Millions of South Africans have more than one ID
Apr 19, 2011
Five million South Africans carry multiple identity documents when legally, they should only have one, Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Tuesday.
Her department was able to determine this because the system recorded the dates of re-issue, Dlamini-Zuma said in Pretoria.
She said that while some people genuinely lost their identity documents (IDs), others handed them over to loan sharks as security then applied for new ones.
Last year alone, the government re-issued 1.3 million IDs -- more than those printed for first time applicants, said Dlamini-Zuma.
She hinted that this was the reason for the tariff increase from R20 to R140 for re-issued IDs.
What was more disconcerting was that 750, 000 of the re-issued documents were not collected.
"... [W]hich means people misplaced their IDs and went to re-apply and then find their documents and they then don't bother to collect them," she said.
"This is quite wasteful in terms of time, in terms of money. It opens up possibilities of corruption."
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