In recent time a very disturbing element has entered the arena of law surrounding civic affairs with the Department of Home Affairs in its interface with “third parties”.

By definition “civic affairs” relates to the procurement of documentation surrounding life cycle events such as birth, death and marriage.

In each of these instances an interface with the Department of Home Affairs is necessary at one of its regional district offices in order to procure certificates. More particularity of this appears lower in this article.

Insofar as the obtaining of abridged, i.e. “shortened form” of birth, death and marriage certificates, if the office of the Department of Home Affairs concerned is computer linked, i.e. not one of the smaller or rural offices, then the process is rather simple and is contingent upon correct information being fed into the system, the nominal fee being paid to the Department of Home Affairs in respect of their “administrative” cost and generally, provided that office of Home Affairs is online at the time, the certificate would in all probability be printed while you wait.

The scenario however shifts very considerably when an unabridged, i.e. “long version” certificate is required in respect of the aforementioned.

This process is somewhat different and cannot be done online.

If by way of example, and this is the most common type of certificate applied for, an unabridged birth certificate would require inspection of the vault copy containing the birth entry to be inspected, verified and then an unabridged birth certificate is issued against that information which is then certified into the certificate.

This does explain why an unabridged birth certificate will take longer to obtain. The unabridged birth certificate not only contains the particularity of the person whose birth is recorded, but also the full details of the parents together with their identity numbers.

This is where the crunch lies as the Department of Home Affairs records, if one has to judge by the length of time it is taking, are quite frankly in a mess.

Waits of up to a year or more in the procurement of an unabridged birth certificate are not uncommon.

To compound and complicate the issue further is the fact that once lodgement of an application has taken place, it is literally impossible to connect with anyone within the department at the Department of Home Affairs head office where the process is completed and finalised, in order to discuss or expedite the application. Emails remain unanswered and this is only one of the difficulties being encountered.

The next difficulty being encountered is the fact that the Department is currently refusing to interface with what they refer to as “third party agents” such as immigration consultants/practitioners, attorneys or advocates and insist on dealing with the applicant in person only. Of late the physical lodgement of the application which now has to be attended to by the applicant in person only, excludes any so-called “third party” from accompanying the applicant or indeed making any enquiries or indeed uplifting a completed certificate when it has been completed and finalised.

Recently a family member of the author of this article applied for an unabridged certificate which was required urgently for personal reasons. After seven months of hassling, phoning, sending emails and eventually taking the matter all the way to senior management at the Department of Home Affairs, with a literal and liberal amount of begging involved, was the matter actually finalised.

By then it was far too late for the purpose for which the certificate was in the first place required.

As a direct result of this type of inaction by the Department of Home Affairs, many agencies that were rendering this kind of service are no longer doing so as unabridged certificates generally are required with haste for good reason and they simply cannot be expedited as it is almost like hitting one’s head against a brick wall.

My advice in this regard is that once lodgement has been effected and if nothing is forthcoming within a reasonable time thereafter, that the Deputy Director General of Home Affairs (Civic Affairs) should be approached via his office to look into the matter as this incredible delay that is taking place is not only out of line with the principles of administrative justice, but is also potentially unconstitutional.

Unfortunately our law practice is unable to take on applications of this nature any longer purely because it has become an impossible task due to the obstructive nature of how the matters are dealt with.

Recently an immigration consultant brought an application to the North Gauteng High Court and obtained a default court order against the Director General of Home Affairs instructing the Department of Home Affairs in Pretoria to deal with that consultancy.

Notwithstanding this, the Department still refuses to deal with “third party agents” in defiance of an order of the High Court.

Our office however can be of assistance in the procurement of abridged certifications of all kinds and still attends to applications for determination of status, applications for exemption from the loss of South African citizenship status, applications for resumption of citizenship status and when possible naturalisation applications.

Julian PokroyImmigration and Citizenship Attorney (operating in South Africa, Australia and the United Arab Emirates)
Julian@immigration.org.za
Julian Pokroy Attorneys