On Tuesday, 23 March, President Jacob Zuma, supported by myself, Deputy Minister Malusi Gigaba, the Eastern Cape Provincial leadership as well as the leadership of the district municipality will officially launch the National Population Registration campaign at the Ntlaza Sports Field, Libode, Umtata, under the theme: “2010 the year of action to deliver quality services to the people”.
The choice of venue is symbolic as this campaign is about reaching out to every single South African, especially those in the rural hinterlands of our country where facilities are few and distances to towns far.
Our strategic objectives is the consolidation of a secure and credible National Population Register (NPR) with a single point of entry through an expedited process of registration and application of enabling documents to citizens.
Within one year, we aim to have registered the majority of children born in South Africa on our National Population Register.
Further, we aim to make certain, that every South African citizen is in possession of a South African ID book with information that is verified and secure.
Through this massive registration drive, we aim to reach our ultimate objective that secures the integrity of the National Population Register, South Africa’s biggest and most important database of citizen information.
As the registration of a birth is the first step in the citizens’ journey our campaign starts here.
South Africa has a large number of children under the age of 15 whose births have not been registered and as such have no official status in the country or in the population register.
Our research shows that the majority of people who do not have birth certificates are those who are between the ages of one day and 18 years
A large number of people end up registering at late birth, in a process known as late registration of birth whereby people register for birth when they are 15 years or above.
This is a process we want to do away with by the end of 2011.
Whilst we have put in place a very strenuous new process to vet all late registrations of birth, the process is still open to abuse by those wishing to fraudulently obtain South African citizenship.
The non-registration of birth also has a negative impact on the quality of the National Population Register and negatively impacts on government planning for services and infrastructure.
The National Population Registration campaign will therefore exert a countrywide massive drive to:
* Eradicate the late registration of births and discontinue the process by December 2010 and October 2011 respectively
* Ensure that all new births are registered within 30 days of delivery with immediate effect
* Ensure that all South Africans who turn sixteen (16) years of age and those who are above 16 years receive identity documents.
Apart from our concerted effort around the registration of births we will also encourage young people to apply for an ID as soon as they reach the qualification age of 16 years.
For our campaign to be successful we need a buy-in and an active participation of every South African because this is about much more than just ensuring enabling documents for every citizen.
This campaign ultimately is about ensuring the integrity of our country’s citizenship a key element of national security in defence of our hard freedom and democracy.
Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
18 March 2010
