CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 refugees with Angolan documentation was suspended while many thousand people were still without ID documents.439 Stateless Angolan-Congolese asylum seekers Silvano Kimata was born in DRC. His father was an Angolan refugee and his mother was Congolese; Silvano was registered as an Angolan refugee by the Congolese Commission Nationale de Refugiés and by UNHCR DRC. He grew up, studied and worked in DRC. He married a woman also born in Congo of a Congolese mother and Angolan father, but with no documentation as a refugee or Congolese national. They had three children born in DRC. In 2015, the family decided to take up the offer of assistance from UNHCR to leave DRC and move to Angola, after they were harassed by other Congolese to return to their country of origin. They completed the necessary formalities, which registered them both as Angolan nationals, and arrived in Malanje (Angola) in September 2015. However, they were not able to speak Portuguese nor the local language (Kimbundu), although Silvano’s father had been Mbundu. Local people told them to go back to DRC, saying they were Congolese and not Angolans. Silvano applied for recognition of Angolan nationality, but his application was rejected by the Angolan Ministry of Justice. They remained in Angola for four years, during which time they had another child, but the older children could not attend school. In 2019, Silvano was detained by two immigration officials seeking money; his wife was raped by the officials when they met her to collect the money. The family decided to leave Angola and seek asylum in Namibia where they arrived in September 2019. Case study from UNHCR; names have been changed Separated child of Rwandan refugees In the late nineties, Anna was less than a year old when her Rwandan parents sought asylum in Mozambique. She grew up in Maputo until 2010, when her mother was arrested for the murder of her father after suffering years of domestic abuse. Anna was brought to South Africa by a relative, who had claimed asylum in the Republic. Anna has no documentary proof of her birth, she has no proof of her residence in Mozambique and she has lost contact with her mother, who is serving a life sentence in a Mozambican jail. Anna cannot derive asylum seeker status from her aunt, as there is not a sufficient link of dependency. She has no recollection of Rwanda, nor does she speak the language. Her paternal family has rejected her and her siblings. To date she has spent 7 of her formative years in South Africa and considers this to be her home. Anna has nowhere to go and there is no clear pathway to documentation or a claim to nationality. Anna is at high risk of statelessness. Case study from: Marilize Ackermann, Unaccompanied and Separated Foreign Children in the Western Cape, South Africa, Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town, September 2017 439 Michael Offermann, “Statelessness and risks of statelessness in Angola and for Angolans”, forthcoming report for UNHCR, draft June 2020. UNHCR / December, 2020 100