Legal Impediments to Citizenship in South Africa Various obstacles impede access to nationality through the Citizenship Act. These include: Birth registration is a prerequisite to obtaining citizenship but there is birth registration is not universal in South Africa, and in some cases proves to be impossible Section 2(2) and Section 4(3) of the Citizenship Act provide important safeguards against statelessness for children who are born stateless or born to migrant parents in South Africa. However, there are no regulations in place on how to implement these provisions. Section 6 - 8 of the Citizenship Act provide for the loss, renunciation and deprivation of citizenship in various circumstances. Some of these provisions are problematic in that they do not provide any safeguards against statelessness for the implicated individuals