South Africa Smart ID Card Application

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice. It documents the provenance of the published fields and flow and states the current verification claim honestly.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-05

Eligibility categories, required supporting documents, and fees were read directly from an official DHA-hosted brochure. The applicant-particulars field set was independently confirmed live against the real DOM of the eHomeAffairs account-registration form, and the substantive application-form fields (ID number, citizenship, names) plus the payment flow were read from an official DHA-hosted step-by-step guide showing screenshots of the live application screens. It remains draft, not verified, because the flow beyond account-registration Step 1 could not be walked interactively (it requires a real South African cellphone number for SMS OTP verification) — see "What is NOT yet independently verified" below.

Access notes

• https://www.dha.gov.za/files/Brochures/SmartIDrequirements.pdf is directly reachable (HTTP 200) and is a scanned image with no extractable text layer; read directly via PDF vision, not OCR/regex extraction.
• https://ehome.dha.gov.za/eHomeAffairsV3/SGRegister (the live eHomeAffairs account-registration form) was rendered with a real headless Chromium browser (Playwright, /paperclip/chrome-sysroot libraries supplying missing shared libraries for the sandboxed Chromium build) and its DOM was queried directly for every input/select/textarea element's id, name, placeholder, maxLength, and (for select) full option list. This is a first-party, live confirmation of field names/ids/constraints, not a secondary description.
• https://ehome.dha.gov.za/eHomeAffairsV3/Content/HowToGuide.pdf (linked from the "How To" nav item on the live eHomeAffairs site) is directly reachable (HTTP 200) and contains real screenshots of the application-form, document- upload, payment, and booking screens; read directly via PDF vision.
• Registering an eHomeAffairs account requires a real South African cellphone number to receive an SMS one-time PIN, so the application-submission flow beyond account-registration Step 1 (fields on the actual "Identity Card & Passport/Travel Document Application Form", document upload, payment, booking) could not be walked interactively. Those fields are instead sourced from the How-To Guide's screenshots of that same live form — a first-party source, but a static illustration rather than an interactive confirmation.
• https://www.gov.za/services/services-residents/citizenship/personal-identification/apply-for-identity-document (the national government portal) and https://www.westerncape.gov.za/service/applying-identity-document (a provincial government's page, .gov.za domain) were fetched directly and used to cross-check eligibility ages, re-issue reasons, fees, and the naturalised-citizen document set (Form BI-1620).

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): za/dha/smart-id-card-application / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: Department of Home Affairs (DHA), Republic of South Africa
• Primary source URL (directly retrieved, HTTP 200, read verbatim via PDF vision): https://www.dha.gov.za/files/Brochures/SmartIDrequirements.pdf — "Requirements when applying for Smart ID Card" (categories A/B/C, fees)
• Live form DOM (directly rendered and queried): https://ehome.dha.gov.za/eHomeAffairsV3/SGRegister — "Account Registration email, cellphone country code + number)
  • Step 1" (title, initials, forenames, surname, ID number, date of birth,
• Official step-by-step guide (directly retrieved, HTTP 200, read verbatim via PDF vision): https://ehome.dha.gov.za/eHomeAffairsV3/Content/HowToGuide.pdf — "How to use eHomeAffairs", showing the "Select Application Types" screen, the "Identity Card & Passport/Travel Document Application Form" (For Whom is the Document(s)? - Identity: ID No, South African citizen Y/N, how citizen, full forenames, surname, maiden name), the "Upload Documents" screen, and the "Make the online payment" screen (Payment Type/Amount, e.g. "Re-issue of an identity document" R140.00)
• Cross-check (directly retrieved): https://www.gov.za/services/services-residents/citizenship/personal-identification/apply-for-identity-document — national government portal, eligibility age and re-issue reasons
• Cross-check (directly retrieved): https://www.westerncape.gov.za/service/applying-identity-document — provincial government page, fee table, Form BI-9/DHA-9/BI-1620 references, naturalised-citizen document set
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-05
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (initial authoring source-review)

What was confirmed against the source

| Source element | Field(s) / document(s) | |---|---| | Brochure categories A (youth 16+), B (pensioners 60+), C (other citizens): required documents and fees, read directly from the government scan | applicationReason, birthCertificate, guardianOrInformantIdCopy, parentDeathCertificate, previousIdDocumentOrAffidavit, proofOfResidence, marriageCertificate, divorceDecree, applicationFee | | eHomeAffairs Account Registration Step 1, every field's live DOM id/name/placeholder/maxLength | title, initials, fullForenames, surname, identityNumber, dateOfBirth, email, cellCountryCode, cellNumber | | How-To Guide screenshot of the application form's "For Whom is the Document(s)? - Identity" section | areYouASouthAfricanCitizen, howAreYouACitizen, maidenName | | Western Cape Government page: fingerprints via Form DHA-9, two colour ID photos, naturalised-citizen document set (naturalisation/permanent-residence certificate + Form BI-1620) | fingerprints, idPhotos, naturalisationOrPermanentResidenceCertificate | | How-To Guide payment screenshot ("Re-issue of an identity document", R140.00) cross-checked against the brochure's category-C fee and the Western Cape fee table | applicationFee | | Form BI-9 completed, dated, and signed in the presence of a Home Affairs official (not pre-signed) | declarationSignature |

What is NOT yet independently verified

• The exact declaration wording on Form BI-9 — the form cannot be downloaded (DHA distributes and completes it with the applicant in person), so no first-party copy of its printed text was available to quote verbatim. declarationSignature is modeled without a fabricated statement.
• Whether the naturalisation/permanent-residence document set and Form BI-1620 (naturalisationOrPermanentResidenceCertificate) is required unconditionally or varies by category — the only source is the Western Cape provincial government's page, not a dha.gov.za-hosted equivalent.
• The application-submission screens beyond account-registration Step 1 (the live "Identity Card & Passport/Travel Document Application Form", document-upload, payment, and branch-booking screens) were confirmed from the DHA's own How-To Guide screenshots, not by interactively completing the live flow — doing so requires a real South African cellphone number for SMS OTP verification, which was not available in this environment.
• Whether applicationFee's payment methods (modeled here as cash, card, and bank transfer, based on the guide's "Enter banking details"/"Pay with credit card" options and the brochure's "at a Home Affairs office" cash option) is the complete and current list.
• This document covers the Smart ID Card pathway only. The green bar-coded ID book (being phased out), the Temporary Identity Certificate, and applications lodged at a South African mission/consulate abroad are out of scope, per description.

Path to a verified claim (next step)

To advance to status: verified, a reviewer applies manual-source-review-v1 (Procedure step 2) by interactively completing the eHomeAffairs application flow with a real South African cellphone number (or against a domestic Home Affairs office's own published field-level checklist) to confirm the application-form, upload, and payment fields directly, resolves any discrepancy by shipping a new schema version (immutability — VERSIONING §3, practice Procedure step 5), and records the outcome here plus sets status: verified with a current verification.lastVerifiedAt/nextReviewBy.

Re-verification

Per the practice's Cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-05 (6 months). Re-check the sources on or before that date and on any source.url change.