Home Affairs South Africa

SA puts immigration concerns on agenda

2007-02-02T12:47:00.001-08:00

February 02 2007
Racial profiling at London's Heathrow Airport has caused tension between South Africa and Britain, SABC news reported on Thursday.

Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and her British counterpart, John Reid, discussed immigration control issues in London on Thursday. Concerns about racial profiling at Heathrow were raised.

Reid said that black South Africans were more likely to be interrogated at Heathrow than whites, SABC reported.

A few months ago, Britain decided unilaterally not to accept temporary passports from South Africa.

Many South Africans had also complained about how they were being treated by immigration officials in Britain.

A new study revealed that black South Africans were normally targeted for questioning and body searches.

London announced it was considering introducing a visa system. South Africa said it would do the same if that happened, the SABC reported.

Home Affairs considering ID audit

2007-01-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

The Home Affairs Department is considering a forensic audit to find out how many fraudulent identity documents are in circulation, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said on Monday.

In written reply to a question by Sandy Kalyan of the Democratic Alliance in the National Assembly, she said her department would consider such an audit in the 2007/08 financial year.

“Should such an audit be deemed as indeed necessary and feasible, it will be done in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, notably those within the Justice, Crime, Peace and Security Cluster and the Forum of South African Directors-General,” she said.

The terms of reference of this audit, which would include the timeframes and scope of the audit, would jointly be determined with these partners.

However, the final decision on the feasibility of an audit would take into account the impending introduction of the smart card ID, which would possibly identify fraudsters and drastically reduce fraudulent IDs through a structured multi-level identification service, Mapisa-Nqakula said

Home Affairs promises ID today

2006-12-23T11:38:00.000-08:00

Jaffie Alberto’s seven-year wait for his identity document is about to have a happy ending, thanks to the intervention by The Citizen.

Home Affairs Minister spokesman Cleo Mosana assured this newspaper yesterday that Alberto’s ID would be delivered to his residential address today.

“The ID was issued on December 14. All we have to do is to dispatch it to him. It was a case of miscommunication,” said Mosana.

This swift reaction comes after we ran the story of the 69-year-old Alberto’s frustration over not having received his ID since he made his first application in 1999.

President Thabo Mbeki’s office e-mailed The Citizen concerning the matter. “You are kindly asked to provide my office with the contact details of Mr Alberto, so that we can try to assist him as a matter of urgency,” read an e-mail from The Presidency’s ministerial liaison officer Samson Phakwago.

Alberto was elated about the latest development, “Once I have the ID in my hand, I will jump for joy. I can have a pleasant Christmas this year.”

He said the Home Affairs representative (Mosana) who had telephoned him yesterday had minded her Ps and Qs. “She was polite... she went as far as wishing me a prosperous new year,” he said.
Mosana said the office of Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula had not received the complaint letter that humanitarian Fred Collins, on behalf of Alberto, had apparently written.

“We have not seen it,” she said.

Officials ordered to pay deportees' airfares

2006-12-23T11:35:00.001-08:00

The Pretoria High Court has ordered government officials who illegally deported three Chinese nationals to share in paying for the cost of flying them back to South Africa.

Judge Essop Patel ruled on Tuesday that the deportations on December 2 of Fang Yan, Miexiang Gao and Wenyu Gao were unlawful and "in breach and disobedience" of an earlier interim interdict preventing their deportation.

Patel ordered that Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, the minister of home affairs, Manicum Moodley, the Special Investigations Unit assistant director, Sam Langa, the home Affairs chief immigration officer, and R Marhule, the head of the Lindela repatriation centre, be jointly liable to pay all the costs of air travel to fly the three individuals back from China to South Africa for a court appearance on March 15.

Mapisa-Nqakula was also ordered to contact the three deportees, through the South African Embassy in China, within two weeks and issue visas to them. If she cannot deliver the applicants to the court, Mapisa-Nqakula must provide the court with an affidavit explaining why she could not.

Mapisa-Nqakula must also investigate and submit a written report to the high court Registrar by March 12, explaining why the three were deported.

Patel also ordered that a fourth Chinese national, Xianyun Yan, be released immediately from Lindela or wherever she was being detained and be given a temporary residence permit so she can get a job.

A leading immigration attorney described the ruling as "extraordinary and salutary".

The attorney said that it indicated the court's displeasure at the fact that some home affairs officials acted with impunity. He said the order also appeared to capture the feeling that the South African taxpayers should not be expected to foot the bill when officials abused their offices.

"This order may have some home affairs officials thinking twice before they again dare to contravene a direct order of the court," the attorney said.

Home affairs did not comment.

Audit to establish extent of false IDs

2006-12-23T11:35:00.000-08:00

An audit to determine the number of false IDs in South Africa could lie ahead, according to Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.

In a written reply to questions, she said her department would consider such an audit in the 2007/8 financial year. "Should such an audit be deemed necessary and feasible, it will be done in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies," she said.

The issue of false documents was again in the spotlight when the SABC Special Assignment programme proved how easy it was to buy ID books and birth certificates from departmental officials as well as outsiders working with them. The department subsequently requested the footage of the documentary.

In her reply, Mapisa-Nqakula said the purpose of the forensic audit would be to establish the extent of the number of alleged fraudulent identity documents in circulation.

The days of the green bar-coded ID book are numbered. The introduction of the new credit card style ID will be discussed at the next Cabinet lekgotla in January. Shortly after TV expose, the minister told the National Assembly the green IDs were "contaminated" by criminals and had to be replaced.

Don't bribe home affairs staff

2006-12-23T11:31:00.000-08:00

Refugees and asylum seekers waiting to have their papers sorted out at the Airport Industria refugee office in Cape Town were given a stern warning by a senior home affairs official on Monday after one of them was caught trying to bribe a department employee.

The Cape Times visited the office on Monday after some refugees complained of long queues and poor service.

Addressing some 100 refugees, Norma Xesha, the refugee status determination officer, said there were reports of a refugee trying to entice an official with cash.

"We saw someone trying to give money. We are getting paid by the government to do the job. Do not try to bribe us. If you want to bribe someone, go and do that outside of this office. Don't corrupt the people in this office. If you have too much money and you can't handle it, go and give it to charity," said Xesha.

The person in question was not arrested, but Xesha warned that should a similar incident happen, the police would be called in.

The incident took place during Home Affairs Deputy Minister Malusi Gigaba's visit to various home affairs offices around the city.

His spokesperson, Khulekani Ntshangase, said Gigaba's visit was to address issues of corruption and service delivery at the various centres in the Western Cape.

"The issue, or the reason we came here, was to address the situation and to further assist, so we as a department can fully understand the challenges facing home affairs officials," said Ntshangase.

He said corruption was one of the main challenges facing the department and officials were easily enticed into accepting bribes.

"(Gigaba) is dealing with that. It's (corruption) a matter that he is looking at. He is also looking into whether the conditions are making it fertile for anybody to try and bribe officials. We always say that we've got to make sure that there is easy access (for people) and to close all loopholes that could lead to any forms of corruption," said Ntshangase.

He said Gigaba would be addressing home affairs officials from across the province, at a meeting in the city today.

The refugee centre deals with cases from 1998 to July 2005 only. All new applicants are dealt with at the Cape Town office.

One of the department's latest interventions in speeding up services in its Western Cape offices was the advertising of 10 positions for interpreters and refugee status officers as part of Operation Backlog.

Lack of capacity and inadequate availability of resources to register asylum seekers led to a massive backlog of applications. Four posts for interpreters and six for refugee status determination officers were advertised.

Operation Backlog was launched earlier this year by Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula as the department was faced with a backlog of 110 000 applications nationally.

Cape Town's backlog stood at 22 000 at the beginning of the project.

Ongoing mayhem at home affairs

2006-11-20T12:49:00.000-08:00

The Democratic Alliance has called for the Public Protector to institute an investigation into "ongoing mayhem" in the department of home affairs, a spokesperson said on Sunday.

"A ceaseless public outcry as regards the department's ineffective and inefficient service delivery has continuously fallen on the minister's deaf ears," said DA MP Marius Swart.

Swart said the department had a reputation of being one of the most corrupt government departments, with officials committing fraud, extorting money, and aiding and abetting illegal immigrants.

Swart said all assurances given by Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula to combat fraud and corruption had failed dismally.

"The fact of the matter is that the department of home affairs is delivering sub-standard service to its clients, virtually with regard to all the statutory responsibilities entrusted to it.

"The standard of service delivery is declining at such a rate that the intervention by the Public Protector is necessary," said Swart.

Concept of twins too tough for Home Affairs

2006-11-19T10:50:00.000-08:00

Who among us doesn’t understand being driven to irrational behaviour by the Department of Home Affairs — particularly when you’re told to share one ID between you.

Society is punishing the wrong guy here. Enough of this.

When I was growing up I used to admire and envy my cousins Mduduzi and Dumisani, with whom I lived at our maternal grandparents’ house in Chesterville.

Not only were they big and strong, they were also identical twins. Those days, older people — who saw twins as a biological miracle that needed to be pampered at every available opportunity — would be heard saying: “Ah, look at them! Aren’t they cute! God must have been so impressed with his handiwork he decided to duplicate it!”

The underlying message was, of course, that us lesser human children were so ugly that upon making us, God muttered to himself, “Eish, there I go again, wasting my clay! Let me quickly move on ...”

But the downside of being a twin was that if one of them was naughty, the other innocent twin was bound to be punished for sins he hadn’t committed.

