I applied for a Late Birth Registration certificate in another province. How can I get Home Affairs to send it to where I live now?

The long answer

This certainly seems a ridiculous amount of time to wait for the birth certificate, seemingly due to the Cape Town Home Affairs not answering their telephones. 

So what can you do?

Remember to keep a note of all phone calls made and emails sent, in case you have to escalate it to the Presidential Hotline. 

• You can contact the Home Affairs Contact Centre (Complaints). You can phone them at 0800 601 190, or send a detailed email with the subject “Urgent: LRB Transfer Issue - [Surname] - [Case Number/ID]" to [email protected] to log a formal complaint. You should include a copy of the receipt from the Cape Town office. 

• You can also ask Home Affairs Head Office (Pretoria) to take it up with the Cape Town office, as they are not answering calls from the local office in Pretoria. Their telephone number is 012 406 2500.

• But as the birth certificate is stuck in Cape Town, it may be worth contacting the Western Cape Provincial Manager of Home Affairs. Yusuf Simons (formerly Western Cape provincial manager) is listed for escalated complaints. The key focus is on “reducing bureaucratic delays and improving immigration service”. You can phone him at 082 809 2142, or email him at [email protected].

If none of this works, you can escalate it to the Ministerial Hotline for complaints about service by emailing [email protected] and to the Presidential Hotline to report unresolved service delivery issues by emailing [email protected], or you can dial 17737 (1 PRES).

Wishing you the best,
Athalie