Pretoria - The Minister of Home Affairs Naledi Pandor has extended her gratitude to all South Africans who took off time to apply for IDs, temporary identity certificates and collected outstanding IDs from home Affairs offices over the weekend on 09-10 November for voter registration purposes as proclaimed by the IEC. In the same breadth, Minister Pandor thanks all Home Affairs staff across the country for their dedication in providing the necessary services to the public during the weekend. In this regard:

1. All 403 Home Affairs offices across the country opened according to schedule from 08h00-17h00 on Saturday and Sunday 09-10 November 2013
2. Senior managers including the Director-General, Deputy Directors-General visited all provinces across the country, working with our Provincial Managers to ensure co-ordination of Home Affairs operations and delivery of services to the public
3. our entire Home Affairs front office staff compliment was on duty to deliver services to the public
4. mobile units were utilised to reach out to citizens particularly in areas where the department does not have a footprint

In addition and on both Saturday and Sunday, Minister Pandor and Deputy Minister Fatima Chohan visited and lend support to Home Affairs operations in the Free State, Western Cape and Gauteng provinces including paying house visits to deliver IDs in some instances.

The services we provided included the issuing of uncollected IDs both in our offices including paying visits to the homes of some applicants to deliver these enabling documents. The second category of documents we issued were temporary identity certificates for those who do not possess IDs. Lastly we received and processed applications for IDs.

On the whole and except for a few glitches, the department is satisfied with the arrangements that were made to provide citizens with the necessary support and documentation to enable them to register for the 2014 elections. We recognize however that more can still be done to reach out to those who did not take advantage of the services delivered by our department.

The Home Affairs statistics of enabling documents for the voter registration weekend are as follows:

Home Affairs will continue to provide such departmental support  and services as would be necessary to enable our citizens to vote in the forthcoming 2014 National Elections. Coming against the background of 20 years of the dawn of peace, freedom and democracy, the 2014 general elections are an important milestone in consolidating the achievements of our democracy.

Issued by Ronnie Mamoepa at 082 990 4853 or Lunga at 082 566 0446

Department of Home Affairs, 909 Arcadia Street, Pretoria, 0001

13 November 2013