It therefore was to be expected that The Twins covered up for each other, and fought each other’s battles. Another interesting thing was that when one of them decided he didn’t feel like going to school, the other followed suit.

Sometimes, wisely, one of them would go to school so he could imbibe the day’s lessons which he would later share with his brother.

Fast-forward to 2006: the twins, who are now responsible family men, came to me with a complicated problem.

For the past 12 years they have been living as one person. Every time they applied for new IDs, the Home Affairs Department would issue them with two separate documents — but, apart from their names, the rest of the information was exactly the same, which shouldn’t be the case.

This caused problems for them with banks. Because one of the twins is smarter with his money, while the other has problems with the credit bureaus, the mistake by Home Affairs has made the other twin’s life a misery. He’s having screaming matches with the wife, who’s distressed by the letters of demand that find their way into the family’s postbox.

When I first heard this story, I flashed a smile of victory at my cousin, seeming to say it wasn’t cool to be a twin, after all — at least while Home Affairs is the shameful circus that it is .

Anyway, it got worse when, three months ago, the supermarket chain that they work for decided to change its payroll system. In terms of the new system, you get paid on the basis of your ID number.

Because the twins share the same ID number, the implementation of this new system has been nothing but hell for them.

When the new system kicked in, one of the twins did not get his salary, while the other twin was paid twice .

It was only when the aggrieved twin raised the issue with the manager that the Home Affairs muck-up come to the fore.

Numerous visits to the Home Affairs offices did not help much. Every time they raised the issue with the bureaucrats, they would get shouted down.

A few weeks later they would receive new ID documents — with the same wrong information.

Only when they took their case to the press did Home Affairs take their complaint with a modicum of seriousness.

My cousins’ experience is a pointer to a deeper malaise within the Home Affairs Department: lack of professionalism and empathy with citizens, and a lackadaisical approach to genuine complaints by those whose lives have been turned into a nightmare by bureaucratic incompetence.

I think almost every other person in this country has had his or her nasty experience with Home Affairs.

Not so long ago one of the investigative TV programmes showed how foreigners wanting to legitimise their presence in the country would either buy fake IDs, or be “married” to local women by corrupt Home Affairs officials.

The fact that it is so easy to buy a fake ID explains our uncontrollable crime wave. People commit crimes but will never be traced because their “existence” is fake.

It’s about time Home Affairs got its house in order, otherwise winning our fight against crime will continue to elude us as we don’t even know how many human beings are in this country. We do not even know the extent to which such services as child grants are needed, and who deserves them.

Crazy man gets crazy sentence

2006-11-18T07:54:00.000-08:00

The five-year jail sentence meted out to 22-year-old Kabelo Thibedi, who held a Home Affairs official hostage out of frustration over not receiving his identity document for years, is ridiculous and proves the country’s justice system is crazy.

This is according to Young Communist League of South Africa national secretary Buti Manamela. He was addressing the media yesterday on his organisation’s view on the verdict that has drawn an outcry from the public, demanding the young man be punished by means of community service, not time behind bars.

“The sentence is unacceptable,” said Manamela.

“Thibedi had no intention of hurting anyone, he used a toy gun and he was frustrated for not getting his ID.

“We believe he should have not been sentenced to anything at all. The guilty ones are lazy Home Affairs workers who get off scot-free – they must go to jail,” said Manamela.

Thibedi, accompanied by his mother Esther Zwane, who is being treated for depression, was present at the briefing. He said he still hadn’t received his ID back from the police, since it was confiscated during the trial.

He hoped this appeal would be successful.

Manamela said they would mobilise the youth to picket outside the Appeal Court, calling for leniency.

They had written to National Prosecuting Authority director Vusi Pikoli, and were corresponding with President Mbeki, Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla and Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour on the case.

The league has committed to embarking on a community service on November 28 with Thibedi, visiting schools, houses and churches, and explaining how and where to apply for identity documents.

They are also helping set up a trust fund to foot Thibedi’s legal bill.

“We are also calling upon the hostage victim to forgive Thibedi. This would go a long way toward reconciliation and nation-building,” said Manamela.

South Africa Christians deeply disturbed by homosexual law

2006-11-18T02:59:00.000-08:00

Three days after South Africa became the first African nation and the world's fifth country to pass a law legalizing gay marriages, millions of devoted Christians remained angry or in a state of shock, with some calling the move "an act of satanism," church leaders said.

On Tuesday, November 14, South African lawmakers voted 230 to 41 in favor of the Civil Union Bill, which gives homosexual couples the right to register their unions with the same state recognition as those of heterosexuals.

The law still requires President Thabo Mbeki’s signature and an approval of the second house of parliament before it can come into effect by the end of November, but analysts did not expect much legal wrangling over the legislation.

But Christian leaders, some of them working in prostitution-ridden areas, told BosNewsLife that although the law has been passed, the debate is not over yet as churches here and around the world are praying for South Africa’s future.

Until 2005 homosexuality activity was banned in traditionally conservative South Africa under the 'law against sodomy'. Sexual relationships between people of the same sex was often described as a "dreadful sin" by both Christians and non-Christians. In tribal African communities, it was a reason for expulsion.

However supporters of the new legislation, including South Africa's Minister of Home Affairs, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, have said it addressed one of the inequalities left over from the 1948-1994 apartheid era.

"When we attained our democracy we sought to distinguish ourselves from an unjust, painful past by declaring that never again shall it be that any South African would be discriminated against on the basis of color, creed, culture and sex," she said this week while presenting the bill.

It was passed a few weeks before a deadline set by the country's Constitutional Court which ruled a year ago that the existing marriage law, enacted in 1961, did not conform to South Africa's 1996 constitution which guarantees equal rights for all.

A pastor gives his opinion about the new law during a debate in Soweto. Via VOA News Christian officials disagree. When the Constitutional Court passed the ruling in December 2005, Rhema Church Pastor Ray McCauley told the government, "The majority of South Africans do not agree with the decision. It is a sad day for South Africa when the very bedrock foundation of society, the family, is redefined by a court."

Most African countries, including Kenya where former president Daniel Arap Moi practiced his Christian faith, denounce homosexuality, and in some nations punish it with the death penalty. The leader of the African Christian Democratic Party, Pastor Kenneth Meshoe, South Africa’s e constitution should be amended to protect, what he called, the sanctity of traditional marriage.

"The Civil Union Bill justifies immorality and, by inference, calls sexual perversion a legitimate alternative lifestyle that should be openly accepted," he added. That seems music to the ears of 61-year-old Philemon Khumalo, an elder of a local evangelical church in the Yeoville area of Johannesburg.

"Even before we heard the Gospel, when I was a boy, the traditional African leaders demanded respect for African customs and morals," he told BosNewsLife, adding that, "manhood was something every boy, without exception, was proud of."

Under the apartheid regime he worked for decades as a domestic servant in another area of the city during the apartheid era. "Much of the filth leading to homosexuality was brought into our country by the liberal whites. Now the blacks are just as guilty of accepting and agreeing to their liberal ways," Khumalo complained.

He noted that South Africa’s national anthem is Nkosi Sikelele Afrika or 'God Bless Africa'. "How can we or those African parliamentarians who passed the law sing this anthem and look in the face of God and expect His grace and protection, if we defy His Word, the Bible?," he wondered.

"God is not logical, he is Biblical and there is no such rubbish as religious tolerance for religious liberals." Khumalo said that the Book of Genesis describes how homosexuals, wanting to sodomize Lot's guests, were punished with blindness.

South Africa’s leadership, he warned, “which brings such un-Godly rulings, is already spirituallyDocument on display during public debate on new law in September this year in Soweto. Via VOA News blind and does not see the direction in which our beautiful country is going morally - sliding into the gutter." He said South Africa has already one of the highest rates of AIDS in the world, with some reports suggesting that one out of four people in the country are infected with the HIV-virus that causes AIDS.

"With the latest rulings the situation will only get worse," he argued, referring to what he believes is an already dangerous and unhealthy sex-climate in the country.

In the past, "When our young men went to work in the goldmines of the big city Johannesburg, they were reading all kinds of sexual-related magazines and were closed up in the men's working quarters where women and wives were not allowed to visit them," he recalled. He believes it is one of the reasons why "many of the young men became homosexuals, but were never allowed to talk about it."

Khumalo, who himself worked at the gold mine before taking a job as domestic servant, said he was able to visit his own wife and family only twice a year, at Easter and Christmas. While he is pleased that times have changed, he and other church members noticed that the new found freedom increased pornographic activities and free sex.

The evangelical church in Yeoville has been praying around the clock against the law from an undisclosed location amid fears of anti-Christian violence carried out by militant gay rights activists and others opposing the anti-free-sex message from the congregation, members said. One lady, who identified herself only as Paullina, said youngsters have “no respect for moral ethics” and said her district Yeoville has become a center of drug dealing and prostitution.

"We even have gay bars," she said, after the owner visited the United Kingdom and Amsterdam. "Many gay South Africans call themselves a Christian, but have nothing to do with the faith as they don't live according to the Bible. They have no right to call themselves Christians, its not democracy its blasphemous," Paulina explained.

The conservative Dutch-reformed right wing party Freedom Front Plus (FFP) agrees. "That is why the creator made "Adam and Eve" and not "Adam and Steve" nor "Madam and Eve," said Corne Mulder, Chairman of FFP said marriage is God's institution for a man and a woman. That is why the creator made "Adam and Eve" and not "Adam and Steve" nor "Madam and Eve".

