The short answer
He can try gathering his own school or hospital records and seek help from legal organisations.
The whole question
Dear Athalie
My partner is one of the 250,000 people without a birth certificate described in a GroundUp article by Tania Broughton. His mother didn’t have an ID herself, and she has since passed away. Now my partner is struggling to piece together the documents he needs to get his birth certificate and ID – his mother’s death certificate, hospital records and proof that he simply cannot access. He has two children and very much wants to be a good father, but is unable to register them, open a bank account and get a stable job to support them. I am asking for any guidance, contacts and support there might be for him.
The long answer
Does your partner perhaps know of anybody who knew his mother and knew about his birth? If he does, he could ask them to make an affidavit saying that they know that he was born at a particular time.
An article by Section27 in May 2025, which describes the struggle of an undocumented mother to be given proof of birth from the Heidelberg Hospital, may be informative. It says that according to the National Department of Health, undocumented patients who cannot produce a South African identity document are classified as private patients under the Uniform Patient Fee Schedule. This applies to both South African citizens and foreign nationals who require services which are not categorised as basic healthcare services.
This particular undocumented mother, Maria, was charged R8,000 for the birth of her baby, which she could obviously not pay, and the hospital then withheld her proof of birth. Section27 took up her case in 2024, quoting a 2023 Gauteng High Court ruling that they had obtained, which ruled that public hospitals and clinics cannot withhold proof of births as a guarantee of payment.
Section27 issued a letter of demand to the Heidelberg Hospital highlighting the mother’s rights in section 27 of the Constitution, which states that everyone has the right to access healthcare services, including reproductive healthcare. In the end the hospital had to give in and provide Maria’s proof of birth.
If your partner knows which hospital he was born in, he could go there and ask for the clinic card, which the hospital must keep in their records. If he experiences similar difficulties, he could approach Section27 for assistance.
Was there any church that his mother attended? If there was, he could also ask the pastor or someone who knew her from church to make an affidavit saying that they knew her and that she had a son – giving as much detail as they could supply.
Does he have any school records? He could get proof of attendance from the school he attended.
When she died, was her death reported? If so, by whom? If he could get those details, he could ask that person to help him access the death certificate.
As you know from the struggle your partner is having to find the documents, applying for Late Registration of Birth is a prolonged and exhausting business, but there is some hope now that the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) has challenged Home Affairs in court, as Tania Broughton’s article describes.
The LRC says that “… much of the backlog can be ascribed to unreasonably long delays in Home Affairs verifying the supporting documents of applicants (in particular the proof of birth form and evidence of school attendance), lack of inter-provincial cooperation between Home Affairs offices, and the insistence of Home Affairs on conducting interviews for all applications for late registration of birth despite this not being required by the law or by Home Affair’s own policy”.
Deputy-Director Njabulo Nzuza of Home Affairs has responded to the court challenge firstly by denying that there was an LRB backlog of 250,000. According to an article by South Africa Today on 19 June 2025, he said that the Home Affairs records showed a backlog of 33,000 LRB applications.
Secondly, Mr Nzusa says that Home Affairs is speeding up the LRB process by delegating authority from provincial managers to district offices, and simplifying the registration process. He hoped that they would be able to show that they were improving their systems, so they could resolve the Legal Resources Centre case out of court.
Thus, the desire to settle the case out of court may exert the necessary pressure on Home Affairs to show that they are truly improving their shocking LRB services.
But if your partner continues to struggle with LRB, he could consult one of the following organisations, which have a lot of experience with Home Affairs:
Email: [email protected]
Tel: Johannesburg: 011 836 9831
Cape Town: 021 481 3000.
Email: [email protected]
Tel: Musina: 015 534 2203
Durban: 031 301 0531
Pretoria: 012 3202943
Johannesburg: 011 339 1960
Cape Town: 021 424 8561
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 011 356 4100
Wishing you the best,
Athalie
Please note: GroundUp is just a news agency. We are not lawyers or financial advisors, and we have nothing to do with SASSA, Home Affairs, or any other government bodies. We do our best to make the answers accurate using publicly available information, but we cannot accept any legal liability if there are errors. If you notice any discrepancies, please email [email protected].
Answered on June 30, 2025, 1:06 p.m.
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