You may knowingly or unknowingly be one of five million South Africans who have two Identity Documents, even if you don’t want two.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, minister in charge of that paragon of efficiency and scruples, the Department of Home Affairs, said yesterday that they were able to determine this fact by checking the re-issue dates of documents. Simple, but brilliant.

Granted, some people have genuinely lost their IDs, which is fair enough, but apparently an ever-growing trend is to hand your ID over to a loan-shark, get your cash and then just re-apply for another ID.

Last year alone the government re-issued more than 1,3 million IDs, more than those printed for first time applicants. Dlamini-Zuma said  that this may be the reason that the cost had risen from R20 to R140 for reissuing IDs.

Dlamini-Zuma also spoke about efficiency and how offices had been refurbished and how people would get a number while queuing.  She also said that they wanted to “roll out” a smart-card based system that would minimise fraud. Yes, I can see that logic.

The numbers in her speech didn’t really seem to add up though, with a few million duplicate IDs not explained. Could there be a little fraud-under-carpet sweeping going on here? Surely not.

[Source : SAPA via News24]