As an elder in his church, Khumalo stressed that no matter what the Constitutional Court, government or parliament may rule, African Christians will never accept marriages between homosexuals, but "only the blessing of the marriages between ladies and gentlemen in the eyes of God."

Evangelicals argue that while Jesus Christ still loves all sinners, including homosexuals, He hates sin, including homosexual behavior. Some evangelical groups have set up support groups for those who they claim are struggling with homosexuality, angering some gay rights activists who say homosexuality is neither a sin nor a choice.

Paulina said however that legalizing gay marriages, "could never have happened under the wise Madiba," the nickname for previous president Nelson Mandela. She accused current President Mbeki and his African National Congress party of "being weak" at times of trouble.

"If Mbeki acts according to God's law this South Africa still has a future, if he acts according to the Constitutional Court ruling it has none," she said.

Anger at gay marriage law

2006-11-15T01:52:00.000-08:00

South Africa's parliament overwhelmingly approved a bill yesterday to make the nation the first on the continent to legalise gay marriage.

The bill was pushed through the National Assembly by the ruling African National Congress amid protests by religious groups and opposition parties in a region where homosexuality remains largely taboo.

The cabinet approved the bill in August after the country's highest court ruled it was unconstitutional to deny gay people the right to marry.

The court gave parliament until 1 December to change the law. The Civil Union Bill, which gives same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual ones, still needs approval by the second house of parliament. However, it is expected to come into effect by the end of November.

When enacted, South Africa will accord homosexual couples over the age of 18 the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, following countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Canada.

"When we attained our democracy, we sought to distinguish ourselves from an unjust painful past, by declaring that never again shall it be that any South African will be discriminated against on the basis of colour, creed, culture and sex," Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, the home affairs minister, told parliament.

Yesterday, Lindiwe Radebe and Bathini Dambuza welcomed the news. Engaged for a year, they now want to take their relationship to the next step.

The couple from Soweto hope to be among the first gay people to take advantage of the new law. "I can't wait," said Ms Radebe, 25, an activist with the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, which supports black lesbians.

Ms Dambuza, 22, a tour guide, wears an engagement ring that Ms Radebe gave her about a year after they met.

Getting married will change their lives, they said. "For some people marriage means nothing, it is just a piece of paper. But we want that symbolism of having a legally binding document of our love," said Ms Radebe.

The couple are keen to have children and hope that by getting married it will be easier to adopt or become parents.

Foreigners tied up in red tape

2006-11-11T12:58:00.000-08:00

Businesses which need foreign language-speakers for call centres are reluctant to employ foreigners because of the work permit process. A number of South African firms refuse to employ skilled foreigners because of nightmarish immigration bureaucracy, say recruiting agents and immigration experts. This despite an immigration law that the department of home affairs amended last week to help firms combat the domestic skills shortage by employing skilled foreigners.

The amendments, which the Minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said were mostly technical, were passed in the National Assembly, but have not yet been ratified by President Thabo Mbeki.

Many of the amendments rectify omissions in the existing law and in some cases take the law back to the status quo before amendments were introduced in 2004, said Julian Pokroy, the chairperson of the committee on immigration at South Africa’s Law Society.

One amendment extends the permit period for an intra-company transfer work period from two years to four years, which Pokroy said is closer to the international benchmark of five years. These permits go to workers who have been transferred by multinational firms to their South African subsidiaries.

Another amendment refers to the quotas issued by the department of home affairs for permits that can go to individuals with skills defined as scarce or critical. The current amendment extends the quotas from work permit applicants to people applying for permanent residence who have a permanent job offer.

In a submission to Parliament, the Congress of South African Trade Unions called the amendments “piecemeal” and said that they had not been developed in a consultative manner. Cosatu also raised concerns that there was not enough focus on developing local skills to meet the skills shortage or to ensuring the transfer of skills.

Pokroy said that home affairs had promised to overhaul the immigration legislation in 2007, but it was unlikely that it would meet this deadline. He said that the problem was not with the principle of the law, but its interpretation, adding that several South African high commissions used outdated forms and guidelines in processing immigration documents.

“I could place many more people if the laws were easier,” said Sylvia Rapke, who manages a recruitment agency that places German-speaking workers. “I find companies who tell me right away, we’re not prepared to go through the whole work permit process.” This could pose particular problems for businesses that require foreign language-speakers such as call centres and tour operators, she said.

Julia Willand, the director of Immigration and Consulting South Africa, said several recruitment agencies told her that companies would not accept individuals who did not already have permanent residence in South Africa.

Long delays in processing work permits posed a serious obstacle to companies that wanted to hire new recruits “tomorrow”, she said.

Willand said that this week’s amendment to extend the intra- company transfer permit to four years was positive. But she said that many other changes were necessary. In February, the department of home affairs introduced quota permits for certain job categories that would expedite work permits for individuals with critical skills. Willand said that some quota categories were obscure while other important skill categories were missing, such as business skills.

Quota permit applicants must still have their qualifications verified by the South African Qualifications Authority (Saqa). Although Saqa had greatly reduced its turn-around time, it might still take a month to process, she said.

Katrin Starzmann, the head of the immigration department at the International Business Network, said that she knew a German national who had come to South Africa on a visitor’s permit. Although he found a potential employer who would hire him to train people in glass manufacturing, Saqa took a year to evaluate his qualifications and he decided to return home.

Time delays also impact on investors who will not invest if they are unsure whether they will be permitted to stay in the country, said Starzmann.

ANC in about turn on same-sex marriage bill

2006-11-10T14:48:00.000-08:00

In a major about turn, the African National Congress (ANC) in Parliament’s home affairs committee swept aside opposition objections to the same-sex marriages bill and used its 70% majority to force the use of the terms “civil union” and “marriage” equally.

The approved version of the bill makes the term “civil union” the same as a “marriage” and wherever the one appears, so too does the other. This approval is a direct rejection of the masses of submissions from religious groups objecting to giving homosexual couples the choice of using the term marriage. It is also a direct rejection of traditional leaders who wanted the constitution to be changed rather than the bill approved.

It has been an open secret since the tabling of the Civil Unions Bill, which allows same-sex couples to solemnise their partnerships and to call them marriages, that the ANC is deeply divided on the issue. Many of the ruling party’s MPs sympathise with traditional leaders and the religious lobby, who believe that the bill harms the sanctity of marriage.

It seemed the conservative ANC component had been whipped into line, and the substantially altered legislation was forced through its first major hurdle. It must now go to the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces before it can be signed into law by the president.

When the committee began its proceedings yesterday, ANC chairman Patrick Chauke said the committee had done all that it was supposed to do and this included listening to the public in hearings and that now the committee was considering the “finished product”.

After the ANC approved the motion of desirability, Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Tertius Delport tried to explain why his party still had serious problems with the bill. ANC MP Kgoloko Morwamoche stopped him, saying the time for debate was past.

Chauke took advice from parliamentary advisers about whether he had to allow debate in order for the procedural requirements for passing the bill to be satisfied.

He then went through the bill, putting each clause to the vote.

Only the ANC voted for the bill, while the DA abstained. The African Christian Democratic Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party asked that their opposition to the bill be recorded.

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

2006-11-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

THE current Immigration Act was born in the cauldron that was the home affairs department in the first 10 years of democracy. The running battles between an Inkatha Freedom Party minister, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, his controversial adviser, Mario Ambrosini, and a succession of ANC-aligned directors-general is part of the legend of this most dysfunctional of departments.

Add to that the obstructive way in which the then chairman of Parliament’s home affairs committee, Aubrey Mokoena, dealt with legislation, and it is small wonder the law on the statute book is so deeply flawed. The act certainly failed to live up to the early promises of a modern legal instrument to control migration in a way that was sympathetic to investment and business and would also defend the rights of refugees and migrant workers.

Indeed, ever since it was signed into law, the Immigration Act has been a target of criticism, particularly from multinational corporations doing business in SA. This has led, somewhat grudgingly, to two amendments to the act in two years. The fact that the act has needed to be amended twice since being enacted a little over three years ago in itself speaks volumes about the quality of the statute.

The latest amendment, which includes scrapping a two-year limit imposed on skilled foreign staff, was approved by the National Assembly — despite opposition from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). The original idea of the two-year limit was to persuade foreign companies to use the two years in which their experts could work here to train up locals and so achieve “skills transfer”. It has not worked and has been seen as a major disincentive to companies which have located here.

In a skills-deprived country, skills transfer to locals is vital, but another more creative way of getting this to happen must be found. Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula is to be congratulated for recognising this. However, it must be remembered that in August 2004, when the first amendment bill passed through Parliament, the minister promised an overhaul of the entire act. Indeed, in Cosatu’s objections to the current amendments it reminded Mapisa-Nqakula that it had only agreed to the 2004 changes on the understanding that this major review of immigration law would take place sooner rather than later. Yet when the minister introduced the measure to the National Assembly last week, she failed to make any mention of an overhaul or review.

With SA’s political and economic geography under unprecedented scrutiny as a result of the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) and the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA (Asgi-SA), there is an urgent need for a clear understanding of how immigration laws impact on investment and attracting the skills needed to make the economy grow. This must then be translated into a practical, user-friendly legal instrument that will ease the blockages and make doing business in SA both easier and cheaper.

