Johannesburg: AfricUpdate – News Desk
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber says the department is beginning to win the fight against corruption. “From visas to the green bar-coded ID book, weaknesses in the system of document issuance were engineered and exploited, enabling syndicates to extract bribes in order to issue documents to people who were not entitled to it,” Schreiber said.
Speaking at the University of Johannesburg Combatting Corruption Summit, on Friday, Schreiber said the Department of Home Affairs was a ground zero site for the grand corruption project, known as State Capture. “Over the years, that level of impunity cascaded throughout the administration, as Home Affairs sadly became synonymous not only with long queues and poor service delivery, but also with corruption,” Schreiber said.
Schreiber said corruption was not limited only to Home Affairs. “This pattern of syndicated behaviour, where people inside government conspire with “tenderpreneurs” masquerading as private businesses, is visible throughout the state. As South Africa increasingly morphed into a syndicate society, Home Affairs was not spared,” the Minister said.
The Minister said syndicates formed wherever services of value had to be rendered. “From visas to the green bar-coded ID book, weaknesses in the system of document issuance were engineered and exploited, enabling syndicates to extract bribes in order to issue documents to people who were not entitled to it. It was not by accident that one of my first acts as Minister was to revoke the citizenship of Gupta family members. But now, under the GNU, a very different message is going out,” the Minister said.
Schreiber said individual accountability is the first building block of government’s approach to washing the stain of corruption and State Capture from not only the Department of Home Affairs, but the entire ecosystem that includes the Border Management Authority (BMA) and the Government Printing Works (GPW).
“Through holding accountable people involved in corruption both inside and outside the department, we are dismantling the syndicates that took hold over many years,” the Minister said. To date, Schreiber said a total of 54 officials from the department and the BMA have been dismissed between July 2024 and August 2025 for offenses including fraud, corruption and misconduct.
“This is a strong start, but we are far from done. We will not stop until we have purged each and every official who abuses their position for personal gain. Even more significantly, eight of these individuals have already been convicted and sentenced to prison terms of up to 18 years each, sending a clear message that there will be no impunity for those who betray the public trust.” the minister said.
