Mr Ronnie Mamoepa, Department of Home Affairs: Let me welcome you all on behalf of the Minister and of course the incoming Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma. Minister has just arrived back from Ethiopia where she together with the President (Jacob Zuma) had attended the funeral of the late Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi.
As indicated to you, Minister is going to conduct a briefing to you on this Civil Registration matters at the conference and thereafter we will take questions. Minister of course is supported as you can see by Mr Dimitri Sanga from United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), our Director-General Mkuseli Apleni and of course the Head of our Civic Branch, Vusumuzi Mkhize.
Minister, we want to take this opportunity to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to address us this afternoon. I am sure colleagues you will be happy to spend time with the Minister today and interact as much as possible on the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Conference. Thank you very much Minister the floor is yours.
Minister of Home Affairs and Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Dr Dlamini Zuma: Thank you very much Ronnie and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the media. This is really a conference of Ministers who deal with Civil Registration and Vital Statistics. It’s the second conference of its kind in Africa. The first one was held in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia two years ago 2010 and then it was agreed that the second one will be here (in South Africa).
It has now been agreed also that every two years the Ministers who deal with Civil Registration and Vital Statistics should meet and synchronise and make sure that we as the continent do have proper Civil Registration and Vital Statistics in all our countries. So this conference is attended by delegates from all our African Union (AU) member states. 42 of them are led by Ministers and 12 of them are led at other levels of delegations. Conference is actually co-hosted with the AU. Of course South Africa is the physical host but it is hosted both by the AU and by the United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa / UNECA. There are other stakeholders who are supporting like the African Development Bank and others.
This is an important conference. You may not think so, but it is very important because up to now there hasn’t been a uniform or comprehensive registration - civic registration in all the countries in the continent. Some countries do it, some don’t while some only do the national census once in ten years and that’s it. But it is very important that we should have civic registration that is done and that we should work on a proper regional framework or continental framework if you like. We should register all the important events in life - births, marriages, deaths.
Of course we also need to identify all our citizens - so we have IDs for all our citizens. It’s important because if you are a country that’s developing you can’t really plan for your development if you don’t register births, marriages, deaths. You don’t know what’s going on in the country about the population. Because development is about developing people, and whatever else is done is done for the benefit of the citizens - you have to know who the citizens are, how old they are. If you are to have universal education as we are all working towards – it’s good to know that so many children are born today - you can plan if they start school at seven- then you know that during that year there would be roughly so many kids that would be starting school.
If you want to give them universal immunisation - it is important to know how many vaccines to have and at what stage - because the vaccination regime goes up to five years to start with. So planning for simple things you need to know how many people you need to have registered.
We are looking at the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - how are you going to know even whether you are reaching MDGs or not. If you don’t know what’s going on in the population. But of course it is also important for integration. We are talking about integration now for the continent. Now integration is not just about infrastructure but it’s about people.
So how are you going to even have free movement of people if you don’t know who is moving from where. So it is a very important exercise and this conference is going to be looking at progress, looking at making sure we are moving together. Of course in South Africa we do it. It’s a law that every child born must be registered within 30 days of birth but not everyone even in South Africa does register their babies within 30 days. But within a year we do get up to 90% registered now. But it must be within 30 days for very good reason.
Marriages should also be registered. Deaths should also be registered. Because as you register deaths you also are able to tell why people are dying? What is the problem? Are you having deaths that you can prevent so it’s very important for a whole variety of reasons, and we are very happy there has been such a response to this conference.
We are also going to be strengthening as South Africa our own system because in reality if we were all registering having our civil registration done properly, we may not even need these ten years census. We could use these statistics. Because we would be having reliable comprehensive statistics from the register. So we are here and I think if you want to ask questions you can ask.
The Ministerial conference is only starting tomorrow. The meeting that has been taking place was the officials meeting. The Ministers are going to start meeting from tomorrow, Thursday 6 September 2012. So I think we will look at progress from the last conference which was held two years ago (in Addis Ababa), progress that has been made since then and look at what still needs to be done. And of course it needs financial support. We must make sure that people are trained, human beings are trained to do that.
