11 Introduction Guillaume Soro, leader of the rebel New Forces, emphasized the foundation of the war in citizenship rights by stating: ‘Give us our identity cards and we hand over our Kalashnikovs.’ Citizenship issues have been among the core questions to be resolved in the negotiations to end the war. A programme of identification through public hearings before magistrates had by May 2008 issued new documents to 600,000 of some 3.5 million Ivorians believed to be eligible. Yet these documents were only the basis for a nationality application, and not confirmation of nationality itself. Continuing problems with the identification system meant that elections were in late 2008 postponed once again to the next year as the voters’ register could not be completed. In Zimbabwe, the different structure of the colonial state has brought a different type of conflict over the issue of ‘who belongs’. Though what was formerly Rhodesia ceased to be a British colony in 1961, majority rule was obtained only in 1980, following a bitter guerrilla war in which the right to land was as much an issue as the right to vote. Ultimately, the war was ended by negotiation, and an official policy of reconciliation left the wealthy white population largely undisturbed. Land reform was undertaken, but thanks to the terms of the peace settlement was required to be on a ‘willing-seller, willing-buyer’ basis for the first decade. Nevertheless, measures were progressively taken to require white Zimbabweans to declare their loyalty to the new state, principally by focusing on and denying their possible right to other citizenships. Although the 1980 Zimbabwean constitution allowed dual citizenship, the 1984 Citizenship of Zimbabwe Act introduced a prohibition on dual citizenship, together with a requirement that Zimbabwean citizens with an entitlement to another citizenship renounce that right. An estimated 30,000 whites renounced their foreign citizenship before Zimbabwean officials and kept or obtained Zimbabwean passports as a result. As the popularity of the government of President Robert ­Mugabe declined, the ban on dual citizenship was taken to absurd extremes as part of an effort to blame others for the country’s