ConCourt mulls law changes on citizenship

The Constitutional Court is mulling changes to legislation introduced in 2013 which four individuals say stripped them – and several others – of their entitlement to SA citizenship overnight, according to a report in The Citizen. Yamikani Vusi Chisuse, Martin Ambrose Hoffman, Amanda Tilma and a 12-year-old girl – represented by Lawyers for Human Rights – last week argued for an order declaring sections of the SA Citizenship Act, invalid and unconstitutional. They were all born to SA parents outside the country. They say as children of South Africans, they had a birthright to citizenship along with all the benefits that come with it. And they say that the sections in question – which came about when the Act was amended in 2010, with those amendments taking effect on 1 January 2013 – have robbed them of that right. In June 2018, the matter came before the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) on an unopposed basis, and an order was granted in terms of which the sections in question were declared invalid and unconstitutional and the applicants were all declared SA citizens. Now, though, with the matter before the Constitutional Court for confirmation, the Home Affairs Department is fighting to maintain the status quo.In his heads of arguments, Advocate Seth Nthai – for Home Affairs – said the matter was not properly opposed in the High Court, in part, because the ‘the workload in the Department of Home Affairs makes it practically impossible for the officials to perform the services with the efficiency required’. ‘There are five officials in the Litigation Directorate and each one has approximately 1 200 pending cases to handle. The (department) receives about 150 cases per week. It has between eight and 10 000 cases pending in various courts in the country,’ Nthai said, according to The Citizen. But he said the matter was of ‘extreme importance’. Nthai said even if the applicants had a right to citizenship, the limitations imposed by the section were reasonable and justified. ‘The legislature amended the Act to remedy the deficiency of that Act. This is so because the repealed section … opened the floodgates of potential fraudulent citizenship and abuse of the citizenship system,’ he said. ‘The harsh reality is that there are simply insufficient resources available to cater for all the various persons who might enter SA borders requiring citizenship in order to access benefits, rights and privileges that go with it’. The report notes judgment has been reserved.