Loss of South African Citizenship

[lwatson]

i did not apply for the retention of my south african citizenship before applying for my british citizenship. this was highlighted when i tried to change my surname in my sa passport....was told that i had lost my sa citizenship.
has anyone else done this? is it possible to have my sa citizenship reinstated without having to move back to sa as a british citizen and reapplying?

[Dawie]

This forum is for UK immigration matters not South African immigration matters. You should post your question in "Other countries".

[SYH]

You must mean your passport expired, your citizenship doesn't expire unless there is some kind of provision that says so or you formally did a renuncification.

[Dawie]

You must mean your passport expired, your citizenship doesn't expire unless there is some kind of provision that says so or you formally did a renuncification.

No, the OP means that he/she lost their South African citizenship automatically because they failed to inform the South African government before aquiring British citizenship which led to the automatic loss of their South African citizenship.

Had they applied for retention of their South African citizenship BEFORE applying for British citizenship they would not have lost their South African citizenship.

People in this situation usually only realise they have lost their South African citizenship when they try to renew or replace their South African passport.

In any case, the answer is no, there's nothing you can do, I'm afraid you should have applied for retention of your South African citizenship before you naturalised as a British citizen!

However you are entitled to permanent residency in South Africa.

[SYH]

You must mean your passport expired, your citizenship doesn't expire unless there is some kind of provision that says so or you formally did a renuncification.

No, the OP means that he/she lost their South African citizenship automatically because they failed to inform the South African government before aquiring British citizenship which led to the automatic loss of their South African citizenship.

Had they applied for retention of their South African citizenship BEFORE applying for British citizenship they would not have lost their South African citizenship.

People in this situation usually only realise they have lost their South African citizenship when they try to renew or replace their South African passport.

In any case, the answer is no, there's nothing you can do, I'm afraid you should have applied for retention of your South African citizenship before you naturalised as a British citizen!

However you are entitled to permanent residency in South Africa.

Ok then there is a provision that causes this to happen, for most countries, this does not happen.

[Shan12]

Why do you specifically want to retain your SA Citizenship?

[Dawie]

Why do you specifically want to retain your SA Citizenship?

That's a bit of a crass question. If your citizenship was unfairly taken away from you, you would also want it back!

[Administrator]

.

I'll back Shan up on that question. The same one occurred to me .. although, I didn't actually type it up.

Part one: the question could be: is lwatson willing and does he(?) want to shed the UK citizenship and go back to the SA citizenship? I would be curious about going through the trouble and then wanting to reverse it.

However, it's also a rather personal question, so I suppose I (personally) would not have asked if it was not volunteered. It's rather benign, so lwatson can make his own decision.

It's an open forum folks .. expect to have questions posted. Equally, feel free to ignore them or decline in some civilized fashion


Part two: lwatson seems to have wanted the dual citizenship, probably from the beginning, but didn't research the process carefully enough.

And, I do very much understand wanting the dual citizenship status. There are very advanced possibilities open to someone with two full citizenships, especially in two such diverse regions.


Since this is truly a question of South African citizenship policy, I am moving the topic out of General UK Immigration.

the Admin

[Shan12]

Why do you specifically want to retain your SA Citizenship?

That's a bit of a crass question. If your citizenship was unfairly taken away from you, you would also want it back!

I did not mean it in a crass way. I am just wondering why the individual wants or feels the need to retain South African citizenship. For some people it might be for the purposes of wanting to return to their country of origin (in which case the person might not know that they can actually live in South Africa without citizenship as they are entitled to permanent residence) for others it might be a purely emotional reason... in which case the individual will need to decide whether the emotional over-rules the effort involved to try and regain citizenship.

[Fight4URrights]

Please message me with any stories on SA Citizenship lost. We are working to fight this problem and bring about change in this matter.

[osmosis]

i did not apply for the retention of my south african citizenship before applying for my british citizenship.

Hi I am also in this predicament. What can one do to regain one's SA citizenship? Has the legislation been tested at all?

[cyrilsavage]

Google "Retention of South Aftrican Citizenship" and you will be delighted to hear that it should be no issue at all as that requirement in the law has been repealed , except that the civil servants in London have not yet been informed . (Well seven years is a bit soon for the law change to filter through to civil servants but still.... we can hope...).

[jhbmike]

Google "Retention of South Aftrican Citizenship" and you will be delighted to hear that it should be no issue at all as that requirement in the law has been repealed , except that the civil servants in London have not yet been informed . (Well seven years is a bit soon for the law change to filter through to civil servants but still.... we can hope...).

Can anyone confirm if this is true. I have tried google but nothing relevant comes back.