Pretoria - A young man left in legal limbo because his parents never registered his birth is elated after the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, ordered Home Affairs to register him as a South African citizen.
Now Tebogo Khoza can register his child under his name and fulfil his wish of marrying the mother. He can also get a job, open a bank account and live the life of an ordinary citizen.
All these things were denied to him, simply because the department refused to accept that he was South African.
For a decade the department threw every argument in the book at him to deny him citizenship. It was only with the help of Lawyers for Human Rights that Khoza was able to go to court in a bid to no longer be stateless.
Khoza said since he turned 16 in 2013 he had tried in vain to be registered as a South African. While the department said it would assist him, nothing came of it.
Khoza was born in South Africa and has lived in the country his whole life. His birth was never registered by his parents, and his mother died when he was only 6. His father abandoned him.
He was raised in a child and youth care centre in Limpopo from the age of 9. When he was 16, the social workers at the centre initiated a process to get him registered.
But what should have been a quick, simple administrative process turned into a 10-year struggle for identity and belonging, and ultimately recognition and human dignity.
Khoza discovered he was stateless when Home Affairs refused to register his birth, and eSwatini (his parents’ supposed country of origin) denied that he was a Swati citizen.
Lack of birth registration (or a birth certificate) was one of the main causes of statelessness in southern Africa. A birth certificate was the first legal identity issued that provided the child with proof of two critical facts relevant to establishing their nationality: place of birth and parentage, Lawyers for Human Rights said.
It argued that the department imposed onerous and arbitrary requirements for birth registration that left many vulnerable people undocumented and at risk of statelessness.
The court was told that the department had refused or failed to draft regulations to facilitate the effective implementation of legal safeguards against statelessness, especially as this impacted on children.
Acting Judge SM Maritz said that despite three court orders where the Home Affairs Ministry was ordered to promulgate regulations, to date the department had still not promulgated regulations in relation to the relevant section of the Citizenship Act.
The failure to comply with the order of the Supreme Court of Appeal and other orders to this effect amounted to contempt of court, he said.
The court concluded that Home Affairs had shown itself to be “inflexible” and “oppositional” in its refusal to assist Khoza, notwithstanding his own efforts to comply with the department’s requirements and to provide all the relevant information at his disposal.
Khoza said that he recently had a child, but his name could not appear on the child’s birth register as he was undocumented.
“This caused me a great deal of stress as I am not legally recognised as the father of my child,” he said.
He wants to marry his partner, but being undocumented cannot do so.
He has received many job offers and development opportunities over the years, but once again he is hampered in accepting these due to his lack of legal status.
But now things have changed for him as he is no longer faceless.
Pretoria News