Renunciation frenzy. Chaos as admin lag is sabotaging the ConCourt’s citizenship fix.
In her latest Opinion published by Business Day, our CEO, Claudia Pizzocri reflects on the surge of enquiries relating to renunciation of South African citizenship over the past few months. Three months after the Constitutional Court (CC) struck down the “automatic loss” provision in section 6(1)(a) of the Citizenship Act of 1995, those who regained citizenship status on 6 May 2025 are still struggling to convert that legal outcome into usable documents. Many are experiencing extreme anxiety particularly when travelling to South Africa.
Enquiries about renunciations of citizenship are rising in unprecedented volumes, not because the judgment is unclear, but because implementation is uneven and guidance to the public remains fragmented.
The CC order restored citizenship retrospectively as if the loss had never happened; however, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has yet to deliver services and uniform guidance that make that restoration practical. This would require a capable and informed Department that can distinguish between an automatic loss in terms of the 1995 Citizenship Act and a loss in terms of the 1949 Act, and that understands the various grounds of exemptions from such loss.
Viral anxiety
A large part of the current anxiety has been driven by social posts warning of arrest and detentions on arrival in SA for those travelling on a foreign passport. One widely shared example is an “urgent notice” posted to the Facebook page called ‘Break The Silence About South Africa’ (with an audience of roughly 200,000 followers) which linked to a letter from the South African Chamber of Commerce USA emphasising criminal penalties under section 26B and urging compliance. The underlying statute is real; the framing is overstated.
Section 26B has been in force for years (to be precise, since 15 September 2004, when the section was inserted), and sets out a long-standing obligation. The provision relating to “Use of foreign citizenship” reads: “A major citizen who—(a) enters the Republic or departs from the Republic making use of the passport of another country; or (b) while in the Republic, makes use of his or her citizenship or nationality of another country in order to gain an advantage or avoid a responsibility or duty, is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding 12 months”.
Flawed assurances
On 31 July 2025, in response, the Border Management Authority (BMA) issued a statement saying the viral claims of a “new passport law” and fresh arrest directives were “false and misleading,” and confirming that the legal position has not changed: South African citizens are expected to enter and depart SA on a valid South African passport, this has been the case for decades.
The BMA’s statement also advises: “In the event that a South African citizen’s passport expired whilst they were abroad, they are advised to approach the nearest South African Embassy to apply for and obtain an Emergency Travel Certificate (ETC). However, in the event that they were not able to obtain an ETC, they will not be refused entry into the country, provided that they have a form of South African identity in their possession at the time.”
While the latter part of the statement is reassuring, perplexing is the BMA’s failure to acknowledge the post-CC ruling reality. Thousands of South African citizens abroad do not in fact have a passport not because their passports “expired”, but as having ceased to be SA citizen they did not qualify for a passport. Compounding the issue, the majority of South African foreign missions are yet to receive official guidelines on how to treat passport renewal applications made by dual citizens who have been prior determined to be permanent residents with new ID numbers.
Furthermore, while on paper the advice relating to ETCs may seem reasonable, in practice, access is uneven and rare. The legitimate question in this instance is whether, in light of the CC ruling, freedom of movement to South Africa by citizens should count as an emergency across the board, or is this subject to assessed discretion and if so by whom?
Reversing citizenry dissociation
Let’s not forget that a standard passport renewal from overseas can easily take 8–12 months or longer. A limitation that Minister Schreiber is currently addressing starting with his July Australian and UAE trips aimed at rendering more efficient citizenship services available to citizens abroad. Schreiber’s declared ambition is cutting passport and Smart ID turnaround times “from over 12 months to just five weeks”. A significant step forward in a long road ahead.
Today, the stark reality remains that capacity limitations and variability of services are experienced widely across SA’s foreign missions. This disconnect is what is driving a vast portion of the renunciation enquiries. It is within this landscape that, incredibly, some read renunciation under section 7 as the only practical workaround. However a renunciation is not supposed to be about a practical bypass, it is a legal act with heavy meaning and with downstream consequences that are difficult to reverse.
The appropriate response should be for the DHA to translate the CC’s judgment into predictable services, perhaps even blanket directives for SA citizens traveling on foreign passports for a defined period of time and practicable guidelines in SA and overseas.
Citizens abroad have lived with protracted delays and fragmented guidance for years; it is precisely this experience that has produced the widespread phenomenon that I have previously called a “dissociated citizenry”, South Africans who remain citizens in law, but feel estranged from the basic services that make citizenship functional.
Operational clarity and legislative literacy are once again the only foundations for viable solutions. Renunciation has become a reflex to uncertainty. It should not be. Section 7 is an extreme step which should not be forced by operational incapacity.
Read the full Opinion as published on Business Day here.
Claudia Pizzocri, CEO at Eisenberg & Associates Inc.