Hon Chairperson, I would like to thank the hon members for the debate. We presented five priorities here, today: to improve our front-office operations; to review our immigration legislation; to improve the physical and systems infrastructure of our ports of entry; to continue to modernise the department; and finally, to implement the Border Management Agency. I would like to thank the hon members who responded to these five priorities and who therefore assisted us to develop other ideas about their concerns. Let me respond to some of them.
Hon Khawula, we will not prejudice the rural areas with the Modernisation programme. There are several interventions we are going to implement. One of them is to automate even the rural offices. We are in discussion with the Department of Public Works to build more offices, because even the 407 offices that we have are not enough. The programme we are implementing with the banks will also create capacity for rural people to have access to our modernised services.
In addition, as I indicated, we are going to convert 38 more offices this year to ID smart card offices. We are also exploring the fleet recapitalisation of our mobile offices so that we can reach out to rural areas, to those people who need these services but cannot go to towns, and to those who don't have access to the Internet. The services we are providing are intended for all categories of South Africans. That is why we can never focus only on the urban people and leave out the rural people.
The Department of Home Affairs is not just about immigration, and particularly not just about the immigration regulations. We have a whole extensive programme of civic service, immigration management and other programmes, as we have outlined here today. The members from the DA have all focused exclusively on the immigration regulations, as if the department is only about this.
I want to focus on two matters. Last year, when we spoke here, we indicated that there is a fundamental ideological disagreement on these regulations. Our disagreements are political. It has got nothing to do with the issues which are being presented here today.
Last year, the critical issue was the decision to remove the penalty and replace it with the declaration of a person as an undesirable person. We have moved further now to focus on two things: firstly, the requirement that an applicant must present themselves in person; and secondly, that any South African child leaving the country or foreign child entering the Republic must present an unabridged birth certificate. The question is: If you are opposed to this, who is this person that you want to have enter South Africa without us knowing? Who is this child that you want to see leaving the country without us knowing?
These issues have nothing to do with tourism. Among the 10 leading countries that have received tourists, three - Italy, Canada and Germany - have exactly the same regulations as we have, but no, the issue is not about them. The issue is about South Africa.
We are even being advised to be so naive as to think that human traffickers don't use regular means of entering the country, but will only enter the country irregularly. It would be naive of us to think that. It would be naive of us to think that because somebody believes that the legislation to manage human and child trafficking exists in other departments, the Department of Home Affairs has absolutely no role to play in this. We cannot agree with that perspective and the Department of Home Affairs will not buy into that type of reckless thinking.
Let me be clear, hon members, South Africa is not an island. What has happened in Kenya, what has happened in the Horn of Africa will happen in our country if we are naive, and we do not want to have a rude awakening. It is quite clear to us that we need to minimise the risks of this, as seen in Nigeria and other African countries, and to learn from their experiences, so that we can protect our country. For us to say we will sit and wait until such things happen in our country, only then to be presented with other documents that say that government was sleeping, is to ask us to be naive and reckless. We are not going to be part of that argument.
Let me further say that the hon Mokgosi, who has now left, was extremely confused about what she was saying. To start with, I deliver no hampers. I am running no promotion.