"You don't realise how important an ID number really is until you don't have one," said Ms Maria Tshabalala from Mpheni village in Elim. She breathed a huge sigh of relief when the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) fixed her ID number at long last. This after the DHA had blocked her ID number because their system had suddenly shown that it duplicated someone else's ID number.
Tshabalala (54) has waited nearly two years for this problem to be solved, and in the meantime, she has struggled to get along. She could not, among other things, get her R350 Covid grant without proof of identity.
"I was sent from one office to the next and nearly gave up the fight. No one really bothered to tell me what documents were required. It was only months later, after this newspaper did a story on my situation, that I was clearly instructed by the department on what procedures to follow and what information to submit for them to issue a new ID number for me," she said.
Limpopo Mirror questioned the DHA on Tshabalala's case. The department's liaison officer, Mr David Hlabane, said the problem could have been the result of identity theft, where an ID was acquired illegally or fraudulently with falsified documentation, or it could have been a case where identity numbers had been inadvertently duplicated. In either case, Hlabane said, markers are set on the National Population Register (NPR) to block any ID that duplicates another as a means of ensuring the integrity and credibility of the NPR.
Tshabalala says she is very relieved, as she can now function normally again. "I have already applied for my Covid grant with my fixed ID number. This will really help me, since I was living mostly on borrowed money," she said.