Having a foreign safety net is costing South Africans their citizenship
Published: 14/Feb/2023
Source: Business Day (Johannesburg)
Many don’t know that securing foreign citizenship could strip them of their right to SA citizenship, unless they apply directly to the home affairs minister
by STEFANIE DE SAUDE DARBANDI
The number of South Africans emigrating, or planning to do so, is reported to have soared amid ongoing load-shedding, increasing crime and the frustration of dealing with crumbling infrastructure. Recently, a Social Research Foundation survey found that 53% of university graduates and 43% of those who earned more than R20,000 a month may leave the country, amid falling confidence in SA’s future.
Not all of those considering emigration do so immediately. Anecdotal reports indicate that thousands, possibly tens of thousands, are taking advantage of ancestral visa and “golden visa” opportunities to secure foreign citizenship as a safety net in case the situation in SA worsens. Golden visa programmes, now available in over 100 countries around the world, offer citizenship or residence status through investment into the host country.
Among those who do make the move abroad, some are applying for foreign citizenship over permanent residence to cease tax residency in SA and so avoid paying tax here while living and working in another country. What many of these South Africans are unaware of is that securing foreign citizenship could strip them of their right to SA citizenship, unless they apply directly to the home affairs minister to keep it, an application they must make before acquiring the foreign citizenship status. Such applications can take months or years to process.