Cape Town - Members of the public have less than 30 days to submit their appeals on why their identity documents (ID) have been wrongfully blocked, depriving them of accessing key governmental and other services.
In an effort to clamp down on ID fraud, the Department of Home Affairs on August 16 announced that those in possession of wrongfully blocked ID could appeal this within 30 days.
Written submissions on why the ID should not be cancelled should be sent to [email protected].
This would also provide an opportunity for the department to resolve what it referred to as a “decades-old” issue of wrongfully blocked IDs while reducing the number of fraudulent documents in circulation.
Some of the IDs were originally blocked as far back as 2005 for a number of reasons, including those documents the biometric system had flagged as duplicates, held by illegal immigrants, or because the ID holder had died.
Speaking to the Cape Argus, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said: “So what happened after that is that there was a court case to say you can’t keep them blocked without following an administrative process that distinguishes between cases where there really could be fraud or a risk to a country or other cases where they may be wrongfully blocked, and there are such cases. So what we have done now is to say we are going to go on a big public consultation drive. We are giving people 30 days – if you have a blocked ID, please write to us, explain to us that you may be someone whose ID is wrongfully blocked, give us the information, we will verify that and then we can unblock your document.”
Those who do not contact the department over their blocked ID will see the document cancelled.
“So we are trying to comply with a court order but also in the process regain its dignity. When you have a blocked ID and you are innocent, it’s a very big problem for you, so we have solve those cases and that will then help us to go after the cases where there’s no plausible explanation.”
The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria in January heard that the department had unblocked more than 1.8 million IDs. However, as at September 2023, there were still about 700 000 blocked IDs. The case had been brought by Phindile Mazibuko, whose ID had wrongfully been blocked, as well as Lawyers for Human Rights and LegalWise, with the Children’s Institute admitted as a friend of the court.
It was declared that blocking identity numbers in the absence of fair administrative process preceding this constituted unjust and irregular administrative action and was inconsistent with the Constitution and therefore invalid.
Manenberg resident Sandra Taylor, 60, found out that her ID was blocked when approaching Capitec for a loan in August 2023. She was informed that she could get a loan; however, her ID had been blocked by Home Affairs.
“I went to Home Affairs that same Friday in Mitchells Plain. I went to find out why my ID was blocked. They told me there were five people with the same name and date of birth. There are five of us.”
Despite other attempts to have her ID unblocked, this has not been done yet.
“It’s terrible, if I go to a shop and want to open an account, they tell me they can’t help me because my ID is blocked. I can’t even go for my pension because the ID is blocked.”
Cape Argus