Chairperson, hon members, let me immediately confess that it has been a lifelong ambition to speak in the NCOP and when I saw that we were being ushered into the Old Assembly Chamber, I was quite devastated. Clearly, there is a higher power at work here, trying to prevent me from giving this speech in the NCOP Chamber! Hon Chairperson, I don't know what that higher power is, but it is quite powerful. Nevertheless, let me thank you, Chairperson, and hon members, for this opportunity. I convey greetings to you.
I cannot but agree wholeheartedly with the Acting Chief Whip of the House when he talks about this House being a principal instrument of our democracy. I think all of us, as members from all political parties and all political persuasions, must reflect on the events that are unfolding every day to the north of us in countries where institutions such as this are absent. Then only will we really appreciate the true worth of the various voices and the expression that is allowed to pervade the institutions of government in this country in a free way, without us being persecuted, and in a constitutional democracy that has as its very engine room the rule of law. I think it is apt that we reflect this. Of course, it is also important that those of us who occupy certain positions in the executive are called to account to this august House for the performance of our departments. Therefore, to me Provincial Week is an excellent innovation by this House and I really wish to congratulate you on that.
I do have a few observations, though, and you will excuse my making them before I delve into those aspects in the report that pertain to the Home Affairs department.
Chairperson, the report - all of 195 pages long - is dated 6-10 September. One would imagine that that is when the visits actually took place. The report appeared in the ATC on 23 February, from what we could establish. Now, that is last week. Certainly, from my department's point of view, we received the report at precisely 1pm on 24 February, which was on Thursday afternoon last week. This left us with literally two working days within which to deal with the various aspects in the report. Happily for us, there are not many issues pertaining to Home Affairs in the report. I would imagine that those departments where there are many issues would require far more time to deal with the report. Incidentally, as my Minister had to be in Pretoria today, I was given the report yesterday to deal with, as is the lot of Deputy Ministers.
Ideally, given the obvious time, effort and resources that have gone into this Provincial Week, one would want this House to expect as much information from us here as possible. To enable us to do that, we need to review how we process these reports in future, so that the maximum amount of benefit is derived from them. Of course, I am aware that this House operates with a limited amount of resources. I know well from my experience of these benches that just compiling a 195-page report is in itself a massive task.
I wonder if, for instance, one of the things we can do is - after these visits and in a short and pithy way - to correspond by way of e-mail or just snail mail with the department concerned about the general issues that have arisen in the various provinces relating to that department. This will enable the department - within a very short space of time and certainly not four months later - to respond to some of these issues.
From the point of view of service delivery, certainly a quicker response time by departments will leave ordinary South Africans with a very positive impression of these provincial visits. They would say that it was after the NCOP had arrived and heard their complaints that they saw action.
So, I do think that all of that is something that we need to seriously consider. If we as part of the executive can assist in order to do things better, we will be very open to those suggestions from you as well.
I leave these suggestions with you, hon Chairperson and hon members, in the hope that you will consider them in light of our common objective, which is ultimately to enhance service delivery to our people.
With your permission, Chairperson, I turn now to the issues that pertain very directly to the Department of Home Affairs. Before I do so, may I just take this opportunity to thank my dedicated staff and officials, who literally tried to work all night yesterday to get some of this information to us.
I wish to refer to those places in the report where reference is made to issues that pertain to the Department of Home Affairs. I now refer to clause 13.1(iii). In this regard, we are referring to a place called Gwede Village, which is located in the North West, in the region of Klerksdorp. The report says, and I quote:
Many of the workers are not South African citizens and are therefore reliant on permits from the Department of Home Affairs. Long delays, however, exist with the renewal of such permits and they are pleading for assistance.
Furthermore, specifically in relation to a farm called Springvale Farm next to Khuma Location it goes on to say:
Many people are not South African citizens and are therefore reliant on a permit from the Department of Home Affairs. Despite the fact that they have been living in South Africa for many years, they cannot get a South African passport and long delays exist with the issuing and renewal of permits.
