South Africa’s Home Affairs cuts ID and passport turnaround times by 67%

The South African home affairs  portfolio has delivered sweeping reforms in 2025, exceeding commitments made a year earlier to modernise identity, citizenship, and immigration systems. Speaking to Parliament, Leon Schreiber said the department successfully laid the foundations of a digital identity system, concluded a new digital partnership model with the banking sector, enabled naturalised citizens and permanent residents to access smart IDs, and rolled out an electronic travel authorisation (ETA) platform powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the security and speed of tourist visa processing.

A centrepiece of the progress was a dramatic improvement in service delivery. Reforms to online verification and internal systems cut turnaround times for smart ID and passport applications by 66.7%, enabling the issuance of a record four million smart IDs in 2025—almost double the previous annual average. Schreiber described this as a practical demonstration of what a capable state looks like, driven by technology-led efficiency within the Department of Home Affairs.

The department also turned a constitutional obligation into an innovation milestone. Following a May 2025 ruling by the Constitutional Court of South Africa requiring the reinstatement of citizenship to affected South Africans, Home Affairs introduced an online process allowing individuals to verify and confirm their status within an hour using facial recognition. The technology underpinning this portal now forms a core component of the digital ID system scheduled for rollout in 2026.

Looking ahead, Schreiber said 2026 will mark a decisive shift from back-end systems to citizen-facing digital services. Through digital ID, South Africans will be able to access enabling documents on their mobile phones and verify their identities remotely via secure facial recognition. At the same time, access to physical documents will expand through a new banking-sector partnership, with the first bank branches set to begin offering smart ID and passport services within weeks—an initiative expected to significantly reduce queues at Home Affairs offices.

Border security and immigration management are also being transformed. After the successful deployment of the ETA ahead of the G20 leaders’ meeting, the Border Management Authority, working with the South African Revenue Service, is expanding facial recognition systems across all international airports and major land ports. Once complete, the ETA will be scaled to curb visa fraud, ensure biometric capture for every foreign entrant, and enable legitimate travellers to receive visa outcomes digitally within 24 hours. Preparatory work is also nearing completion for a public-private partnership to rebuild the six busiest land ports of entry.

Taken together with increased funding for border management, additional labour inspectors, and proposals in the draft White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection, the reforms are positioned to deliver tangible progress against illegal immigration and illicit trade in 2026. Schreiber said the digital-first, modern Home Affairs taking shape is becoming unrecognisable from past inefficiencies, arguing that focused delivery this year will make the coming period the most transformative yet.