A growing number of South Africans, whose identity documents have been blocked by the Department of Home Affairs, gathered in protest today in Tshwane, threatening to shut down the department’s offices as their lives remain in a state of paralysis. The citizens say they are unable to work, study, access healthcare, or even open a bank account.
This crisis persists despite a 2022 High Court ruling that declared the blocking of IDs without due process unlawful. Nearly two years later, the department has failed to act decisively, leaving hundreds of thousands in legal limbo.
Liesl Muller, a senior attorney at the Centre for Child Law, described the situation as “heartbreaking.” She highlighted that the issue extends beyond the individuals directly affected, devastatingly impacting their children.
“The children cannot be affected by this investigation into a parent,” Muller stated. She detailed a case her organization encountered involving two sisters being raised by their grandmother, a pensioner. “During this time, this grandmother… was not able to get a grant to help feed these children and because the children were not registered, they did not go to school either.”
Muller explained that when a parent’s ID is blocked, the child cannot get a birth certificate, creating a cycle of deprivation. She cited court papers involving five families, with cases where children remained unregistered until the age of 13 or 14.
While the Department of Home Affairs has argued that the blocking of IDs is part of its efforts to curb identity fraud, Muller emphasized the critical distinction between aim and method.
“It is obviously important to make sure that there’s no fraud in the population register. But the constitution tells us that you can’t do that in just any way,” she said. The court found that Home Affairs had not followed constitutional processes. Muller revealed that in some cases, a “mere suspicion” can lead to an ID being blocked for a decade.
The department’s communication channels have proven fruitless, according to Muller. She mentioned a specific email address to which documents are sent, but “we’ve just not received responses in months.” This leaves individuals, including victims of identity fraud, in a state of constant fear and without a path to resolution.
While the department has made some progress since the court order—reducing the number of blocked IDs from over 2.5 million to approximately 385,000 by the end of July—Muller stressed that the remaining figure represents an ongoing humanitarian crisis.
“The department has taken no steps to facilitate the birth registration of children of these people,” she said, noting that the Centre for Child Law continues to receive reports of parents being refused the right to register their newborns, an act that places the department in contempt of the court order.
Muller also pointed out that the affected population is often already vulnerable, with the blocked IDs entrenching generational poverty. “Their lack of identity means that their poverty is entrenched and that their children also get stuck in a cycle of poverty,” she said.
The attorney expressed deep concern over the historical echoes of the policy, noting that many of the affected are senior citizens whose documentation from the apartheid era is now being questioned. “It’s a retraumatizing. It’s a reliving of the worst parts of our history. It’s a reliving of the dehumanization that people experienced under apartheid,” she said.
Despite the department’s claims of being understaffed, Muller questioned its commitment to resolving the issue, revealing that it had failed to prove to the court that it had taken required steps to review the cases of those still blocked.
With 385,000 citizens still effectively stateless, advocates are calling for a dedicated and urgent response from Home Affairs to end what they describe as a devastating and unconstitutional ordeal.
