A crowd of hundreds gathered outside the Department of Home Affairs headquarters in Pretoria on Tuesday, staging a desperate protest against the continued blocking of their identity documents, which they say has rendered them unable to work, access social grants, or receive healthcare.
The protest, organized by the civic movement Soil of Africa, saw residents from as far as Limpopo and Mpumalanga clutching their blocked IDs at the gates of the government offices. Many described years of being functionally invisible in government systems and declared they now refuse to be ignored.
“I don’t understand. He take me like I’m a foreigner or whatever. I don’t understand. But me, I’m not a foreigner,” said one frustrated protester, echoing the sentiments of many who feel their citizenship has been wrongly invalidated.
The personal toll of the situation was starkly evident. “I’m suffering. I don’t have a work. Even when I want to apply school, nothing. Now my child doesn’t have a certificate. It’s bad,” another protester stated, highlighting the cascade of difficulties caused by the blocked documents.
The issue stems from a 2023 court ruling which found that the Department’s practice of blocking IDs without due process was unconstitutional. However, protesters on the ground asserted that little has changed in their daily lives since the ruling.
“For many of the residents here, this isn’t just another protest. This is a desperate plea to be recognized by the very state that issued their identities,” a reporter observed from the scene.
A representative from Soil of Africa addressed the crowd with firm resolve. “You are not here to impress anyone. You are here because you are affected. You are here because you want your IDs to be unblocked,” the spokesperson said. The group demanded immediate action, vowing, “We are not going to leave. We’re going to sleep here… They’re going to go home knowing whether they have their IDs or not.” True to their word, many protesters spent the night at Burgers Park in the Pretoria CBD, stating they had nowhere else to go until the matter was resolved.
After hours of waiting, Home Affairs officials addressed the crowd. A department spokesperson revealed that the government has made significant progress, reducing the number of blocked IDs from a high of 2.5 million to just under 400,000.
“As we started the process, we had 2.5 million ID numbers that were blocked. But today, we are happy to inform you that we have already unblocked more than 2.1 million,” the official said.
The spokesperson also referenced the court case, noting that the department has been granted a two-year period to resolve all remaining blocked IDs. This timeline, however, was met with skepticism from Soil of Africa, whose spokesperson said the community has “heard enough promises.”
“We did our due diligence. These people are from South Africa. These people have their IDs from South Africa,” the Soil of Africa spokesperson asserted. “What we need from them is that they just need to give us their ear… to do the screening, the interview, and also to bring their document so that these people can be assisted with immediate effect.”
The standoff highlights the ongoing conflict between the department’s claimed administrative progress and the urgent, life-halting reality faced by hundreds of thousands of citizens who remain unrecognized by their own government.
