Report on Citizenship Law: South Africa South African citizenship. Once a homeland was formally declared independent, citizens of that homeland then lost their South African citizenship. While ten homelands were established, only four were declared independent: these were the Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei in 1981.4 In reality, as suggested, this citizenship was already an empty ascription which did not include any political rights or basic protections. In addition, citizens of homelands already had only restricted travel into and around South Africa based on a system of work and travel passes. So, while the initial removal into homelands had significant economic consequences, the loss of South African citizenship was chiefly a symbolic move on the part of the Apartheid government. To be sure, the symbolism was significant and one of the final legislative blows in dispossessing people from their own land and country. The Apartheid government passed the Restoration of South African Citizenship Act (No 73 of 1986) with the purported intention of restoring citizenship to those who had lost it due to the Black Homelands Act yet this 1986 Act is widely considered not to have met this end; it is thought instead to have chiefly been an attempt to assuage international pressure for reform (Klaaren 2010, Anderson 1994). It was therefore necessary in 1993 to pass another restoration act, the Restoration and Extension of South African Citizenship Act (No. 196 of 1993) to ensure all South Africans had the citizenship needed to vote in the 1994 election. The homelands were only formally abolished in April 1994 and the final remnants of citizenship law promulgated by independent homelands were repealed in the 1995 SACA. 2.2 Post-Independence Legislation The SACA was not an amendment to, but a replacement of, the existing Apartheid-era citizenship law: it formally repealed the 1949 South African Citizenship Act as well as all remaining laws established by homelands, such as the Citizenship of Transkei Act (No 26 of 1976).5 As of 1994, all citizens were entitled to a common citizenship, enshrined in the South African Constitution (§3). The SACA set out with clarity how this citizenship status could be acquired: by birth, by descent and by naturalisation. Klaaren argues that there were only five main changes to the citizenship regime upon independence: 1) the repeal and national application of the citizenship law; 2) aspects of dual citizenship; 3) adjustments to naturalization; 4) the declaration of allegiance was amended and 5) citizenship by birth for stateless children was introduced (2010: 223). Klaaren argues that from a legal perspective the SACA ‘did not make far-reaching substantive changes to the pre-existing South African rules of citizenship—except in the significant aspect that it made citizenship rules uniform through the Republic’ (2000:221). Nevertheless, the SACA was extremely significant, as it created the legal framework in which to ensure the common citizenship guaranteed in the interim Constitution (1993). Of the changes that were made, it is clear that many were a reflection of the current circumstances of South Africans in these early years of independence. A number of people had lost their citizenship during the Apartheid years, for a number of different reasons: a) being forcibly relocated to an independent homeland; b) acquiring and making use of a foreign citizenship without permission from the minister whilst in exile; c) being a naturalised citizen who lived abroad for more than seven years; d) being children of those who had left 4 See, “The Homelands” South African History Online: Towards a People’s History for a brief explanation of the concept of homelands. 5 In total the Act repealed, in whole or in part, 25 pieces of legislation (Klaaren 2010:234) RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2018/1 - © 2018 Author(s) 3