In South Africa, liminality has migrated from anthropology into government administration practice, particularly in matters that pertain to citizenship. In its condescending routine the Department of Home Affairs has manufactured a state of de facto “in-between” by building practical barriers with locked gates that the department holds the keys to.
Public administration literature describes this phenomenon as part of a “street-level bureaucracy” whereby wide frontline discretion, uneven application of rules, and processes structured by local practice rather than by published standards defeats lawful process.
The verification wall
Before a naturalisation application is processed, the department must first attend to verifying a permanent residence status. The verification process, which the department controls, is meant to establish several things before an application for naturalisation can be processed.
These include:
- The legitimate nature of a permit, considering that many fraudulent permits are still in circulation.
- The compliance with any condition attached to the permit, as non-compliance may lead to the withdrawal of a status.
- The status being current.
- Specific to a citizenship application — testing the legislative physical presence threshold (i.e. not having been absent from the republic for more than 90 days per year in any of the five years preceding the application).
The issue here is that this verification process can take years. Oftentimes, individuals are forced to resubmit verification after verification as their files seem to have been lost in a space of apathetic bureaucracy, with no real explanation forthcoming.
While it is undisputed that such a prerequisite verification process is necessary and legitimate prior to awarding citizenship, as in terms of section 5(7) the minister has wide powers “to make such enquiries as [he] may deem fit”, the fact that there exists no national service standard for its turnaround, nor published data on the numbers of these pending verifications, has created a jammed system. No visible accountability exists for those patiently waiting for this step to be concluded, enabling their naturalisation applications to be processed.
In practice, the verification process has become a perfectly engineered checkpoint: apparently technical and neutral, yet decisive in obstructing the pathway to citizenship for those who lawfully qualify and who are left inside invisible queues that exist everywhere and appear nowhere.
Invisible numbers
Once past the verification wall, and once a naturalisation application has been finally “green-lighted” for processing, time dilates further. The double standard here is conspicuous. Detailed data on submitted, pending and even categories of immigration-related applications is gathered and made public through ongoing reports to a portfolio committee, yet there is no official data on naturalisation applications pending or approved.
The only official list is the one mandated in terms of section 5(9)(b) of the Citizenship Act: the tabling in Parliament of the names of individuals who did not otherwise comply with the prescribed requirements for citizenship by naturalisation, and to whom certificates were granted under “exceptional circumstances” by the minister. Ordinary, non-priority naturalisation queues otherwise live off the record.
Even the much-contested and currently parked ANC-driven White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection criticised this deficit, calling for an annual, minister-tabled register of “all persons” granted citizenship by naturalisation. In September 2024, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said he would not simply “rubber-stamp” the white paper, and would seek to tailor and align any reforms with the objectives of the newly established GNU.
Performative induction
The induction ceremony should be the hinge that ends liminality. It is the point at which the state’s words bind the status they confer, sealed by the statutory oath of allegiance prescribed under the act. Yet individuals who attended induction ceremonies in 2022, 2023 and 2024 and were never given a naturalisation certificate. Months have become years, and the wait is reset with severe consequences.
Examples abound. Take a recognised refugee of Eritrean heritage, who was notified in early 2024 that his naturalisation had been approved and was invited to his induction ceremony. Nearly eighteen months later, he is still waiting for the certificate that would give legal effect to that decision. In the meantime, his newborn son could not be registered as a South African citizen at birth, because the father’s status hovers in an administrative limbo.
Or take the Egyptian-born postgraduate professor, invited to the ceremony in September 2023, who is still status deprived and who, in practice, remains mobility restricted from BRICS partners, undermining his academic and economic contributions to the South African landscape at large.
The recurring explanation across offices is often that the citizenship unit is still “approving” the new certificates for the Government Printing Works. However, the latest approved form was Gazetted on 12 June 2023. What is the real issue here? Is there a reason for this impasse, or are conspiracy theories of a political stalling by design not so far-fetched?
Read against the white paper the impasse does not look accidental. The paper plainly supported the position that “the criteria for granting citizenship must be tightened” and “made more stringent”. The current bureaucratic pause achieves a similar practical outcome.
That is why the question has constitutional weight: is citizenship being deliberately throttled until the white paper (or its successor) finds political traction, which the GNU cannot provide in its current composition? The pattern of inertia, selective processing, and the absence of public data, seems to suggest more than simple inefficiency.
Late registration of foreign births
The same incongruent patterns appear in the late registration of foreign births. Identity that is settled elsewhere is treated as probationary here. Into this space crept the DNA maternity/paternity testing demanded by the department for registration of foreign births over the age of 15. Neither statute, nor published policy, require these tests for these registrations, nor is the same policy applied at overseas South African missions. These tests are being arbitrarily imposed with no supporting legislative force.
Suddenly, identities and lifelong familial ties, recognised abroad and recorded on official registers, are challenged and disbelieved here. The legal and human consequences can be dire. In a recent case, a woman in her mid-twenties learned through this process that her father was not biologically related to her. That harm is unnecessary, particularly in the absence of a clear statutory basis.
No one disputes the need for authenticity checks, but limits must be drawn within the legislative framework and taking into consideration international standards. This practice strikes at identity itself.
Troubling echoes from the past
South Africa’s past has shown how the apartheid bureaucracy weaponised rule proliferation, fragmentation of authority, opacity, and time to manage who could belong where, and on what terms. To say there is a similar echo in today’s citizenship track is not to collapse contexts.
It is to note an administrative style that a constitutional democracy was meant to retire. The echo is still heard on the ground. Modern literature calls this liminal legality: lives lived in an in-between space of irresolution. The fit is, to say the least, uncomfortably close.
Citizenship is document-sovereign. Documentation confers legal capacity, rights and obligations. A person “has” citizenship only when the record exists and can be relied upon across systems. That record is the key that unlocks all the downstream verifications (banks, employers, universities, border control and access).
In a document-sovereign domain, transparency on numerical data reflects how rights become actionable and how the state is held accountable. A habit that reproduces itself invisibly for years turns consistency into design.
Undeniably, under Schreiber the Department of Home Affairs has made giant leaps towards improved service delivery and accountability, but not all fires have been extinguished and the citizenship one remains a burning issue that requires real answers and prompt intervention. DM