The two amendment bills of the past two years have simply been tinkering with the Immigration Act. This is rather like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship has a hole in it and major repairs are needed.

Capacity constraints are all too frequently listed as the underlying cause of problems in many sectors of the economy, both public and private. While achieving Asgi-SA’s target of sustained growth above 6% and implementing Jipsa to attract scarce skills will involve far more than just the Immigration Act, it will nevertheless play a critical role.

The minister must now deliver on her promise of a far-reaching review of the act. It won’t be easy, given the level of disorganisation within the department which was compounded by the recent announcement that it had lost yet another director-general.

Thousands confront minister

2006-11-02T05:48:00.000-08:00

Four hours in the blazing sun did not discourage Winterveld residents from having their say at a Department of Home Affairs imbizo.

Minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula completed her imbizo focus week with a visit to the area.

She met women involved in stokvels in the area and paid a visit to the Lehae la Bana orphanage, where she handed over birth certificates to 16 of the children.

Mapisa-Nqakula was joined by executive mayor Dr Gwen Ramokgopa, local councillors and MPs.

Mapisa-Nqakula was scheduled to host hundreds of community members on service delivery, but was instead confronted by thousands of residents. They had been standing in the sun waiting for her for more than four hours.

Although some residents were confused about the purpose of the event, others did not mind waiting for a chance to share their grievances with Mapisa-Nqakula.

Shadrack Mahlangu has had enough of living on the outskirts of the municipality and of being treated like a second-class citizen. "When Winterveld was incorporated into the Tshwane municipality we were promised better service delivery, but it has not happened."

The subject of incompetent department officials was broached by Godfrey Makhubela. "Two people issued with the same names on their IDs is becoming a common practice and it has to stop. When you go to Home Affairs you have to queue for six hours," he said, adding that Winterveld needed a satellite office "because travelling to the CBD is very far and too costly".

Sylvia Tshigo said she had also had enough of the department's mistakes concerning IDs: "I recently found out that I have been married to a Nigerian! How on earth do these mistakes happen?"

A sorry state of affairs

2006-10-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

They sign you up when you're born, they sign you off when you die, and in the years between, their confirmation of your existence is a condition of just about everything you might want to achieve. At least that's the theory, but for many, the failures of the people at Home Affairs block the path to health, wealth and even education. It's one of the biggest government departments. For the millions not riding the wave of globalisation-driven growth, it is one of the most critical.

Yet it has consistently defied every effort to make it helpful, effective and efficient.

Anecdotal evidence is almost universally negative -- mostly stories of rudeness, indifference and inefficiency.

The Department of Home Affairs is also judged the most corrupt, after the South African Police Service, in most surveys. More than 240 officials have been sacked in the past two and a half years, but independent analysts say that is a fraction of the number of officials actively complicit in corruption.

A multi-departmental rescue plan was launched at the request of Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula in July. Headed by Public Service Commission Director-General Odette Ramsingh and including officials from the Treasury and the Department of Public Service and Administration, an intervention team is assessing the department's processes and performance over the past five years and just beginning to breathe life into the notoriously moribund operation.

Ramsingh's initial reports suggest they have a long way to go.

"Managers have not yet recognised that they need a 'business unusual' approach to evolve at a quick pace, as is evident in the sense of comfort and inertia at management level. There is no sense of urgency and a lack of adherence to deadlines," she told Parliament's portfolio committee on Home Affairs in August.

Getting branch offices onto a computer network is one of the key requirements, but Ramsingh reported that even the IT department, usually among the most motivated in any company, had lost the plot.

"A question arises as to whether the Information Services branch understands that ICT is one of the key enablers for organisational improvement and process innovation within the department," she said.

Ramsingh said senior managers had been appointed without due process and sometimes despite the fact that they lacked the required educational and other qualifications.

Ministerial spokesman Cleo Mosana said Mapisa-Nqakula had called for help after Auditor-General Shauket Fakie issued a disclaimer on the department's books -- the strongest censure he can impose.

"We need to review the structure of the department in its entirety, but right now we're looking for some quick wins and we're working to develop the excellence that we have," she said.

Fakie's recent report on the department's management reflected an organisation in total disarray, but one whose managers seemed indifferent to its slow collapse. After years of yellow cards, Fakie delivered his fiscal red this year with the disclaimer.

Fakie described how officials filibustered for seven months, dodged seven formal requests for specific information, falsely blamed auditors for losing records and eventually dumped boxes of unsorted files and documents at the feet of the auditing team.

Patrick Chauke, a member of Parliament's Home Affairs committee since 1994 and its chairman since 2002, spelt out the simple but devastating effects of the department's inefficiencies:
•In rural KwaZulu-Natal, a mother travels hundreds of kilometres to the nearest Home Affairs office and sleeps on its doorstep so she can queue from dawn to get the death certificate she needs to bury her son;
•A father waits two years for an identity book so he can begin the search for work but, when it arrives, key details are wrong. Encouraged by the department's own "get it right" campaign, he returns and applies again. It comes back months later with exactly the same errors; and
•Parents wait months or even years for the documents they need to register their children for child support grants or for school. Until applications have travelled to Tshwane and back -- at high risk of getting lost -- lives are on hold.

"In South Africa, everyone is a client of Home Affairs," Chauke said in an interview this week. "The minister is trying her best, but what is still lacking is to galvanise the senior managers. They are not pulling their weight."

Julian Pokroy, chairman of the Law Society's Immigration and Refugee Law Committee, says the Department of Home Affairs is also failing the business community, throwing up new obstacles to the recruitment of scarce skills, while the government's Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa, Asgisa, is pulling in exactly the opposite direction.

Censorship bill on hold

2006-10-12T08:17:00.000-07:00

The South African government said it would defer the passing of proposed new legislation aimed at curbing child pornography to examine complaints that it could be used to gag the media. The cabinet decided to extend consultations on the Films and Publications Bill, initially due to be passed into law by this year. It is now expected to come up before parliament only next year.

The bill, which the government has claimed is aimed at curbing child pornography, scraps the news media's immunity from censorship.

Child pornography is outlawed in South Africa but can be accessed over the Internet. Police have recently warned that children are increasingly circulating sexually explicit images of themselves on cellphones.

The SA media has flayed the proposed amendment, saying no mainstream media organisation could be accused of distributing child pornography.

They said the new law could be used to impinge on press freedom and the constitutional right to freedom of expression, and take the country back to apartheid times.

Home Affairs corruption

2006-10-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

A Home Affairs official has been arrested for corruption and fraud at the department's Umngeni Road offices in Durban.

Five others were also taken to the police station for questioning in connection with the illegal issuing of documents.

These included identity documents, asylum-seeker permits, permanent residence permits and marriage licences to immigrants.

The refugee section of the department closed down for the day as there were no officials left to staff the office.

The death of media freedom

2006-10-08T09:35:00.000-07:00

Media freedom is dying with a whimper, unheard beneath the cacophony of debate about gay marriage. Unless there is a dramatic change of mood in the ruling party, it will soon be censors rather than consumers who decide what’s fit to print.

In a legislative non-sequitur that can only be intentional, Parliament is testing public opinion on the utterly disparate issues of same-sex marriage and media freedom in the same series of hurried public hearings, which end next week. Parliament will vote on the Films and Publications Amendment Bill and then, if the draft goes through essentially unaltered, it will be up to the Constitutional Court to restore the media freedom that is a necessary condition of a free society.

If adopted, the Bill will forbid the free distribution of news and analysis about sexual activity, propaganda for war, the incitement of violence and hate speech. Instead, three-person teams of censors paid by the government will have the right to judge what should be banned outright, what should be approved for limited circulation and what can be freely published. Even art and scientific papers could be restricted to over 18s or ordered sold only in licensed premises like sex shops.

The existing right to be heard by the panel is to be abolished and, along with it, the limited right of appeal to the courts against censorship.

The Bill bans any image or description of conduct that promotes “harmful behaviour”, which could be applied to much of the night’s television news and drops a critical qualifier from the constitutional prohibition on the promotion of hatred.

The Constitution excludes from the right to free speech “advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion and that constitutes incitement to cause harm”, but the Bill forbids “the advocacy of hatred based on any identifiable group characteristic”. It broadens the range of groups covered and drops the required condition of imminent harm. Blonde jokes could be covered.

Under the provisions of the Bill, Jacob Zuma’s recent outburst against gay marriage could not have been reported without reference to the censor panel, both because it advocated hatred of an “identifiable group” (gay people) and because it could be viewed as incitement to violence.

The arguments about gay marriage have been made and heard across the country. However, the same is not true of the plan to make the SABC, e.tv, M-Net, the country’s 327 newspapers and about 320 magazines subject to censors appointed by a board that is, in turn, appointed by the minister of Home Affairs. Few are even aware that it is on the government’s agenda.

Every media organisation in the country has objected strenuously to the Bill, pointing out to government and to Parliament that it reverses flagship freedoms secured in the Constitution. They have commissioned legal analyses of the proposals, which uniformly warn that they are unconstitutional, unworkable and contrary to the character of a democratic state.

But with the argument placed by the government in the same arena as gay marriage, the media protests have been drowned out. When the two Bills come to Parliament together next week, the same will apply: the row over same-sex unions will smother the debate about media freedom.

Partly, this is because the amendment is presented as a weapon in the war on child pornography. That is what officials have been telling people at the provincial public hearings on the two Bills, but it is not true. The media Bill goes far beyond the protection of children, which already is adequately provided for in new and more focused sexual offences legislation wending its way through a parallel parliamentary process.

