“I did not choose to be stateless. Perhaps that is my destiny. Well, I do not know if it was God or Satan who made me stateless.” Case study Case study L.N. (‘Luis’) was born in Zimbabwe in 1975 to a Zambian father and Malawian mother, who had met and married as migrant workers decades ago. While he was a citizen at birth, he later was told by Zimbabwean authorities in South Africa that he is no longer a Zimbabwean citizen due to changes to the citizenship act in 2001. He had applied for South Africa’s Zimbabwe Dispensation Project, which allowed Zimbabweans to obtain work or study permits. But he could not obtain a passport from Zimbabwe as a non-citizen, and remains undocumented in South Africa. “So who am I? Where do I belong? Zimbabwe is the only country I have ever known as home. That my parents were from other countries is meaningless because I know of no family in Zambia or Malawi. My family is destroyed. I am here in South Africa. My wife is in Harare. My children are in a rural area ... at the moment I’m desperate … I’m failing to support my kids in Zimbabwe. With everything I’m failing, because of that citizenship.” Promoting citizenship and preventing statelessness in South Africa: A practitioner’s guide 105