Home Affairs Minister Mapisa

Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula met British officials amid concerns about false South African passports discovered during anti-terror operations. The meetings, expected to continue until the end of the week, also concerned improving cooperation between the two immigration services. Mapisa-Nqakula promised to smash a false passport racket after reports that people with al-Qaeda links were in possession of South African documents. Although she was personally not aware of the link with al-Qaeda, she promised her British counterpart that her department was in the process of devising means to eliminate the ease with which people fraudulently acquired South African passports and identity documents. She hinted that there was a need for more intelligence work in the elimination of the scourge, saying that from what had been reported it appeared that those caught were "simply nabbed in the normal course of policing at airports and so on ". The use of intelligence should ensure that these people were not arrested when they were in the course of committing a crime, but ahead of it, she said.