South Africa Pioneers Digital Citizenship Services with New Online Platform
The platform allows affected South Africans, including those living abroad, to verify and confirm their citizenship status and complete any remaining steps for administrative processing.
Home Affairs Minister Dr. Leon Schreiber has officially launched the Home Affairs Citizenship Reinstatement Portal, a key milestone in the department’s digital transformation initiative aimed at delivering efficient, dignified services for all South Africans. The portal comes in the wake of a Constitutional Court ruling on 6 May 2025 in the case of Democratic Alliance v Minister of Home Affairs, which declared Section 6(1)(a) of the South African Citizenship Act, 1995, unconstitutional.
Previously, this provision had caused South Africans to automatically lose their citizenship if they acquired another nationality without prior ministerial approval. The Court’s judgment, which took immediate effect, confirmed an earlier Supreme Court of Appeal ruling and restored citizenship to all individuals who lost it under this provision since 6 October 1995. The Court emphasized that stripping citizens of their nationality without sufficient cause was unconstitutional and affirmed that affected individuals are now considered to have never lost their South African citizenship.
To implement the Court’s ruling administratively, the Department of Home Affairs developed the Citizenship Reinstatement Portal. The platform allows affected South Africans, including those living abroad, to verify and confirm their citizenship status and complete any remaining steps for administrative processing. The digital process eliminates the need for queues and paperwork, leveraging facial recognition and machine learning technology to securely verify identities and update records on the national population register from anywhere in the world.
Minister Schreiber highlighted that the portal ensures compliance with the Constitutional Court order while positioning South Africa at the forefront of global digital public service innovation. He noted that very few countries offer citizenship services with such advanced biometric verification and machine learning capabilities. The technology underpinning the portal is also expected to support future initiatives, including the introduction of a Digital ID system and improved immigration and citizenship law enforcement.
The portal features secure digital authentication, advanced document and biometric verification, integration with the National Population Register, and a user-friendly interface for tracking application progress. South Africans abroad can begin the process by visiting myhomeaffairsonline.dha.gov.za, creating a profile, verifying their email, and confirming their citizenship status using their ID number. Those whose citizenship remains valid will be notified immediately, while those whose status was revoked under the invalidated Section 6(1)(a) will be guided through a simple confirmation and reinstatement process.
Dr. Schreiber described the initiative as part of a broader “digital service delivery revolution,” aimed at transforming South Africa into a global leader in smart government while delivering dignity and convenience to all citizens.
