CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 the country, but 2010 amendments simply refer to “a prescribed period”.123 Angola’s 2016 law introduced conditions for acquisition based on marriage that had not been present in the 2005 law. Only Mozambique provides a specific waiver in relation to the marriage period for stateless spouses.124 Most of the civil law countries specify that marriage (like other civil status events) is only officially recognised if formally registered. In a continent where the majority of marriages are religious or traditional, the impact of this gap may be to exaggerate gender discrimination, and render rights based on marriage available only to a few—there is a lack of research on this point. Only a few countries, including Namibia and South Africa in Southern Africa, explicitly recognise customary marriages in their nationality or family laws.125 Although most spouses affected by these discriminatory or restrictive provisions will not be stateless, the risk of statelessness is increased, and may affect their children (especially where, as is sometimes the case, gender discrimination also applies to transmission of nationality to children, or to birth registration, and the children are born in the mother’s state of nationality). 123 South African Citizenship Act, 1995, sec. 5(5) as amended by South African Citizenship Amendment Act No.17 of 2010; South Africa Immigration Act, No.13 of 2002, sec. 26. 124 Constitution, 2004, art. 26. 125 The Namibian Constitution, art. 4(3)(b), states that for the purposes of citizenship “a marriage by customary law shall be deemed to be a marriage”; the South African Citizenship Act 1994 defines “marriage” to include a marriage conducted under the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, No. 120 of 1998. 35 UNHCR / December, 2020