2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(2) apartheid contemporaries.7 The following three quotes from leaders in each of the three eras reflect a strict belief in the absolute right of the state to curate its population free from international interference. In 1913, Jan Christiaan Smuts, Minister of Interior, said: ‘It was universally admitted that those who were in a country had the right to the selection of those entering the country’.8 Cornelius Petrus Mulder, Minister of Immigration in 1969 apartheid South Africa, said: ‘Foreigners have no right or claim to residence here. Their residence here is subject to the willingness and decision of the Government’.9 One year after the first democratic elections, in 1995, Lindiwe Sisulu, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, said: ‘Aliens control stems from the basic right of a sovereign country to decide which non-citizens are welcome within its territory’.10 It is these attitudes which inform the way South Africa approaches nationality administration and includes or excludes individuals from its citizenship. Today, it is widely accepted that the granting and deprivation of nationality no longer falls strictly within the domaine réservé of the state but is subject to international human rights standards,11 making it more difficult for politicians to rely on state sovereignty as justification for regressive policies.12 Each of these three eras had their own approach to curating the South African population which still affects children today. Each will be considered in turn. A The Union of South Africa (1910–48) South Africa was initially occupied by the Dutch (from 1652) but later became a colony of the British in the early 1800s and remained a British dominion until 1949.13 In 1909, the South Africa Act was passed in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (as it then was) (‘Britain’), which granted white minority rule over black Africans, Asians, and ‘coloured and other mixed races’.14 The white minority Government enjoyed a level of independence in respect of governance and policymaking but remained a British dominion until 1949. During this period of British-sanctioned white minority rule, various aggressively selective immigration policies were employed to make South Africa progressively more ‘white’.15 Most notably, the 1913 Immigration Regulation Act prevented black immigration into South Africa, making the regularisation of black immigrants’ 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Sally Peberdy, Selecting Immigrants (Wits University Press 2009) 4. ibid 1. ibid. ibid. Raylene Keightley, ‘The Child’s Right to a Nationality and the Acquisition of Citizenship in South African Law’ (1998) 14(3) South African Journal on Human Rights 411, 414. Laura van Waas, Nationality Matters: Statelessness under International Law (Intersentia 2008) 36–40. Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society 1652– 1840 (Wesleyan University Press 1979); ‘Britain Takes Control of the Cape’, South African History Online (Web Page, 4 March 2022) <https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/britaintakes-control-cape>, archived at <https://perma.cc/4JLH-GVX6>; Peberdy (n 7) 11. ‘Constructing the Union of South Africa; Negotiations and Contestations. 1902–10’, South African History Online (Web Page, 3 October 2016) <https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/ constructing-union-south-africa-negotiations-contestations-1902-10>, archived at <https://perma.cc/X862-G24X>; South Africa Act 1909, 9 Edw 7 (United Kingdom). Peberdy (n 7) 107. 258