Home Affairs finds hundreds of thousands of foreign‑national TRNs untraceable

The Department of Home Affairs has told Parliament that hundreds of thousands of Traffic Register Numbers (TRNs) issued to foreign nationals and entities cannot be traced on its immigration databases. The department presented findings after a forensic review of TRNs used to process vehicle-related transactions on the eNatis system.

What TRNs are used for

“The TRN allows non-South African citizens or entities to register or licence a motor vehicle, apply for a driving licence and conduct transactions on the eNatis system,” Home Affairs forensic investigator Maria Mnisi said. The department said TRNs are issued not only to foreign nationals without South African ID numbers but also to foreign businesses, organisations and non-legal entities such as churches, recreational organisations and “one-man businesses”.

Large-scale irregularities uncovered

Home Affairs began a focused probe after it discovered that 973 TRNs were issued from a small Northern Cape office over four months in 2019. The department said the town where that office is located has 12,000 residents, and that the province’s largest office issued 130 TRNs over the same period.

Investigators found instances where TRNs were issued in one province and, within an hour, duplicates were applied for in Cape Town. “The majority of applicants were residents using the same address,” Mnisi said. She added that eNatis can accept applications with no ID information and “it does not have mechanisms to verify documents submitted.”

Cross‑check of more than one million TRNs

Home Affairs cross-referenced 1,072,258 TRNs issued by the Road Traffic Management Corporation between January 2000 and July 2023 against multiple immigration systems, including the visa adjudications system (VAS), national immigration identification system (NIIS), electronic movement control system (eMCS) and movement control system (MCS).

Only 29,653 TRN holders 2.7% matched records on the NIIS. When checked against VAS, 747,350 TRNs were unmatched. The eMCS and MCS, which capture fingerprint and biometric data, contained only 1.6% and 48% of TRN recipients respectively.

Of the 29,653 TRN holders who had NIIS files, Home Affairs said that “Only 1,677 were legal. The rest, they provided false information to the Department of Transport (DoT) and we could not verify them on our system with the permit numbers they provided.”