🧵Open Letter to the Minister of Home Affairs, @Leon_Schreib

Concerns about the proposed Digital ID System

Dear Minister Schreiber,

@LexLibertasOnX is a think tank and advocacy group committed to the promotion of basic freedoms and the principles of constitutionalism. In this sense, our central aim is to promote decentralisation and self-governance for the various peoples of South Africa. We also take a stand against particular policy ideas that we believe to be counterproductive to the promotion of decentralised governance.

One such issue is the proposed digital ID system.

We have recently submitted our concerns about the proposed digital ID system to your office, and we have opened a channel through which members of the public could express their concerns. Within days, thousands of people have added their names to our submission. Support for our opposition to the digital ID system is still coming in. For this reason, we will add this to the submission that we already presented to your office at a later stage.

This strong public reaction reflects deep and widespread concern about the direction your Department is taking. While the proposal is presented as a technical improvement aimed at greater efficiency and fraud reduction, we believe it represents something far more serious.

We do not believe that the public should be asked to simply trust that this infrastructure will be secure and free of abuse. The design of the system itself — particularly the mandatory logging of verifications and the broad discretionary powers granted to the Director-General — makes abuse not only possible, but likely over time.

In this sense, there are several concerns that we wish to bring under your immediate attention. We will do so one by one. Thereafter, we will conclude with a list of questions with regard to which we would appreciate your answer. 👉 The Creation of Surveillance Infrastructure

At its core, the proposed digital ID system is not merely a convenient authentication tool. It is the construction of centralised surveillance infrastructure. The draft regulations require that all verification queries through the system must be centrally logged and retained for a minimum of seven years. This creates a comprehensive digital trail of citizens’ movements, interactions, and daily activities.

The Department asks the public to believe that this powerful capability will only ever be used for legitimate purposes and that it will never be abused. We do not accept this. Once the technical and legal architecture for mass logging and centralised verification is in place, the temptation for function creep and expanded surveillance will be enormous — especially in a country with South Africa’s governance challenges.

This is not a theoretical risk. It is the predictable consequence of handing the state this level of visibility into the lives of its citizens.

There is a video clip on @afriforum's Facebook of my speech at the public hearing on expropriation without compensation yesterday. I'll add the link below. The audio is poor, due to the echo in the chamber (pun intended). So for those asking, here is a thread of what I said... My name is Ernst Roets. I am from AfriForum. I was sent here by Jan van Riebeeck to explain to you why we are opposing expropriation without compensation.

Mr. Chairperson, we do know, and the panel sitting there also knows that land reform is a political ploy.

The service delivery I’m getting from @CityTshwane is the worst I have ever received. I asked a supervisor if they agree that I should stop paying taxes. They said they agree that I can be angry, because I’m getting no service, but I must please keep paying taxes. My tax money pays the salaries of people who are sitting in government buildings, not doing the work they are getting for; to people who are completely dependent on “the system” but whose “system is down” every time someone has a problem, & who have no clue how the system works.