According to the explanatory memorandum attached to the media Bill, it has “the core objective of protecting children from potentially disturbing, harmful and age-inappropriate materials in publications, films, interactive computer games, mobile cellular telephones and on the Internet since child pornography exists wherever there is a computer, a modem for access to the Internet and a mobile cellular telephone”.

The explanation is as garbled as the Bill. Child pornography is never age-appropriate, and violent computer games or lewd pictures of adults called up on a mobile phone are not child pornography. In a society that is still debating the effects of television violence on children, Department of Home Affairs officials have drafted a sweeping incursion into freedom of information based on their own understanding of a social challenge that continues to exercise academic minds around the world — that is the influence of various media on public morals and child development.

When news of the then still secret draft broke three months ago, officials dismissed media concerns as an over-reaction. The Cabinet said on August 24: “We would like to reiterate that the government has no intention whatsoever of muzzling the media in any way, and that this position will not change. However, Cabinet took the view that the Bill must be published in its current form and that public discourse must be allowed before the Bill is promulgated.”

The Bill has since been promulgated and the crucial line — “Section 22 of the principal Act is hereby amended by the deletion of subsection (3)” — is still there. That line and an equivalent deletion of Section 3 of the next clause remove the 40-year-old exemption of registered print and broadcast media from the provisions of the Films and Publications Act. The rest of the provisions of that law now become relevant to the daily production of newspapers, magazines, radio and television.

The Bill refers to censorship as “classification” but its effect is that media, traditionally allowed to police themselves through the office of the press ombudsman or the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa, will have to measure their intentions against the provisions of the amended Act and try to anticipate the judgment of the censors.

There is provision in the Bill to exempt particular media, which apply for the concession from criminal liability, for the distribution of undesirable films, computer games or publications. In effect, that would impose the media licensing that was at the heart of the contest between the press and the apartheid governments of the ’70s and ’80s and from which they ultimately backed away.

In the form proposed, the exemption provision would allow the minister of Home Affairs to give chosen media indemnity from prosecution for failing to abide by the censorship rules.

But in one of the many contradictions built into this muddled Bill, the minister would have no right to exempt any publication or broadcaster from the obligation to submit material for pre-approval. The confused result, according to attorneys who have analysed the Bill, is that licensed media who do not submit relevant reports to the censors would be breaking the law, but could not be punished for doing so. However, the government could use non-compliance with the legal obligation as a basis to interdict publishers from putting particular news or views into the public arena.

It is not fantastical to imagine these scenarios:

A daily newspaper would have to submit, for approval, a news agency report from the Middle East in which a Palestinian youth is quoted advocating an attack on Israel or an Israeli leader threatens fresh assaults on Lebanon. Many of US President George Bush’s statements on Iraq and Iran could constitute propaganda for war;

An interview or analysis examining Zuma’s campaign to become president in terms of ethnicity, photographs of his supporters waving anti-Xhosa posters, archive recordings of Peter Mokaba chanting “Kill the farmer, kill the Boer” and, possibly, even Zuma’s own trademark Umshini Wami song could all be considered potentially unacceptable to the censors and would have to be submitted for a decision; and

Magazine articles about techniques for better sex and the discreet, but specific, illustrations that often accompany them would have to be submitted for review and could be approved subject to conditions such as that they could only be sold in a sex shop or in an opaque wrapper.

Though the explanatory memorandum says the Bill was drafted after discussions with “a wide range of external stakeholders”, newspaper, magazine, radio and television producers, editors, managers and owners were not consulted or even told that the government was contemplating a substantial reversal of media freedom.

If consumers of our famously free media were consulted, the government has not said how.

Nice work if you can get it

2006-10-07T03:42:00.000-07:00

Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula was speaking at the 57th session of the executive committee of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. Mapisa-Nqakula said the influx of refugee seekers and other migrants is placing a burden on the asylum system. South Africa's legislation to determine the status of foreigners entering the country would be amended next year.

The Travelgate affair carries on

2006-10-07T03:31:00.000-07:00

Mounting anger in the ANC parliamentary caucus over the political management of the Travelgate scandal is focused on chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe, who has been accused by some of those facing charges of sacrificing them to protect more powerful party figures.

There are 30 people facing charges in the Travelgate affair, seven of whom are travel agents and 21 of whom are MPs. An additional five MPs charged have already plea-bargained.

A group of those charged now say they will use the legal process to ensure that they are not hung out to dry while more senior figures, including Goniwe himself, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and other top officials are allowed to make financial settlements and escape further sanction.

The case of Jabu Sosibo and Barbara Thomson sparks particularly intense feeling among MPs. The two made extensive use of car hire services in breach of parliamentary travel rules. They were summonsed to pay large settlements to liquidators, more than R237 000 and R74 000 respectively, but decided to challenge the amount of the settlements in court.

That legal process could have publicly revealed the detailed contents of a forensic report which identifies 330 MPs as the recipients of improper benefits. But Goniwe prevailed upon Thomson and Sosibo to drop their legal action in the interests of the ANC, saying they would receive assistance to help deal with the impact of the settlement. Both apparently understood this to mean that they would receive financial assistance.

When they then abandoned the court challenge, they were landed not only with the liquidators’ bill, but also with responsibility for the legal costs incurred as a result of the abandoned court challenge. Three sources in the parliamentary caucus have told the Mail & Guardian that the total costs have reached between R900 000 and R1-million.

According to the same sources, when Goniwe stepped in to help, he did so by introducing them to a “lender”, who now recoups payments totaling close to R15 000 per month through two monthly debit orders on each of their bank accounts. In addition to principal and interest payments, the lender appears to be charging more than R1 200 per month for life insurance to ensure that he recoups his money in the event that they die before paying him back.

MPs sympathetic to Thomson and Sosibo said neither had consented to the insurance payments, were struggling to subsist on their remaining income and appeared to have been given no clarity about the terms of the loan or the interest rate they are being charged.

Sosibo and Thomson have, however, also received concrete support from senior ANC officials such as parliamentary speaker Baleka Mbete, who wrote a letter excusing them from a liquidation hearing on the grounds that they needed to be present in Parliament.

Meanwhile, some of the accused say that Goniwe’s mandate from the ANC’s national executive committee was that he should arrange for those who benefited from the fraud to plea-bargain, persuading them to cut deals with the National Prosecuting Authority in which they would admit guilt, but not be sentenced to prison terms of more than 12 months without being given the option of a fine, and they could keep their jobs. This arrangement would ensure that they did not become constitutionally ineligible to keep their parliamentary seats. This was seen as an effort to avoid uncomfortable revelations in court.

However, the five MPs who have already plea-bargained were blindsided, one source said. “They were told they would keep their jobs, but each was then presented with an identical letter of resignation to sign. I don’t trust them now. And I can tell you one thing, I am not going to resign, they will have to fire me,” said the source, referring to ANC leadership at Luthuli House.

Meanwhile, some of the accused wonder why they have been charged while so many others have not. “We want to know what criterion was used to decide to prosecute us and not the others,” said one of the accused MPs. “There are 330 names on that list and that issue will have to be raised with the judge if we go to court”.

The answer to that question so far has been that the NPA has had limited resources to pursue all those implicated in the scandal, but also, and crucially, that the liquidation of Bathong Travel, where many more senior ANC members used their travel vouchers, had not yet got under way when criminal investigations began. Parliament delayed the liquidation of Bathong against the advice of its own lawyers for nearly a year, which made the forensic reconstruction of its books extremely difficult.

According to people familiar with the indictments against the 21 MPs who have been charged, the details of the accusations vary considerably. Some are accused of having inappropriately used vouchers for car hire, while others not only paid for car hire with their vouchers, they also allegedly went on to claim mileage expenses from Parliament as if they had been using their own vehicles. Others allegedly took it even one step further, claiming tax refunds for vehicle expenses they had never incurred.

Sources among the 21 MPs differ on whether or not they will plea-bargain. One source said that the legal costs of the trial would be dramatically higher than any combination of cash repayments and fines, and that it would be financially impossible to fight. But the source added that by appearing as a witness in trials of the travel agents or other MPs, he would be able to finger his more senior colleagues.

Others say they are being pressured to agree to plea bargains before October 17, the date of their court appearance, but that they will resist what they see as unfair attempts to scapegoat them. “We will go to court and the forensic report will have to come up. It is not just a question of us naming names, the names are in the report,” one of the accused says.

Goniwe is paying back about R70 000 and Mapisa-Nqakula was also to make an undisclosed payment. A number of other senior figures including two deputy ministers, another Cabinet minister, and top parliamentary officials are mentioned in the report.

Giving advice to others

2006-10-05T02:45:00.000-07:00

Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, the home affairs minister, is giving advice to others on how to run their affairs. Coming from the minister running the most dysfunctional department in South Africa, it says a great deal. He says the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) should be restructured to enable it to spend more of its resources in Africa.

Mapisa-Nqakula is in Geneva attending the annual meeting of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The meeting, which began on Monday, is discussing issues relating to the problem of refugees in the world. Mapisa-Nqakula says there is a growing refugee problem in southern Africa.

"The issue here, which is being discussed, is the issue of the restructuring of the UNHCR such that it is able to rationalise for instance at head office in order for it to pour more resources into the region, so that the work of the UNHCR in the areas is improved because that is where the resources are mostly needed."

