ISSUE 1 of 2024

Dear Team Home Affairs,

My name is Dr Leon Schreiber MP, your newly-appointed Minister of Home Affairs. I will meet many of you on the frontlines of service delivery over the coming weeks and months, but I would like to take this opportunity to briefly introduce myself. 

However, before I talk about myself, I would like to talk about you. Our country has undergone profound change over the past few weeks, and all of us are still adapting to the new environment of cooperation and collaboration created by the formation of the Government of National Unity. This is the nature of democratic change and consolidation, and the GNU provides us with an opportunity to embrace renewal, innovation and modernisation.

At the same time, I want you to know that each and every member of #TeamHomeAffairs is important to me. It is the people who work in this Department who have the power to propel us towards a new vision where we restore dignity to the experience of interacting with Home Affairs.

Every employee of this Department who is committed to delivering on that vision by working together to tackle the problems that frustrate our customers, including long queues, IT challenges, processing backlogs and regulatory bottlenecks, is welcome here. I know that there are many committed officials in the Department. My door and my hand will always be open to you. In fact, one of my primary motivations in addressing the challenges at Home Affairs is to create a better working environment where talented and committed staff members are recognized, rewarded and empowered.

In order to realise the vision of a reinvigorated Home Affairs where both staff and customers are treated with dignity, there will be a zero-tolerance approach to maladministration, fraud and corruption. My commitment to you is to do everything in my power to root out the incidents of malpractice that sully the reputation of all of us who want to take Home Affairs forward.

Now for a little bit about myself. I grew up in the rural Northern Cape where I acquired a love for the outdoors and the spectacular beauty of our country that has remained with me. I studied at Stellenbosch University and in Germany, where I obtained a Doctorate in Political Science at the age of 27. I then went on to work as a Senior Research Specialist for a programme at Princeton University in the United States. In that job, I travelled to dozens of countries in Africa and Asia to interview officials just like yourself about how they managed to build and reinvigorate government Departments. I hope to put that experience to good use in supporting every staff member of Home Affairs to succeed.

As much as I learned from my time abroad, I could not wait to return home and put my skills to use in service of my country. I was elected to Parliament in May 2019, where I served on the opposition benches for five years. The experience I gained in opposition was invaluable, because it gave me a unique perspective on the challenges faced by people in their interactions with government. 

It was the honour of a lifetime to be appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa as your new Home Affairs Minister, and I intend to put my collective experience to work to help our team succeed.

I want to warmly acknowledge and congratulate Deputy Minister Njabulo Nzuza on his appointment, and I look forward to working with him to deliver on the mandate of the GNU. I also wish to thank Director-General Tommy Makhode for welcoming both the Deputy Minister and I, and enabling us to hit the ground running. 

I have already met with the Executive Committee of the Department and the leaders of the Border Management Authority, the Standing Committee on Refugee Affairs, the Refugee Appeals Authority, and the Government Printing Works. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be meeting many of you in person as I join you on the frontlines of service delivery to help solve the problems you deal with on a daily basis.

The Department of Home Affairs is central to the life of every South African. It is, quite literally, the Department that gives us our identity as South Africans. It is the first government department that touches our lives when our parents collect our birth certificates, and it is also the last one that touches all of us when we pass away. Home Affairs is part of our lives when we get married, when we lose loved ones, when we have children, and when we become adults. It is also the Department that opens the doors to the world for South Africans through the issuance of passports. It is therefore the single most powerful Department in government with which to demonstrate that we care about the people of our beautiful country, by treating them with dignity, serving them efficiently, and using the power of Home Affairs as an economic enabler to create jobs.

Based on my own personal experiences with dedicated Home Affairs officials, as well as the meetings I have already had, I am convinced that we can achieve something special in this Department if we work together. By reducing queues at our offices, improving communication, embracing technology to improve the IT system and lessen the burden on workers, extending partnerships with key stakeholders, speeding up the processing of visas and other documents, and embracing innovation in all that we do, we will restore the hope of the South African people that our country’s best days are still to come.

It is a pleasure to meet you and I look forward to working with every member of the team who is committed to innovation, problem-solving and taking our Department into the future.

Because a working Home Affairs makes South Africa work!

With best wishes,

Minister Leon Schreiber MP

5 July 2024