Hon House Chairperson, hon Minister, hon Deputy Minister, securing the borders of a country is one of the biggest challenges facing, especially, developing countries and developing markets around the world. South Africa, as a developing market, is experiencing the same fate. What the Department of Home Affairs is beginning to address now is what needed to have been attended to many years ago.
It will be recorded that when the then Minister of Home Affairs, Prince Buthelezi, started a process to attend to these matters in the early 2000s, some cliques in the powers-that-be disapproved the process. We are facing this dilemma today because some forces tried every trick in the book to frustrate Prince Buthelezi and the department from attending to the crucial issue of migration and immigration matters of the country in time.
Migration control requires a broad spectrum of interdepartmental activities and consultation, but the buck stops exactly with Home Affairs. The Immigration Act places border control firmly within the responsibility of Home Affairs.
After the department's victory on the legal challenges to the immigration regulations at the Constitutional Court, in May 2003, the Minister was able to set up the Immigration Advisory Board. The immigration regulations then were based on the principles of enabling foreign nationals who wished to make a contribution to the economic growth of South Africa to do so on a permanent or temporary residence permit.
Therefore, on the same basis, the IFP welcomes the establishment of a border management agency and the building of a comprehensive national identity system. Home Affairs needs to deal with the fraudulent actions of people who illegally possess South African citizenship, for whatever reason. These are sometimes for purposes of acquiring South African social services, social grants, health and education. These initiatives will assist the country in also stamping its authority firmly on fighting the illegal activities of drug trafficking and human trafficking.
The introduction of the ID smart card and the automation programmes to e- government, intended to provide clients with fast and secure access to services, is a step in the right direction. For a very long time, Home Affairs has been infected with fraud and corruption because of the inability to address the shortcomings of lack of security in the internal processes. South Africa experiences rampant crime associated with the forging of documents. Crime is destroying the image of the country and its economic development initiatives.
Whilst welcoming automation, care must be exercised to avoid putting rural communities, especially, in jeopardy. When systems are down and not operational, there are usually no backup systems. As a result, clients are turned away and they have to come in on another day for the service. This is a waste of time and money for poor people, who have to commute in buses and taxis to and from Home Affairs service centres.
Improved management of records at Home Affairs can help stamp out fraud relating to social grants at Social Development and fraudulent activities relating to low-cost government houses in Human Settlements. It can also assist Education and Health with proper figures for budgeting. A lot of money is wasted in these two departments because of fraudulent, cooked data submitted to authorities. The result is inadequately increased resources provided for bodies that do not exist.
For the record, let me state that the IFP does not approve of the deployment of political appointees to the IEC. This renders the credibility of our elections questionable. The independence of the IEC has to be maintained at all costs. I thank you.