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Home Affairs building.
The Democratic Alliance has welcomed the Constitutional Court’s decision to scrap Section 6(1) of the South African Citizenship Act of 1995, calling it a major victory. The section stipulates that South Africans automatically lose their citizenship if they voluntarily acquire another nationality, unless they apply for and receive permission to retain it from the Minister of Home Affairs.
The DA, which initiated the legal challenge nearly a decade ago, says the ruling restores the rights of many South Africans living abroad.
DA Member of Parliament Willie Aucamp has lauded this as a big victory.
“This has been a culmination of 10 years of legal battles from the Democratic Alliance’s side, where we had to take the previous Minister of Home Affairs to court, the most recent was the previous Minister of Home Affairs, Minister Motsoaledi, who bluntly refused to listen to what the DA had to say. The previous ministers took it through all the ranks of the courts, to the Supreme Court Appeal. Just to – now today after 10 years finally – to get surety for people living outside of South Africa or people who lost their citizenship,” says Aucamp.