Nice work if you can get it

2006-10-04T04:21:00.000-07:00

Joel Chavalala is the embattled home affairs department's new acting director-general and unlike three of his predecessors does not have a background in the intelligence services. Chavalala was appointed in an acting capacity after Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula placed Jeff Maqetuka on special leave at the weekend, after he indicated he would quit in February next year.

At least three former spies have headed the department which has been wracked by maladministration for years and received five consecutive qualified reports from Auditor-General Shauket Fakie.

They include Billy Masetlha, under then Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Masetlha was followed by Barry Gilder and Maqetuka, the head of the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee (Nicoc). Maqetuka swapped posts with Gilder in a surprise re-shuffle in March last year.

Gilder appeared to have been on the way to turning the department around at the time he was pulled off the beat to return to Nicoc.

Last month, Mapisa-Nqakula announced that Maqetuka would be resigning at the end of February. But the minister has since realised that working with a D-G who plans to leave only next year might prove problematical.

He did not want to leave earlier and the minister did not want to fire the D-G. After consultation, the minister decided the best route would be to place him on special leave.

The minister has already called in an inter-departmental task team, that includes Public Service and Administration and the Treasury, to rescue Home Affairs, arguably the most dysfunctional department nationally.

Mosana said that while Chavalala would continue as head of civic services while acting as D-G, he "will be given the necessary support". Mapisa-Nqakula left for a visit to Geneva on Monday.

Five times in a row

2006-10-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

Rampant maladministration of the home affairs department has again been highlighted in the latest report of auditor-general Shauket Fakie, which qualified the department’s 2005-06 financial statements for a fifth time.

The department has been plagued by corruption, high staff turnover and financial mismanagement for several years.

This resulted in the decision this year by Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula to request an interdepartmental task team to perform a rescue operation.

The department has also suffered managerial instability and a low retention rate for its directors-general. The incumbent, Jeff Maqetuka, appointed last year, has indicated he will leave early next year.

In his statement in the department’s annual report tabled in Parliament last week, Maqetuka complained that outdated systems and inadequate human resources were a critical challenge for the department.

Among the reasons for Fakie’s latest qualification were the absence of sufficient documentation resulting in his department’s inability to verify R50m in unallocated income, R1,3m worth of debit transactions and R9,4m in outstanding deposits. He was also unable to find sufficient supporting documentation to substantiate R139m in contract commitments and no statements for an alien bank account of R280m.

Generally, Fakie found a continued lack of internal controls within the organisation.

The troubled government printing works received an adverse audit opinion with Fakie citing, among other things, the poor management of debtors.

Censorship for newspapers

2006-10-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

The proposed new Film and Publications Act seems to try and draw news media into its ambit for the first time. It is intended to extend the arm of censorship over the news media, making it not only outrageous and unconstitutional, but also unworkable.

The Film and Publications Act which regulates films and publications other than the news media by censorship and classification measures which determine the age groups precluded from viewing certain films and which publications should be prohibited or how they should be displayed in stores, is to be amended by the Film and Publications Amendment Bill 2006.

A clause in the Act has exempted the media from its provisions thus enabling the print and broadcast news media to operate freely and without interference or pre-publication censorship. This exemption dates back for decades — it was even honoured by the Nationalist apartheid government.

But the Home Affairs Ministry has now proposed without any warning or consultation that the exemption will be removed in the amending legislation.

If this proposal is accepted by parliament, the effect will be that the print and broadcast media will be subjected to the dictates of the Film and Publications board. The practical effects will be that the media will be subjected to pre-publication censorship, probably forced to expunge large amounts of their news coverage from their pages or broadcasts and submit to procedures which will prevent papers from being distributed on a daily or weekly basis and result in broadcasters having to delay news broadcasts. The fact that the Bill makes provision for exemption matters little, as to impose this duty on the media amounts to seeking licence to publish.

It should also be borne in mind that Icasa’s constitutionally guaranteed role is to regulate broadcasting; no other institution is entitled to interfere with its ability to do so, as this would amount to a violation of Icasa’s independence. Any attempt to second-guess the regulatory role of Icasa must not be allowed, which will be the case if the Bill goes through.

Back to apartheid

2006-10-01T13:33:00.000-07:00

ADVOCATES of a Bill that seeks to curtail the freedoms of speech and publication are misleading the public, according to Democratic Alliance communications spokesman Dene Smuts.

She said Patrick Chauke, chairman of Parliament’s Home Affairs committee, was falsely presenting the Bill as an assault on child pornography, but that it was actually intended to re-introduce press censorship for the first time since 1994 and to curtail freedom of speech.

Chauke’s committee is conducting a series of public hearings on the Civil Unions Bill, which allows for a form of gay marriage, and amendments to the Film and Publications Bill that would extend its reach to include newspapers, magazines and broadcasters.

“Child pornography is already banned, in all its disgusting and deviant manifestations, in the Film and Publications Act as it stands, and the amendments are not aimed merely at plugging loopholes. The Bill reinstates censorship on a range of politically relevant issues,” said Smuts.

She said the ANC was attempting to push such matters through Parliament in one month. “It is ridiculous to handle it in this way,” she said.

The Bill will be debated in Parliament in two weeks’ time and is scheduled to go to a vote on October 20.

Everybody is opposed to Marriage Bill

2006-10-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

CHAOS, confusion and emotional outbursts surrounded this week’s public hearings on the Civil Union Bill, the controversial draft legislation aimed at recognising same-sex marriages.

While a coalition of pro-marriage organisations, Defend Marriage, this week called for the “disastrously organised” hearings to be scrapped and started again to allow for fairer participation, the hearing in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday left few in doubt as to feelings on the ground.

Despite a last-minute change of venue from Ulundi, some 500 people filled a community hall in the Midlands town of New Hanover.

From Muslim clerics to Catholic nuns to traditional Zulu leaders and Christian fundamentalists, they all spoke with one voice, with a resounding “no” to the Bill.

Ironically, their rejection of the Bill is shared by the very people it is aimed to serve — the gay community.

Outnumbered but not outsmarted, a small group of black lesbians, mostly representing the Pietermaritzburg Gay and Lesbian Network, defended themselves. For them the Bill is unacceptable, not because it recognises their right to marriage but because it recognises it separately from heterosexuals.

Abdullah Saeed, of the Pietermartizburg Muslim community, said the Bill went against the Muslim faith.

“We believe in a marriage between a man and a woman only. We want to ask the government to completely reject this,” said Saeed.

Local resident Nkosinathi Nhlabathi said it was a shame that South Africa had decided to be the first country in Africa to consider the matter.

“Where have you ever heard such a thing of two people of the same sex getting married? Not in KwaZulu. This is unheard of,” said Nhlabathi.

The hearings took place in the same week that Jacob Zuma told an audience at KwaDukuza Heritage Day celebrations that same-sex marriage was a disgrace, causing uproar in the gay community.

Said Nozizwe Shezi, a member of the nearby Mshwati community: “Where will gay people get children from? I am a Zulu woman; for me to exist there were my parents, a man and woman. Now why do we need to change this order?

“A snake never gave birth to a human being. Why do we start this thing of a woman and a woman?” said Shezi to huge applause from the crowd.

Patrick Chauke, the Home Affairs portfolio committee chairman, had to remind the crowd not to clap and to remain calm.

Local chief Mhlabunzima Mthuli said Zuma’s statement against gays and lesbians showed that he was a real leader who knew right from wrong.

“This is not the time to discuss this thing. They are changing the meaning of marriage. It’s not good and, as a Zulu man, it is ugly. This is where I stand and I will speak out because we need strong leaders. If this is about the majority, it is clear that we don’t agree,” said Mthuli.

The women of Mshwati also voiced their support for Zuma.

“He is the only person that makes sense. These Xhosas are talking rubbish,” said Mathombi Zondi.

Chauke said a report would be compiled after hearings from all provinces had been held. It will be presented in Parliament on October 20 and it must be passed by December 1.

He said he was overwhelmed by the number of people at Friday’s hearings. “South Africans are actively having their say in the making of the law,” he said.

ANOTHER year, another director-general of home affairs

2006-09-29T02:30:00.000-07:00

There has been a high turnover at the South African departemnt of Home Affairs in the past decade, a situation which is disturbing and destructive.

Now, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has announced that Jeff Maqetuka will step down after just more than a year as director-general. Yet another change in leadership will only add to the deep-seated problems plaguing the department, about which Mapisa-Nqakula is disarmingly frank. The minister acknowledges that the department's problems are chronic, and has previously talked about its "glaring shortcomings".

As a result, she asked both the national treasury and public service and administration to help out by probing and improving the department's financial management systems, as well as boosting organisational efficiency. A high-level task team is advising on how to do so.

While undertaking this worthwhile exercise, the task team must be mindful of the pivotal role that home affairs plays in the day-to-day lives of ordinary people and of business. It is the department's job to provide the documents that give people access to services from housing to health care, social grants to pensions. It also needs to be geared up to let in those people who have the skills our economy needs, rather than doing its best to keep them out. Of course, intelligence is an important factor in issues concerning immigration as well as helping eradicate the corruption that has plagued the issuing of passports, identity books and other forms of documentation. But it is by no means the overriding issue for home affairs.

The overriding issue is service delivery, both to individuals and to business. About two years ago, the minister presented a far-reaching plan to turn the department around by transforming it into a streamlined, efficient, reliable and user- friendly department. That, quite clearly, has failed the happen, given the need to establish the task team two months ago. The problem is not with the plan itself, but rather that it has not been properly implemented -- a familiar refrain with many of government's policies.

