The Minister of Home Affairs has provided no explanation backed with figures on how an unabridged birth certificate will reduce child trafficking, for which there are already laws and which is almost entirely a domestic problem. In any event, this regulation is not enforceable and cannot be introduced.

Stats SA has just released the Tourism and Migration statistics for November 2014 and it makes interesting reading. For every South African travelling abroad, three foreign travellers enter the country. Of the foreign travellers entering the country, the 600 000 from SADC states are three times more than those from overseas. The 29 000 minors under 15 years from SADC states is almost five times higher than those from overseas.

Why is this important?

According to a Unicef report published December 2013, Southern and East Africa are the worst regions in the world for the registration of births. Only 38% are registered and, in a country like Lesotho, 60% of those that are registered have no documentary proof of registration.

Go to the website of the Lesotho Ministry of Home Affairs and try and see how to apply for a birth certificate. It is not even one of their strategic goals.

So yes, it is relatively simple for a South African to get an unabridged certificate for a family holiday but if this regulation is enforced, think of those families for whom there is almost no solution.

In the absence of being able to substantiate the claim that the regulation is about trafficking, it would appear that the real objective is to keep minors out of South Africa from Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland and Botswana, probably for the reason that we don’t want them to use our facilities.