Home Affairs gets a kick in the Trump

Source: Noseweek, 22/09/2016

Xenophobia is alive and well, living in the Department of Home Affairs
in Pretoria and secretly engaged to Donald Trump.


On 6 September 2016 the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) was set to hear
the case of an eight-year-old stateless child born in South Africa who
has steadfastly been denied her right to South African citizenship by
Home Affairs officials.


The child, referred to only by her initials, DGLR, in court
proceedings, has, since birth, clearly been entitled to South African
citizenship in terms of Section 2(2) of the Citizenship Act.


But Home Affairs officials brazenly informed Lawyers for Human Rights
(LHR), who took up her case in 2013, that they did not intend ever
applying that section of the law as "too many children" would
qualify.


In May 2014, after five years spent hitting the wall at Home Affairs,
the child`s mother applied to the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria
for assistance. The court ordered the department to immediately
register the child as a citizen and issue her with an ID number and
birth certificate.


The court also ordered Minister Malusi Gigaba to promulgate
regulations to Section 2(2) to facilitate its implementation. He has
18 months to comply with the order.


But Home Affairs was still having none of it: they took the high court
judgment on appeal – and managed to drag out the appeal process for a
further two years.


The department could have been in no doubt that they did not have a
legal leg to stand on. Their position could only have been based on
the supposition that, if faced with enough bureaucratic hostility,
foreigners will succumb and decide to "go back to where they came
from".


In this case the strategy had failed. The child and her mother were
supported by Lawyers for Human Rights in opposing the appeal. So on
the morning of 6 September, on the steps of the Appeal Court, Home
Affairs agreed that the Appeal Court should confirm the high court`s
rulings.


DGLR was born in Cape Town in 2008 to Cuban parents. Cuban law does
not allow children to obtain Cuban citizenship if they were born
outside Cuba to parents who are considered "permanent emigrants" if
they have lived outside Cuba for more than 11 months. They had.


South African law as a general rule awards citizenship based on the
South African citizenship of the parents. Because DGLR`s parents are
Cuban, she was not assumed to be South African. Qualifying for neither
citizenship, she was stateless – which brought Section 2(2) of the
Citizenship Act into play.


Mercifully, it provides for South African citizenship to be granted to
stateless children born in the country.


Regarding themselves as above the law, the department refused to
implement the section, leaving DGLR stateless for eight years.


Stateless children can never leave South Africa, nor obtain
legal status in the country without implementation of Section 2(2).