I was raised by my South African father without an ID or birth certificate due to my mother being undocumented. What can I do?

The long answer

In an article on 7 March 2025, The Daily Maverick reported that Judge Nziweni of the Cape Town High Court ordered that it was unlawful for Home Affairs officials to refuse to accept applications which they thought were defective. The job of officials who “screen” the applications is to check that all the boxes are ticked and to point out where an applicant is incorrect or needs to supply more information, and to advise the applicant. But these officials did not have the power to turn people away and refuse an application that they found defective. They should still forward the application to the specific place in the Pretoria Home Office hub, where applications that are seen as defective are processed. 

As your father is a South African citizen, you are automatically a citizen too, even though your mother is undocumented. Probably the fact that your mother is undocumented was the reason that your parents did not register your birth, as Home Affairs says that both parents must be present to register a birth. But that changed in 2018, in the Naki case, where the Eastern Cape High Court ruled that if one parent did not have the required legal documents to be in South Africa, the Births and Deaths Registration Act should be read to mean that both parents’ documents must be presented “where possible”. This means that even if one parent cannot be there, the application must still be accepted and considered by Home Affairs. 

But Home Affairs officials are sometimes unaware of court cases that change the law, like the 2018 Naki case.

Section 28 of the Constitution says that “every child has the right to a name and a nationality from birth”. This gives you the constitutional right to a birth certificate.

As your birth was not registered within 30 days, you would need to apply for Late Registration of Birth (LRB). LRB is a long, difficult process and Home Affairs has a very long backlog of LRB applications, which has left many people stranded for years without IDs. I will go into that, but first, below are the documents that you will need when you apply for your late birth registration and your ID (all the forms are available at Home Affairs offices): 

• DHA 24/LRB (notice of birth) Children born at health facilities: DHA 24/PB (Proof of birth) / Children born at home: DHA 24PBA (Proof of Birth Affidavit)

• DHA 288/A (Affidavit giving reasons for LRB)

• DHA 288

• B1-529 (determination of citizenship)

• Biometrics (ID-size photo and fingerprint) of the person to be registered

• Fingerprints of parent/s

• Certified copies of parent’s ID/Passport

• Application for an ID (Form B1-9);

• Proof of payment of an application fee

Even if you can’t supply all these documents, Home Affairs is still required to accept your application and consider it. This is because there is a law called the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act of 2000 (PAJA), which says that everyone has the constitutional right to fair, lawful and reasonable administrative action by government departments. PAJA says that you have the right to be informed of decisions that affect you, as well as the reasons for these decisions (Section 5(1) of PAJA), and that you can have these decisions reviewed by a court, if you are not satisfied. 

Home Affairs may want to interview you as well. And they may even demand DNA tests to prove that you are your father’s child.

But all the difficulties dealing with Home Affairs may be about to change for the better, because of what is happening now in the courts about the very large backlog of LRB applications:

In December 2024 the Children’s Institute and the Legal Resources Centre challenged Home Affairs in court on behalf of fifteen clients, about the years-long delay in processing Late Registration of Birth (LRB) applications. The Legal Resources Centre said that this delay had caused great suffering to about 250,000 children and young adults who have no birth certificates, and so cannot get IDs, which means they cannot access services, education and jobs. They are asking the court to order that the LRB backlog is unconstitutional, and to order Home Affairs to deliver a clear step-by-step plan to address the causes of the backlog, to make sure that these delays don’t happen again. 

The Legal Resources Centre says that a lot of the backlog may be because 

1. Home Affairs takes an unreasonably long time to verify documents, particularly the proof of birth form and evidence of school attendance. 

2. There is also little coordination between Home Affairs offices, where the system is manual and paper-based – in folders - and which is therefore invisible to the national office.

3. Home Affairs insists on conducting interviews for all applications for late registration of birth, even though this is not required by the law or by Home Affair’s own policy.

Tania Broughton reported in a GroundUp article on 17 June 2025 that after the court case was launched on behalf of the 15 affected clients, Home Affairs had taken action to resolve the cases of those clients. Home Affairs indicated that they would be defending the case, but had not submitted their answering affidavit within the stipulated deadline. 

An article by South Africa Today on 19 June 2025 quotes Deputy-Director Njabulo Nzuza of Home Affairs denying that there was an LRB backlog of 250,000. He said that the Home Affairs records showed a backlog of 33,000 LRB applications.  

Mr Nzuza also said that Home Affairs is speeding up the LRB process by delegating authority from provincial managers to district offices, and simplifying the registration process. He hoped that they would be able to show that they were improving their systems, so they could resolve the Legal Resources Centre case out of court.   

So, hopefully, all this will make your LRB application easier, Mpho. But if Home Affairs continues to be unhelpful, you could approach the Legal Resources Centre yourself for help and advice.

These are their contact details:

• Legal Resources Centre

Email: info@lrc.org.za

Tel: Johannesburg: 011 836 9831

Cape Town: 021 481 3000.

You could also approach Lawyers for Human Rights. These are their contact details:

• Lawyers for Human Rights, 

Email: info@lhr.org.za

Tel: Musina: 015 534 2203

Durban: 031 301 0531

Pretoria: 012 3202943

Johannesburg: 011 339 1960

Cape Town: 021 424 8561

Wishing you the best,
Athalie