Digital IDs. Security vs Surveillance.
Read the full opinion by our CEO, Claudia Pizzocri, as published on Daily Maverick. Some extracts below.
In Europe, governments are rolling out wallets and electronic identity cards in the name of secure logins and smoother borders. The European Union’s revised eIDAS framework and the European Digital Identity Regulations require each member state to offer at least one EU Digital Identity Wallet to citizens, residents and businesses by 2026… The stated purpose is coherent: harmonised, higher-assurance IDs to reduce fraud, secure digital services and simplify intra-EU mobility.
The United Kingdom has chosen a more drastic approach… a mandatory digital credential will be required for right-to-work checks and other key verifications… Protests and sharp op-eds have followed close behind.
South Africa is stepping onto this stage with unusual speed and confidence. Crucially, this is not just a rebrand of the existing smart ID card: the smart ID is a physical, chip-based identity document, whereas the proposed digital ID is a new, wallet-style credential that would sit on top of the population register and smart ID system as a separate layer of control.
In July, Minister Leon Schreiber announced that the Department of Home Affairs would submit a Digital ID policy to Cabinet to enable public consultations… The pitch is attractive: one secure identity to access state services, social support, financial products and private platforms, all from your phone; less queuing, less fraud, less paperwork and more dignity for all.
The good
A well-designed digital ID can reduce transaction costs. The EU model, at least on paper, constrains itself: voluntary wallets, multiple credentials, explicit data-minimisation duties. Used this way, a digital ID becomes an instrument people deploy, not a leash the state tightens… a credential that people turn on and off, and that is tightly limited in what it may reveal and to whom.
The bad
Digital IDs also centralise risk. They create attractive targets for criminal intrusion and for internal abuse. Long-term, opaque procurement and public–private partnerships can entrench a handful of vendors as de facto gatekeepers.
South Africa’s record here is sobering… to the unlawful and dependency-creating SASSA–CPS grants arrangement… Each of these projects promised modernisation and efficiency; each left behind a pattern of over-selling, under-delivery and deep dependence.
The ugly
In the absence of a genuinely parallel, functioning non-digital route, “voluntary” digital identity schemes tend to become effectively compulsory over time.
Italy’s recent move to phase out legacy ID cards as valid travel documents illustrates how quickly technical upgrades can translate into structural reliance.
The more likely outcome is an infrastructure that quietly makes existing power easier to exercise and harder to resist… Once access to work, banking, movement and basic services runs through a single, networked identity spine, any error, flag or discretionary status change can lock a person out across multiple systems at once.
If South Africa is to proceed into its self-declared “digital era”, the real choice is not between embracing or rejecting technology. It is between models: whether we build an infrastructure that is explicitly constrained by constitutional limits and plural lives, or one that quietly equips the state to deal more swiftly and severely with anyone who falls outside the format it prefers.
By Claudia Pizzocri, CEO at Eisenberg & Associates Inc.