Well yeah, I get the money making aspect.
I suppose I'm asking the question more around (and I suppose more rhetorically than anything else) what would need to change, and also why the hell we need to now cater for "other" genders... Why should a system factor in a persons "feels" in a way, or will the cater for the fact that this year i identify as an Attack Helicopter and next year as a Fluffy pillow.
Here is my personal opinion about the new policy they are proposing.
First off, I think Home Affairs are not in line with the POPI Act and they woke up way too late. According to them and their draft, in short there are still too much information that could be obtained from a normal 13-digit identity number, like date of birth, gender and nationality. Seems more to me they need to get into line with the act and are now looking at using random identity numbers where this information can no longer be identified.
Secondly, I know for a fact that Home Affairs cannot see information on the children of an individual. There is some sort of internal system which allow them to get this information, but it is limited to whom has access. I think they are looking at correcting this on their systems too.
Lastly, again, I think this is a total money racket. If they make these kind of changes, they should pay for the first issue of an identity document to all citizens. The costs should not be on us.
The cheapest solution to this problem would be to make changes to POPI and keep the current identity number. Also make the required changes to the Population Register to link children and parents and use their manpower to manually update records over the next 10-20 years.
