Pretoria - Home Affairs officials will contact the Siyahlala informal settlement woman in Atteridgeville to assist her and her five children obtain birth certificates and IDs.
Department spokesman Thabo Mokgola said: “We will contact her with the view of resolving the matter.
“Last year minister Malusi Gigaba said that stringent measures would apply to those needing late registration of births. By law, we need to satisfy ourselves that whoever is granted citizenship is actually a South African citizenship.”
Irene Tshwale, 32, said she had never had a birth certificate or an identity document since birth, and thus has not been able to go to school or access job opportunities. Tshwale has since had six children - one of whom died last year - and none of them have birth certificates.
She never knew her parents as her mother died two weeks after giving birth to her. She has never met her father.
Tshwale, originally from Tzaneen in Limpopo, lived with a relative and went to school until Grade 7 when she moved to Pretoria with her sister, who has since died. Her children are aged 14, 13, 9, 7, while the last born is 8 months old.
All her children were born at Kalafong Hospital, and none got a birth certificate because their mother did not have an ID or birth certificate either to produce at the hospital.
“I only got a hospital card and then I was discharged,” she said.
Two children, aged 13 and 9, are attending school without birth certificates, but the other children (14 and 7) were refused admission into the same school because they did not have the documents.
“My oldest child isn’t in school. When I applied for him they rejected him,” she said.
“I went to Home Affairs with my brother and uncle and they told us we needed my mother’s death certificate, but it burnt in a shack fire a while ago,” she said.
“If only I could get an ID then my life would be so much better. I would be able to get a job and support myself and my children,” Tshwale said.
Pretoria News