It has taken the ministry of home affairs three full years to implement the Civil Registration Act, as far as the revocation of non-Swazi national identity documents is concerned.
The Civil Registration Act 2023 states that foreign citizens should not possess national ID cards, but instead, letters of acknowledgement.
The Act was passed in 2023, but this section of it was implemented about a week ago when the ministry of home affairs announced that all foreign citizens must surrender the ID cards.
Initially, when the ministry issued the revocation notice last week, it was with immediate effect.
However, after parliamentarians expressed concern at the short notice, the ministry extended the period by two months, pronouncing December 31 as the deadline.
Ministry of Home Affairs Communications Officer Mlandvo Dlamini said over the years since the promulgation of the Act, the ministry has been making preparations to implement this part of the Act.
“You do not implement an act overnight. But you do it in phases. What has caused the delay here is the securing of the material for acknowledgement letters,” he said.
Dlamini said they would replace the non-Swazi IDs with letters of acknowledgements, which have to be printed on a secured paper to avoid fraudulent activities.
He said the main reasons they are revoking the IDs is to prevent prevailing cases of fraud whereby some users end up utilising the IDs for business ventures outside the country, where they would present themselves as Emaswati despite the expiration of their permits.
“With the letters of acknowledgement, there will be an expiration date that will align with that of the permit,” he said.
The acknowledgements will state particulars of a person, why they are in the country, their status and the validity period of the document.
Dlamini said the decision taken by the ministry would not only prevent fraudulent activities, but it would also save government a lot of money.
Currently, national ID cards are highly subsidized by government at about 300%.
“This will be very cost effective because we will now use paper than the cards.”
When asked if government would recycle the revoked IDs, Dlamini said this would not be possible because IDs have certain security features that would not allow recycling or reuse.
Foreigners who have assumed the refugee status will have their non-Swazi ID cards corrected to bear ‘refugee’ instead of ‘non-Swazi’.
The ministry implemented a significant policy shift regarding foreign identification by withdrawing recognition of non-Swazi identity cards as valid identification documents.