It must be clear to government leaders by now that home affairs doesn't need another director-general from the intelligence community, as most of the past directors-general have been. It needs someone who understands administration, the needs of business and what it takes to deliver an efficient service to locals and visitors.

Minister admits that things are in a mess

2006-09-28T03:16:00.000-07:00

In the wake of a third home affairs director-general leaving the department in four years, the South African regime is concerned about directors-general getting high marks for performance, while their bookkeeping skills are poor.

Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula confirmed on Tuesday that her director-general, Jeff Maqetuka, had resigned, but he had not given any reasons for his decision.

It was reported that Maqetuka was leaving as a result of inter-departmental intervention to save his deteriorating department from total collapse, and that Mapisa-Nqakula had implied that her DG had misled her on the department's finances.

But on Tuesday, the minister said Maqetuka had not given reasons for his sudden departure.

"I am not sure if it is the result of the intervention or not... because he did not give his reason for wanting to leave the department. I can confirm that the DG is resigning," she said during the cabinet cluster briefing in Pretoria.

She defended Maqetuka, saying it was unfair to blame the department's many problems on him.

"My director-general started working in the department in 2005... Problems which we have in the department are problems which are chronic, which have been there for quite some time... I think it would be ill advised of me to attribute (them) to an individual," she said.

Mapisa-Nqakula, who admitted that things were deteriorating in her department, said the departure of directors-general on an almost yearly basis was not a sign of instability.

"I don't think there is instability... I just think it is a department that has many challenges. Perhaps people should be allowed to take decisions … to leave the department, people should have the right to do so.

However, it is also important for us as ministers to play our role as well... (to have) an understanding of the reasons for a person to want to leave, so you can have an appreciation of the nature of the problems or challenges which may have faced the individual," she said.

Maqetuka, who has a background in intelligence, is said to have told a senior government official that he did not have adequate experience and skills in accounting and other financial matters.

Two of his predecessors were also from the intelligence community.

The home affairs department has received several qualified and disclaimed audit reports, with the Auditor-General at one stage raising concerns about financial controls.

No country, no cry

2006-09-26T23:42:00.000-07:00

Home Affairs, one of the front-runners for the South African government department closest to fully dysfunctional, loses its fifth director-general in just a few years.

Home Affairs minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula on Tuesday told media on a briefing of government’s governance and administration cluster that home affairs director-general (DG) Jeff Maqetuka intends resigning.

But for months, Maqetuka has had no real job. He was told that he was to be overseen by the Public Service Commission’s DG, Odette Ramsingh, for at least three months. Maqetuka, who took up his DG position in March last year, would be the fifth DG to leave home affairs in the past few years.

Last week, in her media briefing on the governance and administration cluster, minister of public service and administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi reported on the “intervention support team at the Department of Home Affairs”.

Following a disclaimer audit report slammed on home affairs by the auditor-general in respect of the 2004/2005 financial year, Mapisa-Nqakula requested National Treasury to invoke the relevant part of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA). This allows National Treasury to “assist departments and constitutional institutions in building their capacity for efficient, effective and transparent financial management”.

Ramsingh was then seconded to home affairs to lead the intervention support team of DGs, comprising DGs of home affairs, public service and administration, national treasury, along with the auditor-general. DGs are the relevant department’s accounting officer in terms of the PFMA and thus subject to the draconian clauses so clearly spelled out in the PFMA.

The auditor general, Shauket Fakie, has declined to give home affairs “clean” accounts for four consecutive years. In the latest financial year, the auditor general established that R572m worth of expenditure could not be audited due to lack of supporting documentation.

Mapisa-Nqakula on Tuesday said that problems in home affairs were “chronic”. She added that “it has been there for quite some time and the remedial steps we are taking are steps I believe we'll find durable and sustainable”.

Fraser-Moloketi said that a full intervention support team's report with recommendations will be tabled by the end of September, “which marks the middle of the six-month life cycle of this intervention”.

Home affairs is not alone in its despair. An analysis of 135 annual audits conducted by the auditor-general on the 34 national government departments and public entities, from 2001/2002 to 2004/2005 throws out lots of dirty washing. There were only seven “clean” reports among the 135 mentioned. No less than 35 were “qualified”, received an “adverse opinion” or a “disclaimer”; a total of 128 reports were branded with an “emphasis of matter”.

Departments and entities that receive qualified reports, adverse opinions or a disclaimer from the auditor general are deemed to be in a state of financial disarray and mismanagement. Entities that receive a report with an emphasis of matter are deemed to have failed to comply with their agreed programme of action or to have failed to comply with statutory requirements.

All told, tens of billions of rands extracted from taxpayers are being mismanaged. Poor reports continue to filter through. On Tuesday, South Africa’s parliament tabled its annual report in parliament and for the third year in a row, parliament was slammed with a qualified audit opinion from the auditor general.

Within the next month or so, the department of correctional services, along with all other national departments, is expected to table annual reports in parliament. Correctional services remains among the front-runners, along with home affairs, for the description of “government department closest to fully dysfunctional”.

Another DG bites the dust

2006-09-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

Another Home Affairs director-general takes the golden handshake and moves on.

Home affairs director-general Jeff Maqetuka intends resigning, Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said on Tuesday.

"He has not given his reasons for wanting to leave the department, but I can confirm that he is resigning," Mapisa-Nqakula told journalists during the government's governance and administration cluster briefing.

She said Maqetuka has not reigned yet, but that he has indicated that he wanted to leave.

"There is a discussion between myself and the director-general because he has indicated that he wants to be released early next year," she said.

Maqetuka, who took up the position in March last year, would be the fifth DG to leave the department in the past few years.

"I don't think there is instability (at top level), it is a department which has many challenges, yet when people take a decision to leave the department they should have the right to do so," Mapisa-Nqakula said.

In the meantime Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said an intervention team, who were looking at several critical areas in the department of home affairs, would report its recommendations before the end of September to the group of ministers overseeing the intervention.

The team under the leadership of the director-general in the office of the public service commission was established to intervene in several critical areas including management, human resources and service delivery improvement.

The team was established after yet another disclaimer audit report by the auditor general for the department for the 2004/2005 financial year.

"The problems we have in the department is chronic. It has been there for quite some time and the remedial steps we are taking are steps I believe we'll find durable and sustainable," Mapisa Nqakula said.

Minister Urges UN to Involve Migrants in Debate

2006-09-17T03:01:00.000-07:00

The South African regime is urging the first world to go easy on illegal immigrants from the third world.

Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has told the United Nations (UN) that migrants must play central role in the worldwide debate about migration.

"Migrants should be located at the center of the migration debate," Ms Mapisa-Nqakula said Thursday, addressing a high level dialogue in New York on behalf of the Group of 77 (G77) and China countries.

Ms Mapisa-Nqakula said the protection of the human rights of migrants, migrant workers and their families was a central component of comprehensive and balanced migration management.

"Migration facilitation and enforcement must not compromise the right and dignity of migrants. The exploitation of migrants through mechanisms such as trafficking, as well as migrant smuggling should be criminalized under domestic and international law. Social pathologies such as racism, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance, as well as inhuman and degrading treatment, impact negatively on development and must be eradicated," she said.

The minister said forced migration and its economic effects on host countries should be given due consideration. She indicated that these included situations of refugees and displaced persons that resulted from foreign occupation and armed hostilities.

Ms Mapisa-Nqakula said the important contribution made by migrants with regard to the development of destination countries should be acknowledged when debating migration.

"We should also continue to recognise the increasing feminisation of international migration which requires that we must be sensitive to the circumstances and experiences of female migrants who tend to be disadvantaged in the migration experience. We must therefore adopt measures to reduce the vulnerability, exploitation and abuse of female migrants," she said.

She urged nations to endorse migration policies that empowered migrants, explaining that such policies should enable migrants to capitalise on entrepreneurship programmes through micro-finance.

We are pressing on with this

2006-09-15T02:38:00.000-07:00

The regime is pressing ahead with gay marriages despite a few flaws in the paperwork.

The government's move to recognise same-sex marriages was thrown into turmoil on Wednesday when it emerged that the State Law Adviser (SLA) has declined to certify a bill that has already been placed before Parliament. The law adviser's office says it does not believe the bill meets all the requirements laid out in recent Constitutional Court judgments on the issue.

However the home affairs portfolio committee — which has already drawn up a schedule of public hearings on the bill — and Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula are to press on with the bill regardless.

"We are quite happy with this piece of legislation that we have complied with the Constitutional Court ruling," Mapisa-Nqakula said after a meeting of the committee. "We''re going ahead: we're introducing the bill in Parliament." Any changes necessary would have to be made as part of the parliamentary deliberations on the measure.

She said she was confident President Thabo Mbeki would be in a position to sign the bill into law before the Constitutional Court deadline of December 1.

If the bill is not in place before the deadline, which was set in 2005, the Marriage Act will automatically be adapted to include the words "or spouse" after the words "or husband".

An agitated Mapisa-Nqakula told the committee earlier that after Cabinet approved the bill on August 23, the SLA had declared it was not going to certify the measure. "And I'm saying no, what we need from them is to understand whether the bill is unconstitutional or not, and they're saying no, there's no problem with that," she said.

