Report on Citizenship Law: South Africa 5. Conclusion The founding provisions of the South African Constitution (1996) hold that ‘there is a common South African citizenship’ (§3). All citizens are (a) equally entitled to the rights, privileges and benefits of citizenship and (b) equally subject to the duties and responsibilities of citizenship (§3(2)). In moving from an oppressive regime characterised by extreme inequality, this guarantee of an equal, common citizenship is the cornerstone of the new, democratic republic. The national legislation that is required by §3(3) of the Constitution does much to ensure that this founding provision is enacted: the legislation ensures that there is no discrimination on the bases of race, ethnicity, or gender and sets out uncontroversial principles of acquisition of citizenship by birth, descent, and naturalisation. There remains however, a number of areas where legislation and regulations arguably do not fully live up to the Constitutional rights: first, the SACA permits the deprivation of citizenship in a number of cases, despite §20 stating that ‘no citizen may be deprived of their citizenship’. Second, reforms to the SACA now only allow children of non-citizen, permanent residents to acquire citizenship upon reaching majority, arguably against the spirit of §28(a) that guarantees every child the right ‘to a name and nationality at birth’. Third, despite the ‘statelessness exception’ (§2(2)), the Department of Home Affairs has yet to provide regulations to set out the path to acquisition through this provision. Fourth, citizenship by birth requires registration in terms of the BDRA, which in a number of exception cases has proved to be a high bar to overcome for parents in irregular situations. It is likely, as has already been the case, that the Department of Home Affair’s interpretation of the SACA will continue to be challenged in court, thus allowing for a gradual accumulation of juridical precedent that sets out the required interpretation of the SACA, and allowed regulations, in line with the Constitution. South African citizenship law has been fairly stable since independence in 1994. While the law radically changed to create a common citizenship with no racial inequality, the nature of citizenship law has also remained relatively stable from its inception in the 1949 South African Citizenship Act. Recent years have begun to show signs of a tightening of the requirements for citizenship, particularly in increased residency requirements for naturalisation and reduced jus soli provision for children of non-citizen permanent residents. This tightening is likely in response to the rapid increase in immigration to South Africa postindependence. On the whole, however, the push back against immigration in the form of xenophobic violence is not concerned with provision for naturalisation but rather (i) the extent to which immigration is not sufficiently regulated; (ii) social grants and other perceived benefits available to immigrants and (iii) the lack of regulation around illegal (without permits) work by immigrants. Citizenship law is therefore largely immune from current debates around immigration, and tends to only come to the fore of public discourse around issues of statelessness. As such, while it is likely that the law will continue to be refined through legal precedent and changes to the Department of Home Affairs Regulations, it is unlikely that the stability of the Citizenship regime will be unsettled in the foreseeable future. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2018/1 - © 2018 Author(s) 15