But more importantly is the awareness of the population. Because you can have all the money, you can have all the laws, you can have everything in place but if the population is not aware, not conscious about the need and importance of civil registration, they will not do it and you will not succeed. So it is also an important part, to make sure that there are campaigns, continent-wide that, conscientise our population and our citizens, to take this seriously and indeed register. So that is why we are here. If you have questions we have a whole panel here that will answer the questions. Thank you.
Question: Are we expecting any accord, or deals to be signed or agreements to be reached at this Conference and if so what are they?
Question: Minister, perhaps you can give us an indication on the progress that has been made on the integration, regional integration of systems over the last two years – since the last time you met.
Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Dlamini Zuma: Well, I am not sure when you say deals that are going to be signed, you mean bilateral deals or..?
Question: I assume multilateral deals because this would be a multilateral event. You obviously have targets to be reached. What is it that you are going to be setting yourselves to reach? You are going to say we are all members of Africa - this is what we want or have to achieve.
Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Dlamini Zuma: Well as I said, we will be assessing progress from last time (the first Conference held in Addis Ababa). Last time we took resolutions - I will just read to you a short resolution, so that you know what was the basis for what had to be done in the past two years:
We had agreed, amongst others:
- To take appropriate policy measures to facilitate the implementation of plans, programmes and initiatives for the reform and improvement of Civic Registration and Vital Statistics systems to achieve universal coverage and completeness, taking into consideration the specific circumstances of our countries.
- To mainstream Civil Registration and Vital Statistics processes into national statistical development strategies and other national plans and programmes, including strengthening coordination of activities among various players at national, sub regional and regional levels.
- To formulate laws and policies that ensures timely and compulsory registration of vital events occurring within our countries, with guarantees for equal access to the system for all persons.
- To revise and update our Civil Registration and Vital Statistics laws and statistical legislation in line with international and regional guidelines and recommendations.
- To allocate human and financial resources for this and to intensify awareness-raising campaigns on the procedures.
- So these are some of the things we agreed on. And of course, we in South Africa have also taken certain measures. For instance we amended our laws and before that, there were no penalties for people who don’t register. We introduced certain penalties so that if you register within 30 days its fine and you get everything free, but once you delay for no apparent reason, then there will be penalties. So laws have been passed. We are now just waiting for it to start kicking in. We finished the regulations. We consulted on the regulations, so that is going to start. And of course we have also tightened on other areas.
We are improving our footprint into the country so that everybody has access. We have already started we had mobile (units) going out to areas where there were no offices- but we are at the same time improving the actual footprint of opening offices in the rural areas which were not there before.
So we will be assessing what progress each country has been made in this regard. And then from there on looking at what progress has been made and then make sure that we accelerate and galvanise everybody towards implementation. And of course we will also see what the constraints were, if people couldn’t do this – what were the constraints and also share amongst ourselves what works or doesn’t work. For instance we have said we must rope in the stakeholders- in South Africa and in a number of other countries, they have also done it.
We are working with the health (department) as you know. We have linked Home Affairs offices to close to 300 hospitals now and we are continuing. Actually every hospital will be connected to Home Affairs offices so that as women who come to deliver- before they are discharged – they can register their babies to make it easy for them to register within 30 days, and this has been signed in a Memorandum of Understanding with Health.
We signed a Memorandum (of understanding) with Education (department) to make sure that when children turn 16 (years of age), the schools can work with us to get them IDs so that no child can go up to 20 years of age or start working or going to matric without an ID. So there are a number of areas that we have links with-which are supposed to be done - these are things that are supposed to be done continental wide. But we will be sharing, other people are going to tell us what is happening in their countries and we will all be enriched by what is happening elsewhere.
We also have introduced in South Africa, what we call stakeholder forums, which are people in the community who work with Home Affairs (1) to assist us make sure that people are conscious about this responsibility of registration, but also to (2) let us know even in their communities if there are people, for one reason or another, who are not registered and don’t have IDs and so on. So that they can bring them to our attention. And when we go out with our mobile units – we don’t just go and find that there is nobody- they mobilise the communities and make sure that when our mobile units go there- there are people indeed who need services – who will be coming to those mobiles.
