CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 The DRC, with a population estimated, in the absence of any census for several decades, to be close to 90 million384, comprises several hundred ethnic groups: it is one of the most diverse countries in Africa. In North and South Kivu, the nationality status of the Banyarwanda, speakers of the language of Rwanda, been particularly problematic, and at the heart of the conflicts that have afflicted the country in recent decades. The origins of the Banyarwanda in DRC, both Hutu and Tutsi (historically cultivators or pastoralists, respectively) are diverse and much argued-over. Part of the territory that is now DRC were prior to colonisation subject to the Rwandan king: the border has changed to leave them separated from their ethnic kin in modern-day Rwanda. Secondly, a sub-group of the Banyarwanda known as the Banyamulenge are descendants of Tutsi pastoralists who migrated mainly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thirdly, the Belgian colonial administration used the fact that the German colonies of Rwanda and Burundi were mandated to Belgian control by the League of Nations after World War I to establish a policy of organised transplantation of several hundred thousand people to work on plantations in what are now North and South Kivu in eastern Congo. Others migrated independently of this programme. Since independence, eastern DRC has also received many hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing violence in Rwanda and Burundi.385 The weakness of the Congolese state, including very low rates of civil registration, exacerbated by conflict and displacement, have meant that it is very difficult to distinguish among these categories. Despite nationality law reforms enacted after the peace agreements of the early 2000s that should provide a route to acquisition of Congolese nationality, in practice most Banyarwanda are considered foreigners in Congo, and also have no entitlement to Rwandan nationality. Although the context is in some ways very different, there are some similarities in the profile of those who came to Zimbabwe as migrant workers during the period of white minority rule, and who have faced difficulties in asserting Zimbabwean citizenship since 2000. Until the new Zimbabwean constitution came into effect in 2013, dual citizenship was not permitted for adults. During the first decade of the new century many people born in Zimbabwe of parents with origins in neighbouring countries found themselves unable to claim either Zimbabwean citizenship or the citizenship of a foreign parent, even though they might theoretically have the right to the citizenship of both states. The Zimbabwean Registrar General would require a person to prove renunciation of the citizenship of, for example, Malawi, before issuing an identity document; while the Malawian embassy would say that there was no evidence showing that the person was Malawian, so citizenship could not be renounced or alternatively that the person must first renounce Zimbabwean citizenship to claim Malawian citizenship. The absence of paperwork would leave the person deemed by both states to be a citizen of the other, but by neither to be their own.386 The provisions in the 2013 Constitution permitting dual citizenship for those who are citizens by birth, and that a person born in Zimbabwe before the new constitution came into force became a citizen by birth if one or both parents was a citizens of a SADC Member State should have resolved the situation for most of those in this situation. However, the provision on acquisition at birth was conditioned on the person being ordinarily resident in Zimbabwe on the date the constitution came into force.387 Given the large number of people who had left Zimbabwe over the previous decade, their status remains uncertain. 384 See World Population Prospects 2019, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/. 385 For a detailed account of this history, see Manby, Citizenship in Africa, chap. 7.5. 386 Rumbidzai Dube, “A Right or a Privilege” (Harare, Zimbabwe: Research and Advocacy Unit, 2008); Rumbidzai Dube, “Identity, Citizenship, and the Registrar General: The Politicking of Identity in Zimbabwe” (Harare, Zimbabwe: Research and Advocacy Unit, 2012); Manby, Citizenship in Africa, chap. 7.1. 387 Constitution of Zimbabwe, 2013, Art. 43(2). UNHCR / December, 2020 91