President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced that South Africa will officially invalidate and phase out its legacy green barcoded identity books, labeling the 46-year-old document a catastrophic security vulnerability that is actively being weaponized by criminal syndicates and undocumented immigrants.
The dramatic policy shift forms a critical technological pillar of the state’s newly unveiled “Comprehensive Approach for Migration Management,” aimed at purging administrative chaos and restoring public trust in the national population register.
“We are establishing an intelligent population register that contains biometric data for every person in the country, laying the foundation for a digital ID for all of us,” Ramaphosa announced during a live national address from the Union Buildings. “At the same time, we will progressively discontinue the green ID books that we have, which have enabled identity theft by undocumented immigrants and criminal syndicates.”
The President confirmed that the Department of Home Affairs will soon gazette a hard, definitive deadline after which the legacy physical books will no longer be legally recognized by state institutions, commercial banks, or border authorities.
The radical acceleration of the phase-out comes on the heels of a damning intelligence and forensic report showing a staggering 400 percent year-on-year surge in impersonation fraud. Security experts have warned that sophisticated criminal networks are now utilizing advanced generative artificial intelligence to effortlessly forge the non-biometric, paper-based green documents, which have been in circulation since 1980.
Currently, an estimated 16 million South Africans still rely on the legacy green book. To prevent systemic gridlock at administrative offices during the mass transition, Home Affairs Minister Dr. Leon Schreiber has rapidly scaled up a public-private partnership, expanding digital Smart ID live-capture services to over 200 major bank branches nationwide.
Ramaphosa emphasized that systematically destroying the utility of the green ID book will effectively close the primary legal backdoor used by undocumented syndicates to secure fraudulent citizenship, open illicit local business accounts, and bypass formal immigration checks. By migrating the population to biometrically locked Smart IDs and upcoming digital twins, the administration aims to permanently secure the state’s domestic sovereignty.
