Home Affairs testing new online system — no more long queues
The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) had launched a pilot programme to book appointments at its branches online, which it claims will reduce long queues and wait times.
The system has been linked to the country’s population register so that South Africans can book an appointment with their ID numbers.
This, the DHA said, would prevent the illegal blocking of slots by agents intent on selling them to those queueing.
The system is currently in a pilot phase at high-volume Home Affairs branches, and there are presently eight that have implemented the system.
Four of the eight branches are located in the Western Cape, namely the Cape Town, Bellville, Paarl, and Wynberg branches.
The provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal have two active branches each. South Africans living in KZN can use the system to book an appointment at the Tongaat or Ndwedwe Home Affairs branches.
Those in Gauteng can book at the Pretoria or Akasia branches.
The process
The DHA had announced last year that the online booking system would be made available to South Africans as a mobile app translated into several official South African languages.
However, the pilot system is currently only available through the DHA’s website.
The app demo also required users to declare their health and Covid-19 status to complete the appointment request. This aspect appears to have been dropped from the current pilot system.
There are three main steps to the booking system, the first of which is entering your South African ID number.
After that, users are asked to enter their other personal details, including:
- Full name and surname
- Cellphone number
- Email address (optional)
Assuming the system successfully confirms the user’s details, they will then be able to schedule an appointment.
For this step, you select your province, city, the specific branch you wish to visit, and the product type.
Product type is currently limited to ID Card and Passport applications and renewals, and the collection of outstanding documentation.
After that, users can select a date range in which they can visit Home Affairs, and available appointments are then displayed in the form of a calendar.
“The system is down”
DA spokesperson on home affairs Angel Khanyile previously said that an online booking system would improve service delivery at DHA offices throughout South Africa.
However, a report presented to the parliamentary portfolio committee showed that 90% of incidents of system downtime at Home Affairs offices were due to 88% of network equipment being obsolete.
Khanyile said that the DHA would have to complete substantial network upgrades for an online booking system to be successful.
“The DA will monitor the implementation of the appointment system closely,” Khanyile said.
Earlier this month, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet approved the rollout of the second phase of the government’s SA Connect project.
SA Connect aims to provide 100Mbps broadband links to high-demand government facilities such as Home Affairs. It also aims to offer at least 10Mbps speeds to other government facilities and communities around the country.
While an upgrade to broadband infrastructure at Home Affairs would be welcome, it may not solve the underlying problem, which is a lack of redundant network connections at most of the department’s offices.
During a spat between the department and the State IT Agency (Sita) in June 2021, Sita revealed that DHA only paid the bare minimum for its broadband services.
Sita said that many DHA offices were therefore still running on a single 2Mbps copper-based ADSL connection and a basic service-level agreement that does not include backup links.
When Home Affairs staff say the system is offline, it usually means that the single ADSL connection serving that office has stopped working, whether due to cable theft, service provider downtime, network congestion, or another reason.
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