1995] Act’ is deemed to have been done in terms of the 1995 Act, per section 26(2). Also, you may need to research and understand the legal bases upon which your client may have lost or been deprived of his/her South African citizenship under law in place prior to 1995. Such persons can apply to restore/resume their citizenship, but they must show how they initially qualified as a citizen in order to proceed with the restoration process. A client born prior to 1995 may have acquired his or her citizenship under the South African Citizenship Act 44 of 1949 (the 1949 Act). If that is the case, under the South African Citizenship Act 88 of 1995, he or she would remain a citizen if (s)he was a citizen by birth, descent or naturalisation before the 1995 Act came into force.40 Even if the client was born post-1995, one of the most important factors in determining his or her citizenship is whether at least one parent was South African at the time of the client’s birth. Again, you will need to consult the 1949 Act and potentially earlier legislation. Understanding the legal basis of your client's citizenship will also be important in cases where his or her ID number has been blocked or duplicated and (s)he must now prove the validity of his or her citizenship. It is worth mentioning some historical context of the legal changes of the 1900s. For about twenty years prior to 1949, ‘there were no South African citizens, only British subjects and Union nationals’.41 The 1949 Citizenship Act came into force one year after the National Party took power and was ‘a key piece of legislation in the implementation of the new national vision of the National Party’.42 Under it, most British subjects from South Africa acquired South African citizenship (which replaced Union nationality). One year after the 1949 Citizenship Act came into force, the Population Registration Act 30 of 1950 required all citizens to carry identification passes detailing their race. In 1970, the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act (later renamed the Black States Citizenship Act) came into force. This Act effectively denationalised black South Africans because the Bantu homelands (the Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Ciskei and Venda, known as the 40 41 42 26 See sections 2(1)(a), 3(1)(a) and 4(1)(a) of the South African Citizenship Act 88 of 1995, as enacted in 1995. J Klaaren ‘Post-Apartheid Citizenship in South Africa’ in DB Klusmeyer & TA Aleinikoff (eds) From Migrants to Citizens: Membership in a Changing World (2000) 223. Peberdy (n 44 above) 101. Promoting citizenship and preventing statelessness in South Africa: A practitioner’s guide