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During the Department of Home Affairs’ 2024/2025 budget vote speech on Monday, Home Affairs Minister Dr. Leon Schreiber announced that South Africa will be receiving both updated Smart ID cards and passports.
“Both the passport and smart ID card will be refreshed and updated in order to enhance the security features of these documents, with the aim of building trust by more countries and organisations worldwide,” said Schreiber, as per MyBroadband.
As per the report, the smart ID’s safety shortcomings have not yet been identified in detail, however, passport fraud has been widely reported and is a growing concern in South Africa.
This comes after recent news of twelve South African Home Affairs officials in Krugersdorp who were offered bribes by a Pakistani national, Arfan Ahmed, to assist in producing fraudulent passports.
This fake passport syndicate has landed the criminal eighteen years of jail time in South Africa, and Home Affairs have stated that they have fired the 12 officials who enabled this scheme.
Due to South Africa’s known history of battling passport fraud, many foreign countries have bolstered their protection with the requirement of a visa.
“Every single South African is a victim because we are now forced to apply for visas when we visit countries such as the United Kingdom (UK),” states Former Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsaledi. “This was not the case before syndicates like these denigrated our passports,” he added.
“We will, therefore, have no mercy to anybody whatsoever, Home Affairs official or outsider, who gets involved in these dastardly acts. We are doing so to protect the interests of all South Africans,” he added.
No specific dates for the expected changes of the updated smart IDs and passports has been provided. Schreiber states that the updates will be implemented during the current administration, which is set to end in 2029.
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