This
Tuesday on Special Assignment, we bring you a special report
on a Zimbabwean woman’s quest to “buy” South African
citizenship.
Duduzile
“Dudu” Tshuma, a qualified nurse, is a Zimbabwean citizen
who was forced to flee her native country to South Africa
some years ago. She was involved in organizing strikes for
nurses in Zimbabwe and as a result became a victim of
harassment by war veterans. She is formally registered as
an asylum seeker in South Africa.
Receiving a fraudulently issued
birth certificate from a Johannesburg passport centre
official
Dudu
alleges that at least half of all Zimbabweans and foreigners
she knows have bought themselves South African identity
documents and refugee papers.
A few
months ago, Special Assignment, armed with a spy camera,
embarked on a mission to determine how easy it would be to
buy citizenship for Dudu. Our quest was to buy “genuine”
identity documents for Dudu – in other words documents that
are “legally” on the Home Affairs computer. Not the kind of
green ID books that you buy on street corners that would
fail a simple authenticity test.
A Special
Assignment investigator and Dudu went to six Home Affairs
offices – Tshwane, Germiston, Nelspruit, Pietermaritzburg,
Durban and Johannesburg – and attempted to buy her
citizenship. In each centre, we approached so-called
“identity and passport officials” who hang around Home
Affairs offices. These are private individuals who assist
people in obtaining documentation, filling out forms and
getting photographs taken. We asked these people if they
could help us get identity documents for Dudu.
The results
are frightening. We bought four identity documents, a
temporary identity document, a temporary refugee permit and
several birth certificates. At each one of the six Home
Affairs offices we visited, we were successful in obtaining
documentation.
The four
Id’s and birth certificates we bought for a Zimbabwean
woman. These documents are “legal” and on the Home Affairs
computer.
We next
approached the verification company Kroll to help us
authenticate the papers. After examining the identity
documents and birth certificates, the head of Kroll in South
Africa, Ina van der Merwe, concluded that all four ID books
and all the birth certificates (for both Dudu and her child)
are valid, in the sense that they appear on the Home Affairs
computer. The temporary ID document we purchased in Pretoria
was invalid.
Duduzile Tshuma as she appears
in her new South African identity document.
Kroll tests about 20 000
identity documents every month, and Van der Merwe estimates
that up to 25 percent of all identity documents in South
Africa might have been issued illegally or fraudulently.
It is clear
that the “passport centre” officials work in close collusion
with Home Affairs officials. The Department of Home Affairs
admitted that the four identity documents are on their
system and have been verified by their computers, but say
that three out of the four ID books have been tampered with
and are duplications of existing documents. They cannot
however explain how the documents were issued, but admit
that several of their officials might be implicated.
This
Special Assignment investigation raises several questions
about the Department’s commitment to fighting corruption and
the success of its anti-corruption drive. This documentary
has been compiled by Jacques Pauw and Alex Stellianos and
was filmed by Jan de Klerk.
