President
Delegates

Good morning and its a pleasure tobe here. I am pleased at the opportunity for collaboration that has been agreedby AGRI-SA and Home Affairs. 

The collaboration’s main aim is tomake the registration of births on farms easier for parents, farmowners andhome affairs officials.

Its a strange but true fact thathalf the children in the world are unregistered. It’s also strange but truethat two thirds of deaths each year in the world go unregistered. The reasonthat so many births and deaths go unregistered is that there are many barriers(lack of laws or infrastructure) to registering births and deaths. 

That’s why this partnership is soimportant. 

The only way to know who is alive anddead is through civil registration. Civil registration in turn allows citizensto enjoy the fruits of citizenship. Without civil registration we in governmentwon’t be able to design adequate public services or to pursue adequate policiesof social inclusion. 

In some countries its only thosewho live in cities who are able to register births and deaths. That’s whathappened in South Africa. From 1923 it was compulsory for all (black and white)to register births. But only in the cities. It was voluntary in the rural areasand that is where the majority of black people lived. On farms. On reserves. Oncommunal land. So most births of Africans went unregistered under apartheid. 

At the beginning of the democraticera there was little documentary proof of our identities. A huge effort was putinto translating dompas numbers into regular ID numbers but birth registrationremained elusive and difficult. 

Yet we know that civil registrationof births is an important component of building the National PopulationRegister and we have been on the campaign path for a good many years now.

Our first step in this campaign isto register the birth of every citizen and put their births into the NationalPopulation Register (NPR). Our campaign is aimed at parents now. Register yourchild. Do it within 30 days. Don’t delay. 

But what about all those who don’thave birth certificates? What about all those who lived in communities that arein remote or marginalised areas?

So we established a lateregistration of birth process to provide these undocumented citizens theopportunity to register and acquire enabling documents. 

One campaign objective is to reachthose citizens whose births were unregistered and those with birth certificateswho had never applied for an ID. 

Another objective is to inform andmobilise South Africans about the importance of the Register, the earlyregistration of birth and the fight against corruption over fraudulent birth,death and marriage registration. National and international syndicates workingwith corrupt officials seriously compromise the Register by selling andduplicating identities. 

As part of our campaign strategy wehave launched more than 250 stakeholder forums covering the majority ofdistrict municipalities and metros. The stakeholder forums identify needs andthe needy; support and monitor the Department and hold us accountable. 

Stakeholder forums are strictlynon-partisan and focused on service delivery. They work with the support of thethree tiers of government and all political parties. The enthusiasm with whichcommunities and their representatives have embraced the work of the forums ishumbling and inspiring.

Another key aspect of the strategywas to develop close cooperation between Home Affairs and relevant governmentdepartments, such as Education, Health, Social Development and SAPS. This drewon the positive example of this type of cooperation during the successfulhosting of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. The support of government at alllevels has also been crucial.

Thecampaign has achieved some success. But we still need the support of organisationssuch as AGRI-SA.

In the 2012/13 financial year, HomeAffairs registered 602,530 births within 30 days of delivery. This was madepossible by the steady expansion of our national footprint that reaches intothe most rural and far flung areas through the use of 389 provincial anddistrict offices and 117 mobile offices. In addition, we have connected 347heath care facilities across the country of which 85 hospitals in variousprovinces were connected in the 2012/2013 financial year. 

According to the 2013 mid-termpopulation estimates there were 1,095,669 births in 2012 (not the financialyear). So that suggests that 6 out every 10 births were registered in our targetperiod. 

We also need your support with IDs.

In the 2012/13 financial year, HomeAffairs issued 1,039,862 identity documents to first time applicants. We wantto work with you and other relevant stakeholders to mobilise our youth to applyfor identity documents.

Home Affairs has a role to play inbuilding tolerant and peaceful communities. We are conductingcampaigns aimed at building peaceful and diverse communities. Ourstakeholder forums across the country promote issues to do with citizenship. Theseforums can play a role in promoting harmony between citizen and foreigner andin shaping a more tolerant climate in our communities. 

In closing, as the National Development Plan says, we need “to adopt a much more progressivemigration policy in relation to skilled and unskilled migrants”. I hope to beable to engage with you on this crucial matter in the future.