Minister of Home Affairs Leon Schreiber has revealed South Africa cannot fully track dual citizenship holders after a Constitutional Court ruling removed the requirement for citizens acquiring foreign nationality to notify Home Affairs authorities.
South Africa’s growing political and public pressure over immigration enforcement, border control and citizenship verification has intensified scrutiny over the government’s ability to track dual citizenship, after the Department of Home Affairs confirmed it does not maintain a consolidated record of citizens holding multiple nationalities.
This comes after African Transformation Movement (ATM) Member of Parliament (MP) Vuyo Zungula asked Minister of Home Affairs Leon Schreiber whether the department had records reflecting the number of South Africans who also hold citizenship in one or more foreign countries, including which countries accounted for the highest number of dual citizenship cases.
In a written parliamentary reply, Schreiber said the Department of Home Affairs “does not maintain a comprehensive or consolidated register of South African citizens who hold dual or multiple citizenship.”
He said it was important to clarify that this was “not due to a failure of administration, but rather a function of the current constitutional and legal framework.”
