I received notification on Saturday that my South African citizenship had been ‘restored’. As I wrote previously, I had lost my South African citizenship when I took Swedish citizenship. This was the law in South Africa after 1995. In 2025 this law was found to be unconstitutional, and citizenship was automatically restored to those who had lost it due to adopting dual citizenship (though I have three).
You do not have to reapply for citizenship, just request a status check. Legally I am considered to never have lost South African citizenship, and I have the same ID number now that I had before I lost citizenship (some digits had been changed to denote non-citizenship).
The awkward thing now is that I now have to enter and leave South Africa on my SA passport again, but I don’t have one – yet. The delays are said to be long due to the up to millions of people who will be eligible for passports again.
I didn’t think I would feel this, but I am so glad I have the same citizenship as the rest of my family again. I have two other citizenships (Irish and Swedish) but deep down I am and always will be a South African.
Congratulations Janet! Something similar happened to me when I was 18 (around 1995 too) and I had to choose between the French and the Spanish nationality. I decided to choose French because I was going to study in France and become a lawyer and fast forward 20 or so years later and I live in Germany and I teach languages! I did recuperate my Spanish nationality and they also told me that even though I had dropped my Spanish nationality, I was still Spanish in their eyes so I just had to sign a couple of papers and I was done! Now the hardest part is really getting all the documents in order. I got a passport fairly quickly and easily but the ID card took a lot more work, but I eventually got it!… I also understand so well how you feel when you say that being South African is who you are. I feel the same way about being Spanish. Being a nationality should be more than just being about convenience (if possible). It should also come from the heart!
Congratulations to you Janet! That’s wonderful news.