Chisuse v Director-General, Department of Home Affairs [2020] ZACC 20 citizenship adversely impacts their private and family life, their development and ‘their choices as to where they can call home, start jobs, enrol in schools and form part of a community, as well as their ability to fully participate in the political sphere and exercise freedom of movement’.33 A second theme beyond the significant and particular history of citizenship in South Africa appears to have driven the decision: the possible rights violations that would result if the situation faced by the applicants was not cured. Aware of the wide range of possible interpretations of the law, Khampepe J parted ways with the High Court and reached the conclusion that the impugned ss 2(1)(a) and (b) of the Amendment Act are not constitutionally invalid in that they do not deprive the applicants of any citizenship. 34 Instead, she persuasively reasoned that there is a manner of interpreting the legislation to include within the citizenship scheme persons born prior to the commencement of the Amendment Act.35 Khampepe J noted the existence of special statutory provisions for avoiding statelessness and leveraged those provisions, arguing that it would be irrational that the Legislature would provide for citizenship by birth for children of foreign nationals while not providing for those who had previously been born to South African parents, albeit outside of South Africa; namely, those who had acquired citizenship by descent under the [1995 Citizenship Act].36 As Christine Hobden has noted: [t]he applicants [were] thus bizarrely currently unable to access South African citizenship despite the fact that under previous legislation they had a vested right to acquire it, and if born under the current legislation they would automatically acquire it.37 Additionally, Khampepe J dealt with the specific interpretive difficulty, that statutes are generally presumed not to have retrospective effect: ‘[t]he principle underlying the presumption against retrospectivity is that vested rights which were acquired under existing laws may not be taken away by a new law’.38 CONCLUSION Shrinking citizenship is of great concern for those facing the prospect of reduction in citizenship statuses, not from two to one but from some to none — ie to the status of statelessness. Research in South Africa has only recently begun to pay increased attention to the problem of childhood statelessness, itself only seeing sustained interest at the global level for just over a decade. 39 The DHA does not keep official statistics on statelessness, not mentioning the topic in its annual reports through 2015.40 In 2017, one of the leading NGOs addressing the issue 33 ibid. 34 ibid 37 [82]. 35 ibid 29–36 [64]–[78]. 36 ibid 30 [66]. 37 Hobden, ‘The Case of Chisuse’ (n 17). 38 Chisuse (n 1) 34 [73]. 39 Jacqueline Bhabha (ed), Children Without a State: A Global Human Rights Challenge (MIT Press 2011). 40 Liesl Muller, ‘Childhood Statelessness: Realising the Child’s Rights to a Nationality in South Africa’ (LLM Research Report, University of the Witwatersrand, 2018) 26. 181