The Department of Home Affairs in South Africa recently published a draft Official Identity Management Policy (OIMP) that seeks to update and amend the country’s identity laws, Business Tech reports. According to the report, the department said that the current Identification Act is now more than 20 years old and is not based on a policy that considers key local and global developments in managing official personal information.
“…the current legislation and systems are outdated, fragmented and do not fully align with constitutional principles of equality, non-discrimination and human dignity,” the new policy reads. One major part of the new policy includes recognizing other sex/gender categories, as the law doesn’t cater for intersex or transgender persons. “Such children are assigned either a male or female sex status at birth. Some social groups are discriminated against in the current identity management system. This is because the identity number that we use is not gender-neutral. The identity number recognises and accommodates only two categories, namely, male and female,” the document reads.
According to the new draft policy, the new legislation and population register must make a provision that enables the establishment of a category that is neither male nor female. That is, a sex/gender category that caters for biological males with feminine gender identity or expression or biological females with masculine gender identity or expression in the identity system. The sex/gender category must cater for transgender people that will enable updates of sex/gender information in the population register. The DHA said that another option is to issue a random unique identity number that is not linked to or founded on a person’s sex/gender, date of birth, place of birth or any other marker.
“Currently, the lack of inclusive gender indicators makes the gender diverse community subject to systemic exclusion and scrutiny. In the work environment, many are forced to declare and present a gender they no longer identify with. Menial tasks like grocery shopping or boarding a plane can be a challenge for gender diverse persons as they can present in different ways which can lead to suspicion of irregular or criminal activity unnecessarily.” Hlongwa, a transgender woman, told IOL.
