WATCH | Home affairs: visas issued to 95 Libyans were marked by irregularities

The issuing of visas to 95 Libyans who were receiving security training at a farm in Mpumalanga was marked by irregularities which home affairs minister Leon Schreiber says amount to nothing less than a threat to national security.

Schreiber said the issues at the department, including identity fraud, can only be addressed through the total and sustained digital transformation of home affairs into a digital-first department.

He was leading a home affairs team that appeared before parliament’s portfolio committee on Tuesday to account for issues involving the department.

MPs heard a raid conducted at the farm by law enforcement agencies revealed most participants had been involved in conflict zones, and wars and some were university graduates.

Home affairs is pointing fingers at a department of international relations and cooperation (Dirco) official who processed the visa applications for the men in Tunisia.

The official, who was not named, flouted almost all the legislative requirements for visa applications, including issuing handwritten visas due to an offline system.

Home affairs director-general Tommy Makhode told MPs that because South Africa does not have a mission in Libya, Libyans who intended coming to the country have to apply for visas in neighbouring countries. He said due to a lack of resources at home affairs, Dirco officials assisted with the processing of visa applications.

“We are operating at 39.9% and we don’t cover the rest of the world in terms of missions so we rely on Dirco officials,” said Makhode.

“There are 115 missions for the Republic of South Africa. Home affairs has a presence at only 38 of those and those capacity constraints are coming back to haunt us.”

According to Makhode, the Dirco official confirmed 95 visas had been issued to the Libyan nationals to train at the academy in White River, but the documents were issued without consulting her supervisors or the desk at Dirco, as is normal practice.

The official indicated she had received no response from the desk and therefore proceeded to issue the handwritten visas as the applicants met the requirements according to her own interpretation. The official also confirmed when questioned verbally that she did not consult, seek advice or obtain any authorisation from the department of home affairs, said Makhode.

He said they did not get satisfactory responses when they posed questions regarding other cluster members who are also attachés at the embassy, such as State Security Agency (SSA) military attachés.

Home affairs wrote to Dirco on July 30 seeking clarity and Dirco indicated it would launch an investigation and wants home affairs and the SSA to be part of its visit to the mission in Tunis look at the physical documentation.

Makhode said their preliminary investigation found a lot of irregularities in the issuance of the visas.

“At the time we spoke to the official there was an indication the system at the mission was offline,” he said.

He said this was the Dirco system and not that of home affairs. This is the reason the visas were handwritten.

The application forms used to process the visas were outdated and did not comply with the forms prescribed in immigration regulations.

In some of the application forms, there was no indication the applicants were applying for study visas.

“The indication is that the official decided to grant the study visas,” he said.

Critical information such as place of birth and home addresses of applicants for their country of origin were missing. The applications also did not contain any proof of sufficient funds, as prescribed.

The letter of acknowledgement submitted by the company that ran the programme was not verified.

A preliminary check by home affairs found a Momentum membership that had been indicated in the application form was fraudulent. This was verified by Momentum, said Makhode.

The certificate of criminal status, or what is referred to as police clearance in South Africa, was not verified during the processing of the applications.

“Our legal prescripts indicate you have to appear in person at the mission unless it is an e-visa application. In this case, all the applications were submitted by an agent and none of the people appeared at the mission in Tunis.”

The statement or documents detailing the purpose and duration of the visit were not done, and neither did they provide proof of accommodation in South Africa. The visas were issued on April 3 and were due to expire on December 31.

Makhode said the applications were processed within three days though ordinarily the verification time allowed is about eight weeks.

The Border Management Agency’s (BMA) Mike Masiapato said the 95 Libyans arrived in South Africa in batches of four between April 21 and May 29.

Three groups of 24 arrived on April 21, April 26 and May 1 and the last group of 23 people arrived on May 29.

They came through OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on study visas, but the conditions for their visas were “to receive training from Milites Dei Security Services for 36 months”.

The BMA said its officials verified the visas with the issuing mission in Tunisia on a sample basis, and these were confirmed to be authentic.

Masiapato said the validation of a passport was “a very basic” international principle.

“It has to be machine readable, and in this instance their passports were all machine readable and therefore valid.”

The Libyans were deported at the weekend with the Libyan government paying for their flights to Tripoli.