Home affairs and the psyche of identity

Reading the harrowing IOL article about a 24 year old woman who was driven to suicide because of an ID book delay reminded me of Athol Fugard's Sizwe Banzi is dead, an excellent play I went to see last year at the Baxter theatre. Written 30 or so years ago, starring Winston Ntshona and John Kani, the play deals with issues around identity and the ramifications of the lack of it to the psyche. Set in the apartheid pass-law hey-days, a man unable to get a job due to not having a pass, ends up assuming the identity of a dead person in order to survive.

I am sure for many, the article could also have also reminded them of the story about the 21 year old Kabelo Thibedi who held a Home affairs department ransom with a toy gun in November 2005 demanding the details of his ID to be corrected, after having waited for an initial issue for a number of years, and having struggled for 3 years to have the details corrected. The frustrated Kabelo Thibedi had lost academic and job opportunities due to not having an ID. The 24 year old woman who had similar frustrations as Kabelo wrote in an emotional suicide note: "I am going to rest with my father, where I will not be asked for my ID".

While we are sometimes sympathetic to Home Affairs given the the legacy that they inherited post-1994, the reality that it still takes so long for many people to get their identity documents so that they can find jobs and other opportunities remain disturbing. An ID is both a legal token of citizenship and identity in South Africa, these two cases demonstrate a torrent of frustration in the psyche of thousands of bona-fides whose citizenship and identity is not acknowledged due to inefficiency, lack of competence and corruption.

With the capable Mavuso Msimang as the new Director-General of Home affairs and the newly appointed turnaround action team headed by Kevin Wakeford to fast-track addressing the bureaucratic inefficiencies and curb corruption, one can only hope it will be easier to legally obtain citizenship that to buy it; and that hostage or suicides cases and other humiliations that are attributed to issues outside the immediate periphery of legal identity will become things of the past. Hopefully sooner than later!

Solidarity.