South Africa has made many improvements to the Home Affairs experience in recent months, most notably allowing you to dodge them entirely as banks get themselves involved in the Smart ID and passport process. The government today announced yet another change — this time delivering an upgraded online booking system.
Time to get your (home) affairs in order
The new system is integrated with the MyHomeAffairsOnline platform, adding security to “prevent the abuse of booking slots and improve access to services.” According to the Department, the new system is designed to combat bad actors who gamed the system to block appointment slots and sell them on for profit.
“For too long, ordinary South Africans were disadvantaged by criminals who exploited weaknesses in the previous booking system to hoard appointment slots and sell them for profit.”
“The migration of our booking system to MyHomeAffairsOnline directly addresses this abuse by linking bookings to verified user profiles, strengthening the integrity of the system and protecting citizens’ access to services,” said Home Affairs Minister, Leon Schreiber.
Residents looking to get a booking at their local Home Affairs must now create a MyHomeAffairsOnline profile. This will be linked to their South African ID number and an email address. This way, the system can more reliably reserve spots for legitimate customers by using their personal ID number.
