Home Affairs considers scrapping male and female ID numbers
Gender activists welcome draft new identity management policy, with some reservations
In future, ID numbers may not contain the numbers which signify whether the holder is male or female.
- Gender activists have welcomed changes to ID documents proposed in the Department of Home Affairs new draft identity management policy.
- The policy makes provision for the use of randomised numbers instead of the current numbers which are used as sex markers.
- The draft is open for public comment until 28 February.
Gender activists have welcomed a move by the department of Home Affairs (DHA) to take into account the wishes of transgender, non-binary and intersex people in allocating identity numbers.
The DHA has published a draft of its new official identity management policy, which is open for public comment until 28 February.
According to the draft, the DHA aims to introduce a National Identity System (NIS), in order to guard against identity theft and to digitise identity management. All information about the identity of citizens and non-citizens in South Africa will be stored on the NIS. Included in the draft policy are options for ID numbers to take into account transgender, non-binary and intersex people.
Currently, the seventh digit in South African ID numbers identifies a person’s sex. A seventh digit between 0 and 4 “means the holder of the ID is a female,” while a seventh digit between 5 and 9 “means the holder of the ID is a male”.
New options include randomised ID numbers and the introduction of an additional third category for intersex people.
Gender activists have welcomed the DHA’s acknowledgement in the draft policy that the existing system excludes transgender, non-binary and intersex people.
Iranti programmes specialist Sibusiso Kheswa, said: “The possibility of randomised ID numbers, where gender is not coded, means everyone can have a neutral ID number without having to worry about being outed”. (Outing refers to the revelation of a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation, without their consent.)
Gender Dynamix (GDX), an organisation advancing transgender human rights, is also in favour of randomised identity numbers.
“GDX is in full support of the recommendation to have randomised ID numbers - meaning that no data would be encoded into the ID number, including date of birth, gender or citizenship. This would be a critical aspect in our recommendations to the DHA. Random numbers protect the individual’s personal information and can remain with the person for life, irrespective of whether or not their particulars change over time,” said Zoey Black, legal and education advocacy officer at GDX.
A third category proposed
Both Iranti and GDX disagree with some aspects of the draft policy which includes a new X category in addition to male and female for completing the sex field on various official documents.
Iranti is in discussions with the DHA to clarify some misleading language, said Kheswa. “In the policy, there is mention of a third sex and sexual orientation … We are talking about gender. We are not advocating for a third sex, we are advocating for a third sex category which may be represented by an X. That X means unspecified gender,” he said.
The third sex category is important for the inclusion and self-determination of intersex people, said Kheswa.
“When a baby is born with varying sex characteristics or ambiguous genitalia, doctors often rush to operate and ‘fix’ a particular gender on the child. Globally, the intersex community has rejected these surgeries. When we have Home Affairs legally recognising intersex people, then parents and doctors will leave the child to grow and identify themselves,” he said.
While the draft policy suggested that the X would be used for transgender, non-binary and intersex people, Kheswa said all people should be able to choose the unspecified gender option.
GDX does not support the allocation of an X solely for non-binary, transgender and intersex persons, said Black.
“Trans and gender diverse persons already face extraordinary marginalisation and discrimination, even from officials at the DHA. The creation of an ‘X’ would further perpetuate, if not worsen, the already dire position of trans persons and communities and place them at even greater risk for discrimination and violence,” she said.
Next: Commuters wary of trains as service resumes
Previous: A new vaccine is being tested in Cape Town: Here’s why it’s different
Letters
Dear Editor
This whole system of having "meaningful" numbers is outdated. Yes, it was useful once upon a time but now computing power has put an end to that. It would be fairly simple to keep all of a person's vital information (date of birth, nationality, etc.) on a database without it being reflected in their ID number. That number could consist of totally random digits. Some information could still be listed on the ID itself (like date of birth). Meaningful numbers become redundant sooner or later anyway (like how our date of birth should now require a 4-digit year because some were born in the 1900s and some in the 2000s). All you need is a check digit so that any error in capturing that number is put to the test and the person's ID can be validated.
© 2021 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.