Zimbabwe: Ismael v Registrar General and Another

Published: 24/Apr/2007
Source: High Court of Zimbabwe

(HC 7758/06) [2007] ZWHHC 25

MAKARAU JP: The facts of this matter are not in dispute. I set them out.

The applicant entered Zimbabwe in 1980. At the time he declared he was born in Arusha, Tanzania. In 1982 he applied for Zimbabwean citizenship. His application was declined. He made a second application in 1987 which was successful. In the second application, he declared that he was Somalian and was the holder of a Somalian passport whose number was given and recorded. In consequence of his gaining Zimbabwean citizenship, the applicant was issued with a passport by the first respondent. His current passport is valid until 2013.

Following the receipt of certain adverse reports on the applicant from national security agencies, the second respondent on 20 December 2006, served the applicant with a notice depriving him of Zimbabwean citizenship.

On the same day he was served with the deprivation notice referred to above, the applicant filed this application. In the application, he seeks an order compelling the respondents to issue him with a new passport within 5 days of the granting of the order. The order concludes with the usual prayer for costs.

In the founding affidavit attached to the application, the applicant alleges that he is a business executive whose job entails extensive travel. As a result, his passport pages are almost full with only two pages remaining for endorsements with visas and other immigration stamps. He further alleges that he has had to curtail his international trips to save the remaining pages in his passport. At the time of the application, his son was ill in Malaysia and he anticipated traveling to and from Malaysia to visit his indisposed son.

The application was opposed on the basis that the second respondent had deprived the applicant of citizenship.

In January 2007, the applicant’s challenged the procedure by which the notice of 20 December 2006 had been issued. The second respondent then commenced fresh procedures against the applicant, which procedures were still under way as at the date of the hearing of the application.

It is apparent that the opposition to the application was premised on the defective deprivation order of December 2006 which has since been retracted by the second respondent. At the hearing of the matter, it was however conceded on behalf of the respondents, that the second respondent had retraced his steps and had commenced the deprivation process afresh after the challenge from the applicant’s legal practitioners on the procedures that had been adopted to deprive the applicant of his citizenship.

Read further on ZIMLII:  https://www.zimlii.org/zw/judgment/harare-high-court/2007/25/

Themes: Naturalisation and Marriage, Loss and Deprivation of Nationality
Regions: Zimbabwe
Year: 2007