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Ten-year battle to fix ID book
08/11/2007 18:32 - (SA)
Tshwarelo eseng Mogakane
Nelspruit - Jolinah Mlangeni is clearly black, yet the department of home affairs has found that she shares an ID number with a white woman called Jessie Bok.
Mlangeni has been trying to get the error corrected for the past ten years. During that time, Bok got married and is now called Jessie Claasen.
"I am poor and unemployed, but these people won't fix my ID problem. Now I cannot do anything with my life," said Mlangeni.
She said her problems started when she applied for a new ID book in 1997 because her existing one was old and battered.
She said she was given a temporary ID certificate with the name Jessie Bok.
When she queried the name, she was told that her ID number was the same as that of Bok.
Ten years down the line, the problem still hasn't been resolved.
Her daughter, Lindiwe Mlangeni, said she was very upset that home affairs was treating her mother with disrespect.
"My mother has been using money she doesn't have to go around circles for something (home affairs) messed up. Now they are accusing her of being a foreigner," she said.
She said some officials at the Nelspruit home affairs offices told her mother that she needed to get a letter from her school or from the owners of the farm where she grew up more than fifty years ago, to prove that she is South African.
Mlangeni never went to school, however.
She used to live on Landshoek farm in Ngodwana, outside Nelspruit, before permanently moving to KaBokweni as an adult. The former owner of the farm is long dead.
Solving ID problems
"The last I heard the farm was being bought by government and the farmer's surviving daughter had relocated to Johannesburg. So should I go all over Jo'burg looking for someone whose name I don't even know?" said Mlangeni angrily.
Home affairs regional manager in Mpumalanga, Robert Zitha, was not available for comment on Thursday.
National spokesperson for home affairs, Jacky Mashapu, said the department was very cautious of foreigners posing as nationals.
"We have a challenge as a department, especially in Mpumalanga where many Mozambicans who spent years in this country try their luck to get an ID," said Mashapu, on Thursday.
He asked for Mlangeni's contact details so he could raise the matter with the Nelspruit office.
Mashapu said the department was solving people's ID problems on a daily basis.
- African Eye
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