Statelessness in Southern Africa Thanks to geographical separation, the southern Africa Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique exchanged populations with each other to a much lesser extent; though many Mozambicans became mine or farm workers in South Africa and Rhodesia. The European empires also left a legacy of legal systems that had created a many-tiered citizenship structure whose central feature was racial discrimination. The colonies were founded on a basis of racial and ethnic distinction that justified the gaps in standard of living and legal rights between rulers and ruled. On the one hand there were European settlers — who were full citizens with the same rights as their relatives who lived in the “home” country of the colonisers; and on the other there were African “natives” (indigènes or indígenas in French and Portuguese) — who were subjects. With the exception of a tiny minority admitted to full citizenship, the native or indigène was a subordinate being without full rights. This distinction was taken to its logical extreme in South Africa, where black South Africans were denationalised and purportedly allocated the nationality of nominally independent “homelands”, and was maintained within the region for several decades beyond the date of liberation elsewhere in the continent. Victims of forced removals from South Africa across international borders are among those whose citizenship has since been unresolved, as noted below. Post-independence At independence, the new states adopted citizenship laws largely based on models from the various colonial powers. Transitional rules were also needed to cater for the handover of legal authority from the colonial power to the new states. In the former colonies of Britain, the constitutions of the new states of what was now called the Commonwealth were drafted according to a standard template, known as the “Lancaster House” model after the building in London where they were negotiated. These laws created three ways of becoming a citizen of the new state: some became citizens automatically; some became entitled to citizenship and could register as of right; while others who were potential citizens could apply to naturalise. Those who became citizens automatically were: firstly, persons born in the country at the date of independence who were at that time citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies (mainly those of European descent) or British protected persons (mainly those of African and Asian descent); and secondly, persons born outside the country whose fathers became citizens in accordance with the other provisions. Those persons born in the country whose parents were both born outside the country were entitled to citizenship by way of registration, based simply on proof of facts, and others who were ordinarily resident in the country could naturalise, generally through a discretionary process. In both francophone and lusophone countries the civil code was adopted, based on their respective European models. In the former Portuguese colonies of southern Africa, most of the new national constitutions and political regimes were given a socialist content when independence was attained following the 1974 collapse of the Estado Novo in Portugal. However, all the lusophone countries kept Portugal’s civil law system, including the framework of the provisions on nationality that had been applied in Portugal itself. Some countries also established rules favouring the grant of nationality to those who had taken part in the liberation struggle and penalising those who had collaborated with the colonial regime. For example, individuals who had participated in the liberation struggle within the structures of FRELIMO were given the right to opt for Mozambican nationality, and nationality was excluded for people who had been members of “colonial-fascist political organisations”. Though gender discrimination was a common feature of the laws adopted at the time of independence in southern Africa — as it was in the 1950s and 1960s in most European states — formal equality between races and ethnic groups was the norm. In some cases, however, the laws adopted reversed the system of discrimination, giving priority to persons of African race, or members of certain ethnic groups. In southern Africa, this remains the case in Malawi (see further below). In addition, the rules governing state succession were sometimes written or interpreted to exclude those who were asserted to have insufficient “historical” connection to the territory concerned. The rules governing citizenship have often been most problematic in those countries where colonial-era migration and dispossession of land were most marked, where the numbers remaining after independence of those who had arrived during empire were largest, and where the political power of those affected was weakest. As happened later following the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the European empires in 6