Loss of Citizenship

**Updated on 6 May 2025**

The Constitutional Court of South Africa delivered a landmark unanimous judgment on May 6, 2025, declaring Section 6(1)(A) of the South African Citizenship Act of 1995, as amended invalid. This momentous decision addresses the ripple effect of three-decades of legislation which resulted in far too many South Africans unknowingly being stripped of their citizenship rights, creating profound generational consequences that will now begin to be remedied.

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Section 6(1)(A) of the Citizenship Act had devastating effects on countless South Africans who automatically – and often silently – lost their citizenship upon acquiring citizenship of another country without having prior applied for the retention of their SA citizenships. This provision created a diaspora of ex-South Africans who maintained deep connections to their homeland but were legally alienated from it.

Background: Section 6(1)(A) of the South African Citizenship Act of 1995, as amended, provided that a South African citizen shall cease to be a South African citizen if:

• He or she, whilst not being a minor, by some voluntary and formal act other than marriage (usually by way of naturalization but by any other means the Department of Home Affairs considers to fall within the interpretive scope of such Act), other than by marriage, acquires the citizenship or nationality of another country;
• He or she in terms of the laws of any other country also has the citizenship or nationality of that country and serves in the armed forces of such country while that country is at war with South Africa;
• Any person who obtains South African citizenship by naturalization shall cease to be a South African citizen if he or she engages, under the flag of another country, in a war that South Africa does not officially support.

Prior to obtaining the citizenship or nationality of another country, or before serving in the armed forces of another country in respect of which a person has citizenship, the now invalid provision required that an application may be made to the Department of Home Affairs for the retention his or her South African citizenship, and the Minister may, if he or she deems fit, grant that person the right to retain South African citizenship.

The Constituonal Court ruling only applies retrospectively to those who ceased or would have cesed to be South Affrican citizens from the coming into effect of the 1995 Act, thus on or after 6 October 1995.  The declaration of consitutional invalidty does not and cannot apply to legislation in effect prior to the coming into force of the Interim Constitution.

 Exemption Applications: those who ceased to be South African citizens in terms of the repealed South African Citizenship Act of 1949 are not covered by this judgement.  Applications for the retrospective exemption from such loss can be made in these instances in terms of the Act,