The minister told the committee that taking the SLA's "new bill" back to Cabinet would delay the legislative process and not allow for adequate public participation before the December deadline — another thorny issue in the wake of two other recent Constitutional Court rulings on public participation.

In its present version the bill "would in all probability create some challenges for government". This was because it made no reference to minors, which the Marriage Act did; because it allowed State marriage officers to refuse to solemnise same-sex unions on the grounds of conscience; and because it contained a section on non-marriage "domestic partnerships", which could also create problems.

Not even the rank-and-file supports this

2006-09-14T00:02:00.000-07:00

This is unprecedented. ANC MPs who usually go along with everything the elite tells them are against a controversial bill. They want a free vote on same-sex marriages. It will probably get voted out.

ANC MPs opposed to the Civil Union Bill, which provides for same-sex marriages, have called for a ‘conscience vote’, a call last made on the Termination of Pregnancy Bill a decade ago.

Government officials acknowledge there are more ANC MPs against than for same-sex marriages, leaving the party a lot to do if it to get the Bill passed as ordered by the Constitutional Court, suggests a report in The Sunday Independent. Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, the Home Affairs Minister, who is tasked with piloting the Bill through Parliament, described the debate at the ANC caucus as ‘quite vibrant’ and said the divergent views and emotions expressed mirrored those in society. ’It may be that as a society we are not ready for same-sex marriages. We have to appreciate that people are very emotional,’ the Minister said.

Business as usual

2006-09-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

They just cannot do anything right, but they are still going on strike for more pay.

The beleaguered home affairs department yesterday suffered another hammering in Parliament -- this time over the looming strike by immigration officers that could lead to chaos at the country's international airports.

Home affairs under minister Nosiviwe Mapisa- Nqakula has been taken to task about the long-awaited home affairs identification system, which has cost billions to establish. This problem also comes on the back of scathing reports by auditor-general Shauket Fakie of financial mismanagement in the department.

African National Congress chairman of the home affairs committee Patrick Chauke gave a tongue-lashing for the officials who had arrived half an hour late for a meeting. He said the committee had been raising the issue of salaries of immigration officers for the past five years. "We have raised the issue in the budget vote. I don't know what then happens because we get no action from the department and now there is a possible strike."

Every day new problems emerged in the department and he promised that the politeness of the past was over because the department was not prepared to work with Parliament on issues raised, which seemed to be ignored.

Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba appealed for a chance to implement plans the department had in place to overhaul it and build the necessary capacity. He said part of the process was the review of posts and salary grades.

The department's director of employee relations, Ronald Oppelt, said it would only know today if the strike by Public Servants Association (PSA) members would go ahead as planned tomorrow. All the other unions had said they would not strike after Mapisa-Nqakula had approved new job evaluations and entry level salaries, he said.

Jobs for (daughters of) pals

2006-09-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

Nepotism is not usually this blatant. This marks a new low even for the South African regime.

She is 27, studying, and has no experience working in government, and yet Lerato More-Afilaka has been appointed to one of the most senior positions in the department of home affairs. More-Afilaka started as the Gauteng West area provincial manager on March 1 and, as advertised, is earning R35 600 a month.

More-Afilaka is responsible for regional offices in Johannesburg, Soweto and Vereeniging. District offices under her jurisdiction include Roodepoort and Sandton.

"We received information of nepotism and corruption," Independent Democrats MP Vincent Gore said. "On paper the person doesn't appear to be qualified to perform the very difficult job."

More-Afilaka's mother, Johanna More, is a director in the Gauteng health department and is rumoured to be a friend of both Mapisa-Nqakula and one of the panel members who approved the appointment.

It has been established that More-Afilaka has less than five years' professional experience. More-Afilaka is studying towards a BComm in business management, and has one course left in the degree.

The job ad, which appeared in September 2004, called for a person with "appropriate post-matric or equal qualifications and appropriate experience" and went on to request "solid knowledge in the field of immigration and asylum, and civic service matters".

Despite not meeting the criteria, More-Afilaka on Tuesday told reporters she was up to the challenge. She explained that the advert specifically called for young applicants as home affairs was "looking for someone it could grow".

Nkosana Sibuyi, home affairs' chief director of communication, defended the appointment. "More-Afilaka has quality experience to discharge the responsibilities expected of her."

More-Afilaka beat at least eight candidates to the job. Among them were men and women who had reached deputy director levels inside home affairs and had the university degrees to back them.

Gay marriage hit a rocky patch

2006-09-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

A legal advisory board to the South African government is refusing to give its approval to legislation giving same-sex couples the right to marry and allowing gay and non gay couples who do not wish to marry the right to register their relationships.

The State Law Adviser, which the government usually submits bills to before they go to Parliament said the legislation may not meet all of the requirements of last year's Constitutional Court ruling that ordered the government to remove restrictions barring gay and lesbian couples from marrying.

The SLA declined to give an opinion on the constitutionality of the bill but said it had concerns that the legislation would be a separate act rather than amendments to existing laws. It also said it was worried about a provision in the bill allowing civil marriage officials the right to refuse to solemnize same-sex unions on the grounds of conscience. And it said that the partner registry also was a concern. None of those aspects were contained in the original court ruling.

Conservative groups are voicing their opposition to the measure. They've announced plans to hold mass demonstrations across the country calling for a constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriage.

Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said the government will still proceed with the legislation despite the concerns.

Whatever happens in Parliament it is virtually impossible to prevent same-sex marriage to become legal by the end of the year.

Last December the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa, ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry. (story)

The court ordered Parliament to amend marriage laws within 12 months. If it fails to act within that timeframe, the court said the ruling would automatically change the law to include same-sex unions.

Gays will have to postpone their marriages

2006-09-08T02:02:00.000-07:00

A controversial law is delayed by glitches in the paperwork.

The government’s move to recognise same-sex marriages was thrown into turmoil on Wednesday when it emerged that the State Law Adviser (SLA) has declined to certify a bill that has already been placed before Parliament. The law adviser’s office says it does not believe the bill meets all the requirements laid out in recent Constitutional Court judgments on the issue.

However the home affairs portfolio committee -- which has already drawn up a schedule of public hearings on the bill -- and Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula are to press on with the bill regardless. “We are quite happy with this piece of legislation that we have complied with the Constitutional Court ruling,” Mapisa-Nqakula said after a meeting of the committee. “We're going ahead: we're introducing the bill in Parliament.” Any changes necessary would have to be made as part of the parliamentary deliberations on the measure.

She said she was confident President Thabo Mbeki would be in a position to sign the bill into law before the Constitutional Court deadline of December 1. If the bill is not in place before the deadline, which was set in 2005, the Marriage Act will automatically be adapted to include the words “or spouse” after the words “or husband”.

An agitated Mapisa-Nqakula told the committee earlier that after Cabinet approved the bill on August 23, the SLA had declared it was not going to certify the measure. Instead it had given her department a new draft of the bill. “And I'm saying no, what we need from them is to understand whether the bill is unconstitutional or not, and they're saying no, there’s no problem with that,” she said.

Bills are normally “certified” by the SLA before they go to Parliament as an indication that the office believes they are constitutional, and that they do no clash with existing legislation.
The minister told the committee that taking the SLA’s “new bill” back to Cabinet would delay the legislative process and not allow for adequate public participation before the December deadline -- another thorny issue in the wake of two other recent Constitutional Court rulings on public participation.

She said she was in a “difficult position”, not knowing whether to withdraw the bill. “So I need guidance as to what it is we should do, but people should bear in mind we have a deadline here,” she told the committee. Ayesha Johaar, from the SLA’s office, told the committee that the bill arrived in the office only on August 14, and that the SLA would have liked more time to study it.
The office felt that the bill did not completely meet the principles set out by the court.

In its present version the bill “would in all probability create some challenges for government”.
This was because it made no reference to minors, which the Marriage Act did; because it allowed State marriage officers to refuse to solemnise same-sex unions on the grounds of conscience; and because it contained a section on non-marriage “domestic partnerships”, which could also create problems.

According to legislative experts, this is not the first time that Parliament has had to deal with uncertified bills. An SLA official said it happened “from time to time”.

Read more

Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula's antics

2006-09-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

We're not to blame!

20 Jul 2006

Minister of Home Affairs, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula says Professor Muktal Gupta, head of the Wits Business School went back to India because an agency handling his children’s study visas erred. It was not because Home Affairs messed up, she told the Black Management Forum meeting at PriceWaterhouseCooper where she was talking about the general challenges her department faces. Media reports said that Gupta decided to go back home when he encountered immigration problems relating to obtaining student visa’s for his children.

New ID card project - ten years in the making (22 August 2006)

The intention of the home affairs national identification system was to replace all the current green and blue identity books with an identification card and a national data base of all South African citizens and their fingerprints in the national fingerprint identification system (Nafis). That was way back in 1995. Even for a department as dysfunctional as home affairs the history is startling — tenders advertised in 1996, awarded in 1999 and the contract signed in 2001. Last year, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula promised that the first 4-million smart cards would be issued this year. But earlier this year she said that it had been delayed yet again. Now we have been told that the tenders will soon go to the cabinet for approval.

Department of Home Affairs is “Dysfunctional” (23 August 2006)

There is no sense of urgency, deadlines are not met, there is inadequate management capability to drive and sustain change, and the current organisational structure does not enable the department to meet its core responsibilities. This is according to the interim task team established to oversee the department following the highly critical findings made in the Auditor-General’s report last year.