Home Affairs Minister Dr Leon Schreiber said on Tuesday that his department is moving at “light speed” to take a department that has long been maligned as almost the symbol of government inefficiency and turn it around through reform and digital transformation.

Schreiber was speaking during the PSG Think Big webinar, where he announced that his department would in the next few weeks begin the phased rollout of electronic travel authorisation (ETA) which will eventually automate South Africa’s visa processes.

He noted South Africa’s underperformance in markets such as China and India.

“So we partnered with a handful of tour operators in those countries to test where the visa reform would make a big difference, because people were always complaining that [they] travel great distances, [they] stand in long queues, [they] wait weeks for their passport with a visa to come back and often they would miss their flight. So, it was just a real handbrake on South Africa's tourism sector,” he said.

Home Affairs garnered over 27 000 additional tourists in just four to five months through a small, limited scheme.

Schreiber explained that he wanted South Africa to become a world leader, he wanted to clamp down on fraud and corruption, but also improve efficiency and unlock the tourism market.

He said his department had a big focus on anti-corruption efforts, noting the dismissal of 38 officials and several prosecutions. He said the department had conducted more deportations, over 51 000 people in the past year, than South Africa has seen for at least half a decade.

He announced that the department had several key reforms underway, that had already yielded fruit, such as a record of 3.5-million smart IDs issued in a year, which he said exceeded the target by almost a million.

“…and we have just launched this very exciting digital partnership with the bank and banking sector in South Africa that is going to expand access to these vital services to thousands of bank branches and critically onto digital banking apps as well,” he said.

Convenience, security and efficiency are all expected through this reform.

Schreiber highlighted that automation and digital transformation were key parts of closing off the space for human bias, human discretion, human interference, and making sure that the department used available technology to automate processes and to understand each and every intervention.

Meanwhile, he pointed to Government of National Unity (GNU) collaboration in his department.

“I mean, I have a deputy minister from the ANC Njabulo Nzuza and really across the board in this space, I think we are demonstrating just how powerful the GNU can be, because we're working together in good faith, we're trying to solve real problems,” he said.

He said the GNU needed a while to learn to cooperate.

“I think if you look at some of the things that the GNU has gone through, including not only the dispute around the Budget and the proposal to increase the VAT, but also the fact that we were then subsequently able to get over that disagreement and pass a Budget. Those are big milestones in any coalition government anywhere in the world,” he explained.

He said the GNU needed a much more structured approach on policy questions for speedy resolution.