`Stateless` man struggles for citizenship

Source: Pretoria News, 23/12/2017

However, he has no birth certificate to prove it and thus cannot get a
South African ID because it is said he is not a South African citizen.
Ngubane is therefore stateless and belongs to no country.
Home Affairs refuses to issue him with a South African ID because he
is unable to provide documented evidence that he was born here. The
department also said it was not justified to grant him permanent
residence in the country under the circumstances.
Ngubane said his only evidence that he was a South African, his birth
certificate, went missing when the taxi he was travelling in was hijacked.
He eventually turned to the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, with the
help of Lawyers for Human Rights, to challenge the department’s
refusal to assist him.
It was argued on his behalf that the department failed to properly
conduct an investigation as to whether he was indeed stateless, and
whether this constituted special circumstances to issue him with a
permanent residence permit under the Immigration Act.
Ngubane claimed in court papers that he was born in Newcastle,
KwaZulu-Natal in 1990. His late parents were South African citizens,
he said.
His father died in 1993 when he was 3, he said, and he and his mother
left to live in Nairobi, Kenya, where he went to school.
His mother was murdered in 2002 and he left Kenya with one of her
friends to live in Uganda.
There, he said, he completed primary school, but the school had since
closed down and his mother’s friend, with whom he lived, died in 2008.
Ngubane said he decided to return to South Africa in 2009 and went to
the South African consulate in Nairobi to obtain a South African
passport. This was refused and he was told to approach Home Affairs in
South Africa.
He reached the Komatipoort border post where he was allowed to enter
South Africa by merely producing his birth certificate.
On his way from the border post, the taxi in which he was travelling
was hijacked and he and his fellow passengers were taken hostage.
They were robbed of their belongings, including the bag containing his
birth certificate.
Ngubane said he managed to escape and went to the police, but they
refused to investigate, as he did not have an ID document.
He then went to Home Affairs to try to obtain a copy of his birth
certificate so that he could apply for an ID document. The department
simply said they could not assist him.
Lawyers for Human Rights helped him to apply to Home Affairs for a
permanent residence permit, which was rejected as he could not prove
his South African nationality.
It was argued on behalf of Home Affairs that Ngubane was not
stateless, as the Tanzanian government had linked his origin to “some
or other East African country”.
This was due to smallpox vaccination marks on his body.
Adding to his problems was the denial by the Kenyan, Ugandan and
Tanzanian consulates that he once resided in, and attended schools in,
those countries.
Acting Judge MB Mokoena frowned on Ngubane’s account of where he
actually came from, saying it did not seem as if he had been entirely
frank with Home Affairs and the court.
The judge also questioned the fact that an immigration official at
Komatipoort simply allowed him into the country by means of his birth
certificate.
But the judge referred the matter back to Home Affairs for a proper
investigation.
The judge ordered that he could in the meantime lawfully stay in South
Africa, pending the outcome of the investigation.