Home Affairs looking for South Africans who lost citizenship in last 30 years

The Department of Home Affairs has launched a new digital citizenship verification portal for South Africans to check their citizenship status.

The service will initially target South Africans who lost their citizenship after 1995, but is set to form the basis of the department’s future digitisation.

Since October 1995, any South African who voluntarily acquired the citizenship of another country, automatically lost their South African citizenship unless otherwise agreed to by the government.

This rule was declared unconstitutional in May this year after the Democratic Alliance (DA) took the department to court, paving the way for former citizens to reclaim their status.

“The court held that stripping citizens of their nationality without sufficient cause was unconstitutional and affirmed that affected individuals are now deemed never to have lost their citizenship,” the department stated.

Digital citizenship checks

The portal will use facial recognition and machine learning technology to capture the subject’s identity wherever they are able to access the portal worldwide.

“This not only ensures compliance with the Constitutional Court order, but also positions Home Affairs at the global cutting-edge of biometric verification and machine learning technology to deliver digital public infrastructure,” stated Home Affairs Minister Leon Schrieber on Monday.

Those wishing to reclaim their South African citizenship can rely on advanced biometric and documentation verification that integrates with the national population register.

Schreiber said home affairs was working toward a “digital service delivery revolution” that would make South Africa a world-leader in digital governance technologies.

The minister stressed that the new system will become a paperless tool of law enforcement.

“Very few countries on earth offer digital citizenship services at this level of sophistication.

“Over time, the powerful underlying technology we have built for this portal will also enable us to deliver Digital ID, while enhancing immigration and citizenship law enforcement by eliminating reliance on paperwork and manual verification,” Schreiber concluded.

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