Members of the public have less than 30 days to submit their appeals on why their identity documents have been wrongfully blocked, depriving them of accessing key governmental and other services.

A Cape Argus report notes that in an effort to clamp down on ID fraud, the Department of Home Affairs on 16 August announced that those in possession of wrongfully blocked IDs could appeal this within 30 days.

This would also provide an opportunity for the department to resolve what it referred to as a ‘decades-old’ issue of wrongfully blocked IDs while reducing the number of fraudulent documents in circulation.

Some of the IDs were originally blocked as far back as 2005 for a number of reasons, including those documents the biometric system had flagged as duplicates, held by illegal immigrants, or because the ID holder had died.

Those who do not contact the department over their blocked ID will see the document cancelled.

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) in January heard that the department had unblocked more than 1.8m IDs.

However, as at September 2023, there were still about 700 000 blocked IDs.

The case had been brought by Phindile Mazibuko, whose ID had wrongfully been blocked, as well as Lawyers for Human Rights and LegalWise, with the Children’s Institute admitted as a friend of the court.

It was declared that blocking identity numbers in the absence of fair administrative process preceding this constituted unjust and irregular administrative action and was inconsistent with the Constitution and therefore invalid.

Full Cape Argus report