CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 Table 10: Rate of enrolment in national ID systems in SADC states284 COUNTRY ANGOLA BOTSWANA COMOROS DRC TOTAL % 28 96.8 90 0 ESWATINI LESOTHO MADAGASCAR MALAWI 286 70.9 85.4 98 F% - M% - COUNTRY Mauritius 97.2 96.4 Mozambique - - Namibia - - Seychelles - - South Africa 69.1 72.7 Tanzania 285 80.5 90.9 Zambia - - Zimbabwe TOTAL % F% M% 90 - - 58.2 51.5 65.3 91.9 93.4 90.1 90 - - 92.4 91.0 93.9 75 - - 89.0 87.2 90.9 86.2 84.9 87.7 - no data available Passports The other common form of proof of nationality is a passport: essential for travel, but often used domestically also. Deprivation or refusal to renew passports has been a fairly common political tool, in southern Africa as in other parts of the world.287 At the time of independence of African states, British law regarded the grant of passports as being within the “crown prerogative”, a privilege and not a right (though this position has evolved in recent years); French law, by contrast, had already developed to view passports as a form of state guarantee of personal legal identity.288 Law and jurisprudence in the African Commonwealth countries initially, and regrettably, often followed the tradition of state discretion in the issue of passports. But litigation in some countries and new laws in others 284 Source (except as otherwise footnoted): World Bank, “Global ID Coverage, Barriers, and Use by the Numbers: An In-Depth Look at the 2017 ID4DFindex Survey”, Identification for Development Initiative (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2019), http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/727021583506631652/pdf/Global-ID-Coverage-Barriers-and-Use-by-the-Numbers-An-In-Depth-Look-atthe-2017-ID4D-Findex-Survey.pdf, Annex 1. Information for Mauritius and Seychelles from previous surveys, by email from ID4D team at World Bank April 2020. 285 According to a statement by the Minister of Home Affairs, the National Identification Agency had issued a total of 21,823,026 National Identity Numbers by the end of March 2020 (although only 6,103,225 physical IDs had been issued): “Hotuba ya bajeti ya wizara ya mambo ya ndani ya nchi 2020/2021” (Budget Speech of the Ministry of Home Affairs), at heading “Mamlaka ya vitambulisho vya taifa (NIDA)” (National Identification Authority), 24 April 2020, available at http://nida.go.tz/swahili/index.php/2020/04/24/hotuba-ya-bajeti-ya-wizara-ya-mambo-ya-ndani-ya-nchi-2020-2021/; Felister Peter, “TCRA registered 37,297,930 SIM cards through biometric registration”, The Guardian / IPPMedia (Dar es Salaam), 24 April 2020; Tanzania’s estimated 2020 population is 59.7 million, of whom 29.7 million are adults: World Population Prospects 2019, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/. 286 At the end of the mass enrolment exercise in 2017, 9,186,689 adults had been registered: “Malawi: 9.19 million registered for national IDs, cards distribution underway”, UN Office in Malawi, 1 December 2017. According to information supplied by the World Bank Identification for Development Initiative (email 30 April 2020), based on information from the Malawi National Registration Bureau, as at March 2019, 9,897,902 people age 16 and above had been registered, of whom 9.2 million had been issued with an ID card. Malawi’s estimated 2020 population is 19 million, of whom 10.4 million are over the age of 16: World Population Prospects 2019, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/. 287 Beth Elise Whitaker, “Citizens and Foreigners: Democratization and the Politics of Exclusion in Africa”, African Studies Review 48, no. 1 (April 2005): 109–26; Manby, Citizenship in Africa, chap. 5.5. 288 Paul F. Scott, “Passports, the Right to Travel, and National Security in the Commonwealth”, International & Comparative Law Quarterly 69, no. 2 (2020): 365–95, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020589320000093; Gérard Noiriel, “Surveiller les déplacements ou identifier les personnes ? Contribution à l’histoire du passeport en France de la Ie à la IIIe République”, Genèses 30, no. 1 (1998): 77–100, https://doi.org/10.3406/genes.1998.1497. UNHCR / December, 2020 73