The Green ID Book, a staple of South African life since the early 1980s, will be retired on 31 March 2027, after which it will no longer be a legally recognised means of identification. In its place, the current smart ID card will be required, along with a new digital identity management system that South Africans will access via their smartphones.

This is part of a wider drive by the Department of Home Affairs to modernise the management of South Africa’s population register, and its borders, announced by Home Affairs Minister Leon Schrieber at a press conference in Johannesburg this week. The event was headlined Home Affairs Quantum Leap: A Vision for the Future of Government.

He began his remarks by emphasising the progress that had been made in modernising the department. When he became minister in 2024, documentation was still in paper form, but was now modernised and comprehensively digitised. “It has now been nearly 18 months since I last signed any submission in paper format, as we have long since replaced paperwork with digital processes,” he remarked.

The minister said that getting rid of the old ID book was essential to the country’s security, as it was the most fraudulently obtained and manipulated document on the continent. “Because it is paper-based and contains a manual photograph that can easily be replaced or manipulated, this document sits at the core of the scourge of identity theft in our country.”

Still issued in limited cases, the document would no longer be produced as of 31 March next year; in the run up to this deadline, smartcard IDs would become available to categories of people who had struggled to obtain them. The process of conversion would be a large one, with as many as 14.7 million South Africans and foreign nationals who are permanent residents still being in possession of only an ID book.

First-time applicants, and those over 60 years of age, would not have to pay to obtain the new ID.

Turning to the digital ID system, he demonstrated the prototype, with the first such ID card issued to himself. The ID cards on the system would have access to all documents held by Home Affairs (such as birth and marriage certificates), and would allow officials to verify information quickly and efficiently – although the system also has features allowing holders to decline to share their information.

All of this would be undertaken with an eye to moving services online, allowing people to access Home Affairs services from devices, without the need to visit a branch. The modern world, Minister Scheiber told the audience, is a technological world. The Department of Home Affairs that he inherited had only 40% of the staff and resources it needed to fulfil a “bricks and mortar” mandate. The quantum leap that the minister was announcing was, he said, an imperative for the future.

In addition, a new electronic visa regime is in preparation, the Electronic Travel Authorisation. This would use artificial intelligence and biometrics to issue visas within 24 hours, rather than the weeks that paper-based issuance can take. This is expected to make tourism to South Africa markedly easier. A new digital border control system would make physical entry more efficient, in many instances not even requiring interaction with a border control official.

“This,” Minister Schreiber said, “means more legitimate tourists, more money spent in South Africa, and more jobs created for South Africans.”

New ePassports are also on the horizon, with a biometric chip that will be readable globally at border gates. Schrieber pledged that once this is operative, South Africa would initiate negotiations with a range of other countries to secure visa-free access for its citizens.

Finally, the minister said that large numbers of South Africans remain undocumented, essentially freezing them out of modern society. With modernised systems allowing the bulk of the population to deal with the Department of Home Affairs online, a concerted effort would be made to register and provide documents to every South African lacking them by the end of the current government's term of office: “We intend to use every second of that time to drive our reforms even further.”

He concluded: “Now is the time to leverage the radical reform of Home Affairs into a quantum leap forward for all of South Africa, replacing public service delivery as we know it with a new vision for government as modern, technologically enabled, and relentlessly focused on delivering dignity for all.”