In response, let me point out that I have spoken to the head of the provincial office in Klerksdorp. I am told that the specific area we are dealing with is huge, and the biggest activity there is mining. Quite a few individuals who work on the mines come from places like Lesotho and Mozambique. These are essentially what we know as migrant workers coming from other places into our country and working on the mines. At the moment the area is enormously depressed because, I am told, a number of mines are now closing, and clearly the social impact of that is quite devastating. Given that these are migrant workers and often people who have low skills, it doesn't come as a surprise that these individuals do not qualify for work permits. If indeed they are in our country, they are exempt - because most of them are SADC nationals - from having to get visas to come into South Africa.
What this regime does is to allow in any SADC national except, I believe, for those from Angola and the DRC at this stage, and perhaps Madagascar. Other than that, all of the SADC countries enjoy a visa exemption regime in South Africa. What that does is allow people to "sojourn". This is the word that is used in the legislation, and I am still trying to understand what the word means. I was told by somebody in the Cape that in Afrikaans there is a word that is used and may come very close to the word "sojourn", and that word is "jol" [have fun]. So, whichever way you want to understand the word "sojourn", good luck with finding an acceptable definition of the word in the dictionary.
People can essentially come into our country without having to purchase a visa at the border and are able to visit our country for about 90 days, after which they go back to their countries of origin. I am told that in this area what often happens is that these workers come in on the basis of this visa exemption, work for about 90 days, go back for two weeks and then come back to work. So, they are constantly moving to and fro.
Hon members, on the issue of people not getting South African passports if you are a foreigner you are not entitled to a South African passport. I hope that takes care of that particular issue.
The second issue that was raised pertains to the Gert Sibande District in the Piet Retief area in Mpumalanga province. I see that there are some very specific cases relating to specific individuals. I am not too au fait with the Rules of the House. So, I won't be using the individuals' names. When I speak to these issues I will just use the alphabet. The report in paragraph 15.1(vii) begins by saying that many of the residents are not in possession of the South African identity document or a birth certificate and are therefore unable to access social grants, housing benefits and other forms of assistance. It continues and says that one resident, Ms D, claims that she has been living in South Africa since 1960 and that all her children were born in South Africa. Yet, she and her children are unable to obtain ID documents. It goes on to say that one Mr M alleges that the Department of Home Affairs refuses to issue him with a South African ID document because he is unable to prove that he was born in South Africa. His mother apparently died when he was a child and he does not have a death certificate for her. He also alleges that he could not write matric because he was not in possession of an ID document.
Chairperson, geographically speaking we are talking about an area that is close to the Swaziland border. I am going to begin with Mr M. We were unable to communicate with Mr M to get more details, because we didn't have a contact number, as none was provided to us.
Let me respond in this way. Currently, as you may know, we are in the midst of a campaign that our department has been conducting since March of last year and that is going to end at the end of this month. The campaign is called the National Population Registration Campaign. The strategic objective of this campaign remains the need for the consolidation of a secure and credible National Population Register. This campaign is targeted at securing the integrity of the National Population Register as South Africa's most reliable and important database for our population.
I think we must sit and consider just how important this database is. Without a secure National Population Register, pretty much none of government's services can actually be rendered in a way that allows for integrity to be woven through the system. As government, we will be able to better plan the delivery of quality services, such as access to child grants, health and housing, and education to all citizens if we have a National Population Register that is secure and has integrity, and on which all South African citizens are actually registered. So, it is part of our interest to ensure that all South African citizens do feature on this National Population Register.
Our campaign is specifically aimed at three things. The first is to eradicate the late registration of births. Those of you who have been to hospitals will probably have seen that we now have points at hospitals where we register births as soon as they happen in those hospitals. This is the whole point of it. We don't want registration of births beyond 30 days of children being born in this country. As South Africans, we have to get into a culture of making sure that our children, as soon as they are born, are registered as South African citizens and receive a birth certificate. We have been going around the country - in fact, tomorrow we'll be in KZN for two days, launching a stakeholder forum - and trying to galvanise support for this campaign.
The second objective of this campaign is to ensure that all new births are registered within 30 days of delivery - with immediate effect.
The third one is that all South Africans who turn 16 years of age and those above 16 years must receive ID documents. In the case of Mr M, I imagine that he is able to access his ID document based on the fact that he says he has been schooled in South Africa all of his life. All he really needs - and this is for the information of members in case they come to some kind of ... [Time expired.]