President
Delegates
Good morning and its a pleasure to be here. I am pleased at the opportunity for collaboration that has been agreed by AgriSA and Home Affairs. The collaboration’s main aim is to make the registration of births on farms easier for parents, farm owners and home affairs officials.
Its a strange but true fact that half the children in the world are unregistered. It’s also strange but true that two thirds of deaths each year in the world go unregistered. The reason that so many births and deaths go unregistered is that there are many barriers (lack of laws or infrastructure) to registering births and deaths. That’s why this partnership is so important.
The only way to know who is alive and dead is through civil registration. Civil registration in turn allows citizens to enjoy the fruits of citizenship. Without civil registration we in government won’t be able to design adequate public services or to pursue adequate policies of social inclusion.
In some countries its only those who live in cities who are able to register births and deaths. That’s what happened in South Africa. From 1923 it was compulsory for all (black and white) to register births. But only in the cities. It was voluntary in the rural areas and that is where the majority of black people lived. On farms, on reserves, on communal land, so most births of Africans went unregistered under apartheid.
At the beginning of the democratic era there was little documentary proof of our identities. A huge effort was put into translating dompas numbers into regular ID numbers but birth registration remained elusive and difficult. Yet we know that civil registration of births is an important component of building the National Population Register and we have been on the campaign path for a good many years now.
Our first step in this campaign is to register the birth of every citizen and put their births into the National Population Register (NPR). Our campaign is aimed at parents now. Register your child. Do it within 30 days. Don’t delay. But what about all those who don’t have birth certificates? What about all those who lived in communities that are in remote or marginalised areas?
So we established a late registration of birth process to provide these undocumented citizens the opportunity to register and acquire enabling documents. One campaign objective is to reach those citizens whose births were unregistered and those with birth certificates who had never applied for an ID.
Another objective is to inform and mobilise South Africans about the importance of the register, the early registration of birth and the fight against corruption over fraudulent birth, death and marriage registration. National and international syndicates working with corrupt officials seriously compromise the register by selling and duplicating identities.
As part of our campaign strategy we have launched more than 250 stakeholder forums covering the majority of district municipalities and metros. The stakeholder forums identify needs and the needy; support and monitor the department and hold us accountable.
Stakeholder forums are strictly non-partisan and focused on service delivery. They work with the support of the three tiers of government and all political parties. The enthusiasm with which communities and their representatives have embraced the work of the forums is humbling and inspiring.
Another key aspect of the strategy was to develop close cooperation between Home Affairs and relevant government departments, such as Education, Health, Social Development and SAPS. This drew on the positive example of this type of cooperation during the successful hosting of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. The support of government at all levels has also been crucial.
The campaign has achieved some success. But we still need the support oforganisations such as AGRI-SA. In the 2012/13 financial year, Home Affairs registered 602,530 births within 30 days of delivery. This was made possible by the steady expansion of our national footprint that reaches into the most rural and far flung areas through the use of 389 provincial and district offices and 117 mobile offices.
In addition, we have connected 347 heath care facilities across the country of which 85 hospitals in various provinces were connected in the 2012/2013 financial year. According to the 2013 mid-term population estimates there were 1,095,669 births in 2012 (not the financial year). So that suggests that 6 out every 10 births were registered in our target period.
We also need your support with IDs. In the 2012/13 financial year, Home Affairs issued 1,039,862 identity documents to first time applicants. We want to work with you and other relevant stakeholders to mobilise our youth to apply for identity documents.
Home Affairs has a role to play in building tolerant and peaceful communities. We areconducting campaigns aimed at building peaceful and diverse communities. Our stakeholder forums across the country promote issues to do with citizenship. These forums can play a role in promoting harmony between citizen and foreigner and in shaping a more tolerant climate in our communities.
In closing, as the National Development Plan says, we need “to adopt a much more progressive migration policy in relation to skilled and unskilled migrants”. I hope to be able to engage with you on this crucial matter in the future.
Enquiries:
Lunga Ngqengelele
Cell: 082 566 0446
