CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 Naturalisation of long-term migrants and their descendants Some countries in southern Africa have made positive efforts to integrate pre-independence migrant communities that were not integrated in the application of the rules governing state succession. The newly democratic government of South Africa undertook an exercise to regularise the status of long-term migrants and refugees established in the country at that time. In 1996, the South African government agreed a series of amnesties for nationals of SADC countries resident in the country and, separately, to mineworkers and long-term refugees. Although it was expected that about one million might qualify, only around 175,000 applications were eventually granted during the period allowed.312 The status granted was permanent residence rather than citizenship but it provided a route to naturalisation, while the children of permanent residents born in South Africa were (until 2010) automatically citizens at birth. Namibia has more recently undertaken an exercise to register undocumented long-term residents at risk of statelessness, including in its border regions, pursuant to a cabinet decision of 2010 aiming to address statelessness in Namibia. Responding to a parliamentary question in 2018, the Home Affairs Minister stated that a total of 3,012 people who could show they were living in the country before 1977 had been registered as Namibian nationals under this programme by the end of 2016.313 Most of those registered were of Angolan origin; but among them were also around 200 people of Nama and Damara heritage removed in the 1970s by the South African government from the Riemvasmaak area of the Northern Cape to what was then South West Africa.314 Naturalisation or recovery of nationality by long-term refugees and their descendants Some other countries have made efforts to provide access to citizenship for long-term or former refugees. By far the most substantial grant of citizenship to long-term migrants or refugees in the SADC region has been by Tanzania. Tanzania has undertaken facilitated naturalisation procedures on several occasions, including for several thousand Rwandese in the 1980s, as well as a number of Somalis of Bantu ethnicity.315 In 2007, Tanzania offered naturalisation to Burundian refugees resident in the country since 1972 and their descendants; of those eligible, 80 percent, or 172,000 people, expressed their desire to remain in Tanzania, and the remaining 20 percent were to receive assistance with repatriation. As a prelude to the implementation of the Tanzania Comprehensive Solutions Strategy (TANCOSS), the Government of Tanzania, in collaboration with UNHCR, carried out a census of the 1972 refugee population between July and September 2007, registering 218,234 Burundian refugees established in the country since 1972. By the end of 2009, approximately 53,000 persons had been voluntarily repatriated, and the naturalisation process 312 A series of immigration amnesties were offered to particular groups of foreigners from the region: contract mine workers (1995); a broader category of people from the SADC region who had lived in South Africa for at least five years and had economic or family ties in the country (1996); and finally Mozambicans displaced by the civil war in that country who had been refused refugee status by the apartheid government (1999). An estimated 1 to 1.5 million people became eligible for South African citizenship in this way, though only 51,000 applications were received from miners, and just over 200,000 for others from the SADC region. See discussions in Bronwyn Harris, “A Foreign Experience: Violence, Crime and Xenophobia during South Africa’s Transition”, Violence and Transition Series (Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, August 2001); Jonathan Crush and Vincent Williams, eds., The New South Africans? Immigration Amnesties and Their Aftermath (Cape Town: IDASA, 1999); Human Rights Watch, “Prohibited Persons: Abuse of Undocumented Migrants, Asylum-Seekers, and Refugees in South Africa” (New York, 1998). 313 Okeri Ngutjinazo, “Citizenship granted to 3 000 foreigners”, The Namibian (Windhoek), 12 March 2018. 314 Information provided at the UNHCR regional statelessness meeting 1-3 November 2011. 315 Charles P. Gasarasi, “The Mass Naturalization and Further Integration of Rwandese Refugees in Tanzania: Process, Problems and Prospects”, Journal of Refugee Studies 3, no. 2 (1990): 88–109; UNHCR, “Finding a Home on Ancestral Land: Somali Bantu Refugees Gaining Citizenship in Tanzania” (Dar es Salaam: United Nations, 2010). UNHCR / December, 2020 77