Naturalised citizens and permanent residents can now access Smart ID cards for the first time - Home Affairs

THE Department of Home Affairs has announced that for the first time in South African history, naturalised citizens and lawful permanent residents will now be able to apply for Smart ID cards, including through the eHomeAffairs platform.

This major development will take effect from Monday and is the result of months of targeted Information Technology reforms.

For years, these groups were excluded from accessing Smart IDs and were limited to the older, less secure green bar-coded ID book. 

A naturalised citizen of a particular country is someone who has legally become a citizen of that country, although they were not born there.

This not only affected their ability to use eHomeAffairs but also raised security concerns linked to outdated documentation. The new digital transformation measures introduced by Home Affairs have corrected this disparity, providing full Smart ID access to over 1.4 million people.

Minister of Home Affairs Dr Leon Schreiber hailed the move as a historic milestone, saying: “This breakthrough for our digital transformation reforms directly delivers dignity to over 1.4 million people, including hundreds of thousands of South African citizens, who had their dignity infringed for years by being treated unequally.

''For years, these South Africans were treated as second-class citizens by being excluded from access to the Smart ID and from eHomeAffairs, which effectively forced them to use only the green bar-coded ID despite the government’s stated intent to do away with this document over fraud concerns.”

Schreiber added: “But the benefits of rectifying this inequality extend beyond these 1.4 million direct beneficiaries. This is also a victory for improved national security. Naturalised citizens and permanent residents were the last remaining groups of people eligible for South African ID documents, who were excluded from obtaining Smart IDs.

''Thanks to our redress of this long-standing injustice, every eligible person in South Africa is now able to obtain a Smart ID for the first time. This takes us much closer to fully adopting the Smart ID and doing away with the green bar-coded ID book, thereby eliminating the fraud linked to this document.”

As part of the roll-out, Home Affairs offices will also operate extended hours on the Saturdays of  May 17, 24 and 31, 2025, from 08:00 am to 13:00 pm to manage increased application volumes. The Department is also working to expand access through more participating bank branches, ensuring broader reach across the country.

“Now that all citizens and lawful permanent residents are eligible for the Smart ID, what remains is to geographically expand access to all.

''The Department is already hard at work to also deliver on this objective, by dramatically increasing the number of bank branches that take applications for Smart IDs and passports. It is clear that we are making ever more rapid progress in using digital transformation to deliver Home Affairs @ home,” said Schreiber.