade by the department, due to incompetence and lack of legal training. In 2015, two years after the coming into effect of the SA Citizenship Amendment Act of 2010, home affairs officials were still oblivious to a fundamental change in the legislation. That is, effective January 1 2013, in terms of the amended act the child born in SA of a permanent resident parent was no longer born a citizen. 

As his father’s profession entails frequent travel, an application for Zain’s first SA passport quickly followed the registration of his birth. The passport application gave the department a second opportunity to implement due checks and balances, yet this did not happen and Zain’s first SA passport was issued in 2015 when he was only four months old.   

Pakistan only has dual nationality agreements with 22 countries, and SA is not among them. As SA passports have historically outranked Pakistani passports in terms of global mobility scores, faced with the option his parents easily and reasonably settled on SA citizenship and passport for Zain. 

In 2017 Zain’s father’s work led the family to relocate to the United Arab Emirates and Zain travelled on his SA passport while living there. As children’s passports are valid for five years, in 2020 Zain’s passport was due for renewal. The SA embassy in the UAE forwarded the renewal application to home affairs in Pretoria and again it failed in its role of custodianship and issued a new passport to Zain.    

Fast forward to today. Zain is now 10 and has already travelled to the UK, Turkey, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Pakistan on his SA passport, and visa applications have been processed on that passport throughout. But recently, another passport renewal application was submitted via the embassy, and home affairs finally latched onto the error. An official from the embassy called Zain’s father and politely yet unapologetically informed him that Zain was not an SA citizen and he would therefore not be issued a new passport.    

Zain has no redress against home affairs’ incompetence and his family is now left to face the many complications that will follow, with nothing more than a one-page letter issued by home affairs stating the conclusion. No accountability, no official explanation that can be shown to other governments with which Zain has interacted as an SA citizen. 

Sadly, Zain’s story is far from unique. Many other children who were born in SA after January 1 2013 of at least one permanent resident parent, will be faced with the same stark realisation as their lives progress and their identities are suddenly purged. Unless Schreiber’s home affairs can rise above the issues of the past, some of these children will soon be writing matric, buying property, marrying and having children, all under an identity they were never entitled to in the first place.

The error could be endlessly perpetuated, creating yet more innocent victims of the institutional vandalism that has plagued the department for far too long.

• Pizzocri is CEO at citizenship and immigration law firm Eisenberg & Associates.