Chairperson, the Department of Home Affairs has become infamous over the years as a department plagued by corruption, scandal and poor service delivery.
The influence of this department is far-reaching. It does not only affect the lives of all South Africans, but also of millions of people who enter our country from Africa and the rest of the world.
The ID was relieved that someone of the calibre of Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was put in charge of the department and we have already seen some improvements. These have included a slow yet convincing transformation into the delivery of a service that is efficient, accessible and corruption free. This confidence, however, will never blind us to the qualified audits the department gets year after year.
With the 2010 Fifa World Cup on our doorstep, we can only be proud to say that in terms of our ports of entry we are ready. We also say that there are minor challenges, like the access control at the Cape Town Airport at Customs and also the siege of the baboons at the Beit Bridge port in Limpopo. It is a pity that we did not have the opportunity to visit other Southern African Development Community, SADC, countries, seeing that the World Cup is on African soil.
We support the increased budget for the Film and Publication Board, but we feel we could do more to clamp down on child pornography and the increasing sexual exploitation of children and women, especially as the 2010 Fifa World Cup looms.
I would also like to voice the ID's concern about the lack of representation of females in middle management. There is a need for us to address these imbalances.
I strongly feel that the Minister owes us an explanation about what exactly happened with the forensic audit reports on the Who Am I Online project and the review requested by the State Information Technology Agency, Sita, into the smart card project tender control process. In addition to the upcoming smart card briefings by Sita on 20 April, we demand to see the forensic audit report.
It does not make sense that Sita, the very organisation that the Minister herself said didn't do as it was supposed to do, will now be giving us a briefing on the forensic report that none of us have even seen.
According to media reports, the Minister publicly condemned Sita for the delays in the smart card project. And now we are expected to trust Sita to give us its own sanitised version of the report!
Why is it that the Who Am I Online project report, given to the former Minister on 10 February 2009, had not been seen by the portfolio committee until today? What does the department have to hide? The ID supports this budget. I thank you.