We’re still waiting for the Department of Home Affairs to launch the promised online portal to confirm the citizenship status of individuals affected by the Constitutional Court’s judgment in Democratic Alliance v Minister of Home Affairs ([2025] ZACC 11). As noted in my earlier update, this will be an important step for many people trying to regularise their status and access services like passport renewal. We hope to see progress on this soon.
Having said that, we’ve received a flood of calls and emails recently about something separate, but just as important: the rule that all South African citizens must enter and exit South Africa using a South African passport.
This is not a new law and it’s not part of the Constitutional Court’s recent judgment. It’s been in place for years. In terms of the South African Citizenship Act, all adult South African citizens, regardless of whether you also hold another nationality, are legally required to enter and leave South Africa using the SA passport.
This has caused serious complications for many people. Even though the Constitutional Court confirmed that they are deemed never to have lost their South African citizenship, the Home Affairs system hasn’t been updated to reflect this. In practice, many individuals still only have documents showing them as permanent residents, not citizens.
We’ve seen firsthand how this creates problems at the border. People are being questioned and threatened with arrest because they don’t have a valid South African passport. But the reason they don’t is simple: they can’t apply for one. The system doesn’t currently allow it and the promised online portal to confirm or correct their citizenship status still hasn’t been set up.
We’ve also seen recent posts from Minister Schreuber highlighting impressive turnaround times for passport issuance in places like Australia and the UAE which is great news and very encouraging. We hope this same energy and focus will now also be directed at restoring the records and rights of South Africans whose citizenship was previously treated as lost.
If you’d like more information, email us directly at info@dsdlaw.co.za.