Starting today, 1.4 million naturalised citizens and lawful permanent residents will be able to apply for smart ID cards at home affairs branches and via the eHomeAffairs portal.
This, as the IT reforms at the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) have made it possible for these types of applications to take place, according to minister Dr Leon Schreiber.
According to a DHA statement, for years, IT failures forced South Africans born abroad, as well as permanent residents, to continue using only the “insecure” green bar-coded ID book and excluded them from obtaining the “more secure” smart ID.
It also prevented them from using the eHomeAffairs platform to make bookings. In rare cases, a small number of naturalised citizens were able to obtain smart IDs only after being granted permission by the minister and following a tedious manual process.
However, they are now be able to use eHomeAffairs and obtain smart IDs like all other eligible persons.
Schreiber comments: “This breakthrough for our digital transformation reforms directly delivers dignity to over 1.4 million people – including hundreds of thousands of South African citizens who had their dignity infringed for years by being treated unequally.
“For years, these South Africans were treated as second-class citizens by being excluded from access to the smart ID and from eHomeAffairs, which effectively forced them to use only the green bar-coded ID despite the government’s stated intent to do away with this document over fraud concerns.”
First introduced in 2013, the smart ID card will replace the traditional green ID books for South African citizens.
As the custodian of identity, civil status and migration of citizens, the DHA looks to convert millions of citizens from green bar-coded ID holders to smart ID card holders. The smart cards are said to have better security features and are extremely difficult to forge.
To speed up the rollout of smart ID cards, the DHA has partnered with the major banking outlets – First National Bank, Absa, Nedbank and Standard Bank. Using eHomeAffairs, citizens can apply for their smart IDs and passports online, and finalise the application process at certain bank branches.
Schreiber says the benefits of rectifying the previous inequality extend beyond these 1.4 million direct beneficiaries.
“This is also a victory for improved national security. Naturalised citizens and permanent residents were the last remaining groups of people eligible for South African ID documents, who were excluded from obtaining smart IDs.
“Every eligible person in South Africa is now able to obtain a smart ID for the first time. This takes us much closer to fully adopting the smart ID and doing away with the green bar-coded ID book, thereby eliminating the fraud linked to this document.
“Now that all citizens and lawful permanent residents are eligible for the smart ID, what remains is to geographically expand access to all. The department is already hard at work to also deliver on this objective, by dramatically increasing the number of bank branches that take applications for smart IDs and passports.”
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