2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(2) after 2013, the failure to implement this law perpetuates the cycle of statelessness and statelessness from one generation to the next, affecting mainly black residents and their families. B Apartheid South Africa (1948–94) The apartheid policy was officially introduced in 1948 and came into full force in 1961 when South Africa declared itself to be a republic and left the Commonwealth amidst the latter’s objections to the former’s racist policies.26 In addition to limiting the non-European population’s access to everything from land to educational rights, one of the main objectives of the policy was to systematically exclude them from true South African citizenship.27 This is evident from the creation of the former Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei (‘TBVC’) homeland states to which black residents were relegated and encouraged to administer their own citizenship.28 The Restoration of South African Citizenship Act only superficially addressed the citizenship of TBVC citizens living in South Africa.29 The 1995 Act attempted to remedy this problem by including the territory of the TBVC states in the definition of the territory of South Africa. 30 However, these separation policies still affect citizens today because of the confused amalgamation of the different systems post-apartheid.31 Considering South Africa’s exclusively white immigration policies and the fact that black labour was still needed for commercial farms and the mining industry, the apartheid Government allowed certain forms of temporary, and even illegal, immigration to suit its labour needs. For decades, black migrants were allowed to travel for work across borders with or without formal status. 32 The apartheid Government encouraged labour migration and ignored its insufficient formal administration. Today, these long periods of stay in South Africa are not recognised as lawful stay towards permanent resident status or citizenship, resulting in subsequent generations being unable to derive legal status from their parents and grandparents. The result is a large (legal) ‘foreign population’ who have strong links to the State through long-term residence, often stretching over generations.33 A good example of this scenario is the lack of refugee legislation during the apartheid era when multitudes of Mozambicans fled from civil war in the 1980s to a state where there was no process to regularise their stay. Today, many of the grandchildren of Mozambican refugees live as stateless persons in South Africa because Mozambican law does not allow the transfer of citizenship 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Peberdy (n 7) 110. See Bentley J Anderson, ‘The Restoration of the South African Citizenship Act: An Exercise in Statutory Obfuscation’ (1994) 9(2) Connecticut Journal of International Law 295. Bantu Authorities Act No 68 of 1951 (Union of South Africa); Bantu Homelands Citizenship No 26 of 1970 (Republic of South Africa). Restoration of South African Citizenship Act No 73 of 1986 (Republic of South Africa). See also Restoration and Extension of South African Citizenship Act No 196 of 1993 (Republic of South Africa). Jaap van der Straaten and Anna Zita Metz, ‘South Africa ID Case Study (English)’ (Working Paper, World Bank Group, 2019) 18, 22 <https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/315081558706143827/pdf/South-Africa-IDCase-Study.pdf>, archived at <https://perma.cc/A565-PPG6>. Peberdy (n 7) 14. ibid 49–50; Jonathan Crush and Vincent Williams (eds), The New South Africans? Immigration Amnesties and Their Aftermath (South African Migration Project 1999). 260