Pretoria – Home Affairs Minister Dr. Leon Schreiber has welcomed the conviction of a dismissal of Dawn Pieterson, who has been found guilty on nine counts of fraud and two counts of contravening the Births and Deaths Registration Act.
Pieterson was employed at the Department of Home Affairs office in Calvinia, Northern Cape, where she abused her access to records to commit fraud and corruption between February 2019 and September 2022.
She did this by opening funeral policies on clients’ identity numbers, nominating herself as the beneficiary, then falsely declaring the holders of the ID numbers as deceased in order to access the payouts.
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The department will continue to monitor this case as Pieterson is scheduled to be sentenced on 26 January 2026.
Minister Schreiber said: “This latest successful conviction is another step forward in our ongoing work to clean up Home Affairs.
“It is the 9th conviction secured through the collaboration between the department and law enforcement agencies.
“It also follows the dismissal of 37 officials since July 2024.
“I applaud the department’s counter-corruption unit for this conviction, as well as our partners in the Hawks and other entities.”
Minister Schreiber stated: “Importantly, the modus operandi used in this case again confirms the fundamental importance of our digital transformation agenda.
“By fully automating and digitalising all departmental processes, as we are doing through the Electronic Travel Authorisation for visas and through Digital ID for civics services, we will eliminate the space for human discretion and interference exploited by criminals like Pieterson.
“We are absolutely determined to both put criminal officials behind bars, while simultaneously using technology to close the loopholes they exploit.
“This is how we can defeat the scourge of corruption once and for all.”
