South Africa is making strides towards a fully digitised economy, with plans to implement unique digital identities for citizens and to introduce instant visas. The South African Revenue Service (SARS), the Reserve Bank, and the Department of Home Affairs are leading this effort, aiming to simplify record-keeping and enhance surveillance across the economy.

Edward Kieswetter, head of SARS, highlighted the challenges posed by the current system, where South Africans are assigned multiple identifiers for different purposes—tax, healthcare, and business registration—creating inefficiencies and potential for fraud. The absence of a unified digital identity, he argued, allows for exploitation, such as individuals collecting both wages and social grants without detection.

The government’s push for a single digital identity aims to streamline this fragmented system, allowing a more transparent, centralised platform for tracking citizens' economic and institutional activities. The intention is to create a universal window for surveillance, improving the government’s ability to monitor and manage the population's engagement with formal structures.

Furthering the digital transformation, SARS is also collaborating with Home Affairs to issue instant visas, leveraging existing technology already capable of processing tax assessments in less than five seconds. Kieswetter explained that the technology is available and a proof of concept for instant visas is in development.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber, who unveiled a five-year strategic plan for digital transformation in September, has long been an advocate of digitisation, influenced by the ideas of Tony Blair and other Fabian thinkers. The department is now focusing on embedding digital technologies and fostering inter-agency collaboration to enhance efficiency.

Though the digital transformation agenda is still in its early stages, with much of the planning process still ongoing, the push for a unified, surveillance-driven digital infrastructure reflects a broader trend towards increasing governmental control and oversight, with the potential to significantly reshape South Africa’s administrative landscape.

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