Home Affairs urged to ensure indigent South Africans get free DNA tests to prove citizenship
Published: 28/Feb/2023
Source: SABC
By Molemo Mothoa
Home Affairs has again been urged to ensure that the National Health Laboratory Service conducts free DNA tests for indigent South Africans where such a test is required to prove one’s South African citizenship.
This follows the Munyai twins’ struggle to be identified as South Africans. Their father struggled for three decades to obtain their birth certificates.
Now 31 years old, both Lebo and Lebogang Munyai finally received their birth certificates. Their father raised them after their mother abandoned them in a hospital two weeks after they were born.
But for three decades, he’d been tossed around by Home Affairs. They needed him to prove his paternity before he could apply for their birth certificates. After obtaining DNA results from a local GP, Home Affairs still refused to recognise it.