The Facts – South African Dual Citizenship & Retaining your SA Nationality

Many South Africans abroad, particularly in the UK, have been confused by recent rumours and misguided articles about retaining one’s South African nationality. We have been inundated at SAPeople by worried expats who would like some clarification on South African dual citizenship, so we turned to the experts for advice…

An immigration consultant in the UK, specialising in the fields of British and South African immigration, kindly provided the following information for all those who are concerned about retaining their South African nationality:

The consultants are often witness to the frustration of clients who have lost their South African citizenship, and advise their South African clients to protect their South African citizenship, before applying for their British citizenship.

South Africans who are about to apply for British citizenship should take note that they have to apply for the Retention of South African citizenship before they acquire British citizenship, in order to safeguard their South African citizenship. This way their SA citizenship is protected and they are able to hold dual citizenship – of both South Africa and the United Kingdom.

If you fail to formally apply for dual citizenship permission before acquiring British citizenship through naturalisation, you will automatically lose your South African citizenship.

It is however possible to re-instate one’s South African citizenship once it has been lost, but this may cause quite an administrative hassle, and involves you having to live in South Africa for an extended period of time. One could apply for a returning resident and so forth but it is a lot of hassle and money and a lot more effort than taking the small time to protect it at the onset.

Process of retaining your South African nationality

The process to retain your South African nationality has two stages:

1. The first is to apply for a Certificate of Non-Acquisition from the UK Home Office. This is a letter confirming that you have not yet acquired British nationality.
2. Once this letter is received one will be able to submit the second stage of the application to the South African High Commission. This is when you will be applying for your Certificate of Retention, which will mean that, when you become a national of another country, you will still retain your South African nationality, and will thus be a dual citizen. This application can be done in person or post.

But why protect your South African citizenship?

The immigration consultants advise their South African clients to protect their South African citizenship, before applying for their British citizenship. Clients often ask why they need to bother to do this, as they believe that they are planning to immigrate on a permanent basis.

The reason why this is important differs for each individual – for some people they are proudly South African and do not wish to give up their citizenship; some clients on the other hand believe that they will never ever set foot in South Africa again and as such simply want to expedite their nationality application and don’t want to wait for the protection of their SA citizenship.

Immigration consultants strongly encourage all of clients to protect their SA citizenship for the following reasons:

• You never know what the future holds. We have seen it time and time again where a client believes that he/she will never return to SA and then indeed does. If you do decide to return to South Africa, it is not as easy to do, if you have lost your SA citizenship.
• Renouncing your South African citizenship or forfeiting your SA citizenship by inaction on your part can also cause a knock on effect on your children. Often times clients forget that their children need to be kept in mind and that by making a quick and hasty decision today might have an impact on their future children and generations down the line.
• If you are no longer a South African citizen and have SA assets this could have serious impact from a tax point of view, inheritance tax point of view, and even simple things like having a South African bank account. If you are not a South African citizen anymore you need to declare that and it will be hard to get credit in South Africa.

Of course it is at the end of the day the decision of every individual.

Prevention is however definitely better than cure.

MORE INFO

Entering and Leaving South Africa (passport queries answered)
What to do if you’ve Relinquished your South African Citizenship & how to Prevent Losing it