South Africa: Stateless man whose parents never registered his birth gets ID after long battle
Published: 10/Mar/2023
Source: Pretoria News / IOL
By Zelda Venter
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.