So there are a number of things that we have done to strengthen our civic registration as South Africa. But we will then be assessing progress continent wide and taking new resolutions about how to proceed.
Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Dlamini Zuma: Maybe just to add one point. Even the football people are very keen on this campaign because they are saying when it comes to the different teams, like the under 13, the under 17, the under 20, it’s very difficult to know whether these ages are correct – as people who are coming to present themselves as under 13 or under whatever because there is no proof of how old they are – so they are very keen to support this. You will recall that in one of the derbies Captains of Kaizer Chief and Orlando Pirates actually spoke about this at the beginning of the match because it is something that the football fraternity is keen on. For development generally in the country and the continent it is very important.
Thanks colleagues, Minister.
R Mamoepa: Colleagues, do you still have questions? This is your opportunity.
Question: In terms of the information you have got. I see that you have two problems, You have countries like Guinea Bissau if I am not mistaken, in the last two years have had quite a bit of upheaval, and it would be questionable as to how those people for argument sake who want to register – there may be instances in terms of the politics of a country where people may not want to register they would rather not be known because of the system not there.
We have that same history in our own country where people did not want to have passports. How do you tackle all these kind of scenarios into your own assessment? How accurate do you think your assessment is on the situation on the continent actually is? Are you also not concerned that within certain regimes that this kind of registration could be used for negative purposes, and the best example I can give is, is of South Africa, but I’m sure that kind of registration can be used negatively elsewhere?
Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Dlamini Zuma: Just explain what is the negative? How do we use registration negatively in South Africa, now or in the past?
Question: Well it was in the past, not currently now. I am just using that as an example, without targeting any of our South African neighbours. Registration is something that can be used negatively and there are certain regimes where this is highly possible.
Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Dlamini Zuma: Let me just say, you see in South Africa it wasn’t the registrations that was the problem. The problem was the policies in the country, because there was discrimination that was there. It was constitutionalised. So when you registered, you were not registered as a person. You were registered as a Zulu who lives in that Bantustan. You were registered as a Pedi who has to live in that patch of land, so the registration – obviously if it is done like that, if it is super-imposed in a country where the laws are like that – then its going to be a big problem. But if it’s in a country where everyone is equal before the law and you register them as citizens, and not as particular groups of people, tribes and so on then it shouldn’t be a big problem. That’s why there has to be a regional framework of how you register – so that we don’t have to get into those situations where people are registered according to tribes or religions, and according to anything that is discriminatory – and that can be used to discriminate against them but in terms of how the assessment was been done and everything.
Mr Dimitri Sanga, UNECA: Yes, in terms of assessment one of the major problems we have as technician identify in preparation of the first Ministerial meeting was that issues of coordination even within the country. That means given then multidisciplinary nature of civil registration you have more then one Ministry that is involved in this issue in many countries. In a country where the Ministry of Justice in charge of registration, but the people effectively registering people are from Home Affairs. There is a need to bring all this register somewhere, where it becomes an official register and so on. These institutions are not talking to each other. So the first step that we did was to undertake the assessment was to bring together, it was a unique questionnaire that was worked out by experts from different countries. That imposed that these difference stakeholders in a country involved with civil registration had to sit down.
And it took time, maybe a month to tell us what is the status of the registration in the country – there are bottlenecks. What are the challenges and so on. And this included most importantly the legislative framework. I can tell you that in some African countries you still have this registration framework going back to the colonial period. One of major steps that we are actually asking countries to go through is to revisit that legislative framework.
To make sure that civil registration that everybody is worried about in a country. So as her Excellency put it, if the legislative framework that is discriminatory you find that in the legislative process itself. But the first step is to ensure the legislative framework is not discriminatory, that the registration of births, marriages, cause of death will be done irrespective of the tribe or origin, the language and so on of the people. These are some of the things we have done. The assessment we have done as the countries, including the bottlenecks, including the things we have done well and so on.
Ronnie Mamoepa: As we allow the Minister to take leave of us, we would like to remain with the media to deal with logistic issues and arrangements for tomorrow. We thank the Minister and her delegation for spending time with us. We will see you tomorrow Minister at the opening session.
