In just a few days from taking office, the newly appointed Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Schreiber, has drawn vast attention, ours included, as his appointment marks a significant and unprecedented change for the Department of Home Affairs and its direction.
Yesterday, we joined and gave voice to our clients’ consolation following the temporary extension of the concessions made in light of the persisting backlog, which provides some limited relief to certain foreigners aggrieved by the unreasonable delay in the processing of visa, appeal and waiver applications.
Today we take stock, as perhaps the Minister himself may have, of how one simple duty-bound half step to partially relieve legally admitted foreigners from the state of utter uncertainty imposed on them by the Department’s own inefficiencies and short fallings, has given rise to a wave of disgruntled, xenophobic, and sadly uninformed criticism from many South Africans on social media platforms.
Of course, the service delivery failure by the Department has not been limited to immigration matters, but widespread to citizenship services and border management impacting equally citizens and foreigners. The issues are far too many to be reduced to a simple list and should not be tackled with too much haste.
Implementing change requires ambition and motivation but also requires substantial balance. Too much too soon is rarely a successful combination.
This morning the Minister posted on social media: “Since my appointment, I’ve been inundated with queries from the public. I’ll sit down over the weekend to personally deal with every one of them..”. This undertaking is surprising, perhaps unrealistic and mostly concerning as it appears to undermine the much anticipated implementation of due processes and legitimacy within the Department opening a social media “back door” to access the Minister and his office.
The electoral campaign is over. We hope the Minister will not commit himself to promises he cannot uphold moving forward.
by Claudia Pizzocri | CEO | Eisenberg & Associates