Opening statement (Deputy Minister Fatima Chohan): Good morning colleagues and thank you all for joining us here today. We are very honoured indeed this morning to be able to host our colleagues from Namibia. South Africa and Namibia have got fraternal ties, not only are we geographically very closely situated but our relationship is that of a family. We share a common history and over and above that we share many ties. One such tie is our relationship with the Department of Home Affairs in Namibia and in particular with the Minister, the Deputy Minister and the officials of the Department of Home Affairs in Namibia. Today we are here because we have agreed that in order to forge even closer ties we need to be able to share our experiences, our successes, our challenges and the solutions that we have come up with to address some of those challenges with each other.

And, as part of this process we are very honoured indeed to have Dr Elias Kaiyamo who is the honoured Deputy Minister of Home Affairs of Namibia visiting us here today, meeting with myself and senior officials in the Department of Home Affairs in the Republic of South Africa. Also joining us are the members of the Namibian delegation, officials at a senior level and people from the Foreign Affairs unit of the Namibian contingent. Perhaps what we should do above all, Dr Kaiyamo, is for our delegation to just introduce themselves to you and of course you and your delegation to introduce yourselves and then we will give a brief outline as to the purpose of the visit and exactly the agenda that we expect to follow today. So I will begin on my side and then I will ask our officials first to introduce themselves and then you can introduce the delegation and I believe some people will be joining us as well.

Introductions continue…

Opening Statement (Deputy Minister, Dr Elias Kaiyano): Let me just respond to what my sister, comrade and colleague said. Namibia and South Africa have been partners on the road of progress, friendship and comradeship. Our coming here is just to assure you that we are with you in all these challenges. Comrade President (Jacob) Zuma recently visited our country and we were happy to be assisted on our programme of drought with hundred million. He assured us, as the ministers, that the relations between South Africa and Namibia should not be only be driven by him as President and (Hifikepunye) Pohamba as President, but both ministers at respective levels should also drive the agenda of continuity and unity in their respective countries.

What we learned is that Home Affairs is quite advanced in terms of ID in terms of technology, now we came to learn and how we can collectively promote our ministries. Deputy Minister, I also want to thank you for sending, recently, a delegation (with our records). We received a good number of records which we will be able to use in our ministry and we were also assured that some are still coming. 

Media interview

Question: What is the main purpose of the visit and what do you hope to achieve?

Answer: (Deputy Minister Fatima Chohan): We are very excited that we are able to host the delegation from Namibia today; we hope that this will be one of many visits both ways, to South Africa as well as to Namibia in order to strengthen our ties but also to learn from each other. As much as Dr Kaiyano was very kind in saying that South Africa has advanced in many respects and while that is true, I also believe that there are things that the Namibians do that we can equally learn from. And so, we see this as a relationship of mutual benefit and mutual assistance and so, once again, we are very pleased to welcome the delegation.

A large part of the programme will be dealing with the process of transformation of the Department of Home Affairs, which has taken quite a few years, we will also be indicating to our Namibian colleagues the processes related to the Smart ID Card and we will be going out and showing them exactly how that works at our front offices. They are also interested in our refugee system and we will also be visiting our reception center in Customs House.

One of the things that we want to reassure our Namibian colleagues on is our readiness to share with them the many thousands of records of Namibian citizens that were still in South African archives over many, many years due to the historic situation between Namibia and the Republic of South Africa. To date, we have already sent more than 55 000 records back to Namibia, of their citizens, and by end of this year we hope to be able to send about 3 000 more dockets of Namibian citizens back to Namibia for safekeeping at the Department of Home Affairs of Namibia. So, we are very pleased about the progress in this regard and we will continue to ensure that that kind of co-operation receives utmost attention.

Historically, you will recall, South Africa occupied the territory of Namibia for many decades and due to that historical fact, when births were recorded, when people required identity documents, etcetera, essentially the two systems between the Republic of South Africa and the Republic of Namibia were collated into one system and dealt with by the former department of Home Affairs. As a result, South Africa is currently the repository of many, many documents that actually belong to citizens of Namibian. These were all kept in manual form, unfortunately, not digital form and so there are various warehouses throughout the country full of documents that have to be sifted through and those citizens identified, and those document related to Namibian citizens then sent back to the Department of Home Affairs in Namibia. 

Deputy Minister, Dr Elias Kaiyano:I have come here to South Africa to visit my sister, the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs and also to learn from the best practices in this country. We were told that South Africa is already ahead in terms of ID production and so on, now we came here to see for ourselves and also to learn other best practices in this country, so it is the main reason why we are here. Not only that, also to promote these existing good relations between our two countries. But, as a country and as a region we commit ourselves to work towards the integration of the region, so we have to learn how our colleagues do their production to enable us to be the best in Africa as a region, SADC region.

I will take the best of what I see here. Namibia and South Africa have been having very good relations. On a party level, SWAPO and the ANC have a historical background together and then as governments we need to continue building on these old ties. It is the only way we will be able to defeat poverty and backwardness. ENDS

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