Nobody knows who he is, Young Boy X, as he stands by the side of the road waving the cars into the empty parking bays. Even though his neon jacket lights up the night, you can tell that he hasn’t been a parking guard for long. He looks fresh on the street and seems slightly out of place, like he wants to hide from the drivers rather than ask them for money.
Eight days ago, he buried his father — the only family member still keeping him connected to his home in Transkei. Believing that work would be better in the city, he decided to hitch-hike to Cape Town, but without an identity document he quickly realised that he could not get a job. So that night, as I was parking my car, he decided to ask a stranger for help. He told me that he did not have a birth certificate and that he did not know if his mother was still alive. I never asked for his name, but I told him that I would do my best to find a solution to his problem.
Late birth registration a challenge
A week later I entered the gate of the Haven Night Shelter in District Six, where I told one of the fieldworkers, Jacqui Beck, about Young Boy X’s situation.
“It’s a lot harder to attain an ID when you have to apply for late registration of birth,” said Beck. She explained that this was a challenge they often faced with people from rural areas.
“In rural areas like Transkei they’re lacking service, and to register births there is very difficult. I know the Department of Home Affairs sends mobile units out to assist, but for some the service is still too far away.”
As a fieldworker at the Haven she often assists homeless people who have never had an ID because their births were not registered. Some have lost them due to the conditions they live in on the street.
“There are so many stories. At Home Affairs, some of them found out that they were dead, others were married when they weren’t, female when male, and vice versa.”
One of Beck’s clients, who was re-applying for his third ID after losing it on the street, found it amusing when the official told him that he was declared dead. “He laughed as he said: ‘Well, as you see I’m very much alive,'” she remembers.
“When he was declared dead, he just left it. I never saw him again.”
As Beck is talking, Kenneth Roman, another fieldworker at the Havens, pulls out the birth certificate of a woman that he helped earlier this year. “Look,” he says pointing at the date,
October 27, 1961, the day the woman was born. He then pointed to the day she first got her certificate — July 27, 2010.
“That’s how long she lived before she was registered,” he said. Though he regularly meets people in similar situations, he still has a sound of amazement in his voice as he explains.
Difficult to verify identities
“It only took two months to get the application through because she had children with identity documents that could verify her identity. But often it is a lot harder to do the late registration because when we go back to their communities, the schools they went to aren’t there anymore. Their families have disappeared. There have even been cases where whole communities were gone.”
This makes it hard to verify someone’s identity because they rely on family or other people from the community they grew up in to vouch for them, the fieldworkers explain.
Beck remembers a case from last year that was similar to Young Boy X. The woman she was assisting didn’t have a birth certificate nor any immediate family who could identify her.
“What we do in these cases is that we try to get their school letter if they’ve attended school. So we got her primary school to mail the letter to us with an official stamp. Home Affairs wanted the original letter, but after they got it they lost the application. The whole process took two years, but she was very patient. Many lack patience and give up. Some people even die while they’re waiting for their ID.”
Over the last years the Department of Home Affairs has been put under pressure and has been criticised for their inefficiency at issuing ID documents and birth certificates in time.
In 2005, Kabelo Thebedi held a Home Affairs offical hostage after waiting two years for his ID documents. Last year Douglas S’khumbuso Mhlongo committed suicide after a Home Affairs official ripped his application to pieces, accusing him of being a foreigner and denying him the ID document that he needed for his new job.
At the time Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said that Mhlongo’s death marked a turning point for her department, which she criticised for not having a proper culture of service. Home Affairs declined to comment when asked what measures had been implemented to improve the department since last year’s incident.
Struggling with applications
“Without ID documents they can’t apply for grants or formal work. You need an ID for everything you do today,” said Sheila Jacobs, manager at the Haven Night Shelter in District Six.
According to Jacobs, six of the South Africans residents at the shelter are currently struggling with their applications. One of them is Luka X, who was left destitute after a train accident in 2000, losing both his arms. At the age of 44 he is already suffering from memory loss as he cannot remember much of his life prior to the accident. He has the right to apply for a disability grant, but needs his ID.
“One of the challenges he’s facing in the application process is that he is unable to give fingerprints as both his arms have been amputated. Home Affairs wants us to get papers from the hospital where he had the operation, but the hospital is reluctant because the information is confidential.”
Through her work, Beck says she encounters plenty of extraordinary cases and clients with special needs. Recently, she started assisting a young man, Ashley X (24) who has been drifting between two orphanages, a foster family, a youth care center, and the streets of Cape Town since he was four.
“My mother left me at the orphanage because she wanted me to have an education and what she thought was a better life. I was supposed to take it all in (the education), but somehow I was busy looking out the window,” says Ashley, while describing how he, at the age of 16, kept with the wrong people. He started smoking, drinking, lying and breaking into people’s houses.
“On the street you isolate yourself from other people. You’re so busy trying to make a plan, finding a place to sleep, a place to cook, something to eat. I was always asking myself where am I going to sleep tonight? The nice times only last a certain time. When you have money you have lots of friends. When you don’t you sit alone watching the pouring rain. It’s hard to find true friends on the streets.”
Ashley is wearing a navy blue hoodie, with BAD BOY written in a dark grey colour, but it doesn’t mean that he is still adhering to the rules of the street.
“Sometimes when I walk the street and see people that I know that are still there I feel like I’m looking at myself, but I made a choice. A choice to walk away, and to take wisdom and advice from other people. I gathered myself.”
When he talks it is almost as if he paints a picture of himself that day on the street that he decided to start picking up the pieces. However, it is proving to be harder than expected.
Falling through cracks
Since Beck started researching Ashley’s background, she has contacted the orphanages where he stayed during his childhood. One of them remembers him but does not have any information or papers that can verify that he stayed with them or is who he claims to be.
“I don’t understand how they can fall through these cracks, accessing institutions and schools without getting these documents,” says Beck, pointing out another client, Francois X. His identity was never determined even though he served a 20-year sentence in Pollsmoor Prison.
“He is semi-blind and in need of medical help. Since he is now 63 he is also eligible for pension. But there is no birth certificate, which means no social service,” she said.
“The day they finally get their IDs it will enhance the quality of their lives, and they can say: ‘I belong here’.”
Stories yet to be written
Inspired by friends who work on the sea, Ashley dreams about becoming a seaman though he has never been on a boat before:
“The day I get my papers I will go to the waterfront and open a seaman’s book, so I can take the courses that I need to work on the sea,” he says.
“On the ocean I will take all the stress, the anger, the worry of life on the street and tie it to the anchor. And when I throw it in the ocean, I will leave it there.”
These people without IDs do not exist according to the archives of Home Affairs because on paper, they were never born. Their stories are yet to be written.