Christine Hobden (LHR), do bring citizenship law into the courts and the media, but this is chiefly focused on attaining clarity of, and action on, the provisions within the SACA to protect against statelessness. This report will use the terms ‘citizenship’ and ‘nationality’ interchangeably. Historically the term citizenship has been relevant in South African law to distinguish between a South African citizen of the Republic and a British subject of the Empire. The new democratic regime has also used the idea of a shared common citizenship to underpin rhetoric of the ‘rainbow nation’, rather than a shared nationality which conjures connotations of shared language or ethnic background. The Constitution refers mostly to citizenship (§3;§20) with the exception of guaranteeing children the right to ‘a name and nationality from birth’ (§28). Given the short history of South African democratic citizenship, the report will focus on the initial legislation created in 1993, 1994 and 1995 and the subsequent amendments that have created the current citizenship regime of 2017. It will begin however, with a brief overview of pre-independence citizenship law and the uses of citizenship status for the oppression of South African people, in order to highlight some legal consistencies and political motivations in the formulation of the post-independence citizenship. The report will end with a discussion of some of the current challenges, debates, and possible reforms to existing legislation. 2. Historical Context 2.1 Pre-Independence Legislation2 Prior to the constitutionally entrenched common citizenship established in South Africa on 27 April 1994, citizenship law was governed by the South African Citizenship Act (Act 44 of 1949). This 1949 Act used language of ‘any person’ when setting out the requirements for citizenship (��3(1); §6(1)). Yet the application of the term ‘citizen’ to all South Africans was purposively misleading, and was, in most respects an empty one (Klaaren 2000): the majority of the rights we understand to flow from having the status of citizen were in fact attached only to status as a ‘European’ or white person. Black, Indian and Coloured South Africans formally had the status of citizen but were not granted the vote, free movement, or any kind of equal status. It is also relevant to note that until 1961, South African citizens were both citizens of the Union of South Africa, and subjects of the British Empire. When the Union of South Africa declared independence from British rule in 1961, all individuals became “South African Citizens” and no longer British subjects, yet the disenfranchisement of the majority of the population remained in place. In 1970, the Apartheid regime implemented legislation that sought to deprive black people of even this nominal citizenship. The Black Homeland Citizenship Act (No. 26 of 1970)3 began the process of creating independent ‘homelands’ based on ethnic groupings. In the initial phases, individuals were forcibly moved to their respective homelands (eg. Xhosas to Transkei; Zulus to KwaZulu) and acquired citizenship of that homeland in addition to their 2 3 2 For a more extensive analysis of the history of citizenship in South Africa, see Klaaren (2000). This Act is also known as the “Bantu Homeland Citizenship Act” or the “Black States Citizenship Act.” RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2018/1- © 2018 Author(s)