Department of Home Affairs (South Africa)

Duties

The department is responsible for:

Budget

In the 2010 national budget, the department received an appropriation of 5,719.6 million rand, and had 9,375 employees.

Extremely Poor Service

The department has been criticized for its inefficiency, particularly in regard to processing documents. Eye Witness News reported that it will take two years to process visa requests from Zimbabwe citizens applying for work and study permits.

In another case, The Sowetan reports that as South African citizen has unsuccessfully tried to attain an identity document for four years . There have also been reports of the incompetency of the officers themselves. For instance some of them do not even know the relevant documents that need to be submitted for a particular visa application. In some scenarios, 2 identical applicants submitting the exact documents for the exact visa might not get the same response. One might be refused while the other one might be approved. Some applicants might have their applications rejected several times, either because they are only being informed of the relevant documents to be submitted each time their applications get rejected or the Home Affairs officials processing the documents are themselves not aware of the immigration rules of the country and thus a well completed application that deserved to be approved might still be rejected. It is not surprising that a straightforward application might take up to 2 years to be processed, while ideally in an effective system, they would be processed in a couple of months at worst. The consequences of such inefficiency can be worrying. Many foreigners thus often find themselves working illegally or even losing their bread winning job, simply because the system takes too long to process their visas.

Harshness on Applicants

Communication is also a major issue. Apart from the call centre, where the operators can provide technical advise with regards to lodging complaints, follow ups on applications and referring a complaint or question to the " Right Person" , there is actually no efficient way of contacting the actual immigration officers themselves, especially when it comes to getting explanation and professional advises on delicate matters. Phone calls usually go unanswered. Emails sent to the designated immigration officers also go unswered most of the time. If a phone call or an email ever get answered, the applicant usually gets told that his complaint or request will be referred to the "Right Person" and that an immigration officer will contact him in due time. It turns out that most of the time the applicant never gets called back. What usually follows is that the applicant usually phone again or send a new email only to have a totally new person attending to him ( if he is lucky enough ), to whom the applicant will have to reexplain his entire problem. This vicious cycle usually goes on for a long time to the point that some applicants actually give up because of the harshness of the system.

Corruption

There have been numerous reports of corruption within Home Affairs. In February 2010 the department closed one of its Johannesburg offices due to corruption. A number of officials and staff members have appeared in court for alleged corruption and bribery . Allegations include the sale of fake passports.

Mismanagement

In May 2010 it was reported that the Department of Home Affairs had not paid its bill to the Government Printing Works, leading to a delay in the issuance of new passports. Home Affairs is facing lawsuits of R 5 billion for various breaches of terms and contracts. The same article reports that the department also faces lawsuits from "people erroneously declared dead, people whom they failed to issue with identity documents and others arrested after their IDs were used in a fraudulent manner."

A report by the country's Public Service Commission found that the Department of Home Affairs accounted for 22 of the 260 financial misconduct cases for national departments in 2008/9.