Comments by Premier Dr Zweli Mkhize
We are very pleased to receive this visit from our national Minister of Home Affairs Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma. It was at our invitation because as we are organising matters and looking at how we can help different departments, we felt we should get the guidance from the Minister for Home Affairs. A few other ministers have been here, but it was the Minister’s turn this time. I will let the Minister make a few comments.
Comments by Minister Dlamini Zuma
Firstly, I am very delighted to have been invited to the province, in particular because I have been saying that in order for us to turn things around at Home Affairs, we need to work together, not only just as government as a whole, but also with the population. It was therefore very good that the Premier and his colleagues decided we should come and discuss.
What we really discussed was areas of co-operation and partnership that we felt we can implement with the province.
The first area is that of working together on the campaigns that the Department is going to be launching next year – the birth registration campaign because the co-operation with the province will ensure there is proper mobilisation of the population for this birth registration and also for the identity document (ID) campaign. Because as you know, we have said we will not run ID campaigns during elections because in the past there has always been a huge ID campaign attached to elections. This time, there will not be such a campaign. The campaign is now. We will be launching this campaign for the whole of next year so that when 2011 comes we will only be issuing IDs to 16 year olds and 16 year olds do not vote so there will be no need to campaign around this. We are also going to be running a campaign for birth registrations, including the registration of births at the hospital and for this we require the support of the province to allow us to utilise their hospitals but perhaps also to allocate a person who will work with Home Affairs for the registration of new-borns. So this is an area of partnership we have identified.
We have also identified some of the areas we want to work on. The province has a tourism programme that also means looking after the borders and we are going to co-operate to facilitate the people in and out of South Africa and therefore in and out of the province.
We are also going to be partnering with the province in for instance the registration of marriages. As you know, historically South Africans have been in different population registers. When we came to a central point, a lot of people did not register their marriages in the central population register so it is not uncommon to see, when someone has died, who you know was married, but the death certificate indicates the person was never married because the marriage was never registered in the central database. The other aspect of these marriages is the customary marriages because we would like customary marriages, according to the law, to be registered whenever they take place so that the law knows these people are married.
And we are also going to be discussing and sharing ideas in developing policy. We are going to be looking at immigration policy, the policy around migrants and so on, and we would like the province and others to make inputs into that because in the end it is a policy that will affect us all.
The last partnership deals with us managing Home Affairs offices in the area. It should be quite acceptable for the Premier to just walk into a Home Affairs office and look at what is going on. If things are right, he can say so, if not, he can say so and let us know. Everyone else in the province should also have this right as they partner with us because Home Affairs is really a peoples office. Officials should know they are there to service the population, not just the Minister. Every government official and public official has a right to be there. We look forward to launching the campaign and working with the province.
Comments by Premier Dr Zweli Mkhize
These are the discussions we had with the Minister. For us, it is a situation of ensuring we do what will help the Department of Home Affairs to succeed. We have agreed to work together, as the Minister has indicated on the issue of partnership on birth registrations, birth and ID campaigns using the hospitals, going out into the community. There are already instances where we are working now, we have organisations at the level of the ward where we have a warden where in one ward, a group of officials together with the leadership of the community will look at issues that are affecting communities. We have agreed that when we have worked out the number of documents we require, we will alert Home Affairs and the necessary arrangements can be worked out.
We also particularly welcome the invitation to visit Home Affairs offices. We will honour this and will be visiting these offices. We believe that Home Affairs should be assisted as far as possible to do their work and deal with people who are not doing their work or engaged in maladministration. We must ensure the communities find a Home Affairs that is responsive to their needs. For us, Home Affairs is one of the most important departments. Part of the role of government is to ensure that communities are properly documented. We are very very grateful for the visit of the Minister.
Enquiries:
Ronnie Mamoepa
Cell: 082 990 4853
Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
25 November 2009
