Aspects of Transkeian citizenship and nationality

Abstract

Abstract This article deals with some aspects of Transkeian citizenship and nationality. The concepts of citizenship and nationality, and the distinction between them, as applied to Transkei, are observed. A distinction is drawn between the present situation and the legal situation after the independence of Transkei. All the citizens of pre‐independent Transkei are “non‐citizen nationals” of the Republic of South Africa and automatically obtain the nationality and citizenship of the Republic of Transkei on independence day, although some of them will physically be absent from Transkei at that stage. As an attempt to determine the population of one of the new states in Southern Africa ‐coming into being within the framework of the South African policy of separate development of the peoples of this subcontinent – the intermediate Transkeian citizenship complies with international law and the transformation into Transkeian nationality can take place at any given moment. Some other individuals too, become citizens and nationals of independent Transkei. After independence all these persons will be aliens in the Republic of South Africa. There is doubt whether ultimately, the continuous presence of a vast number of aliens, in the Republic of South Africa will be politically and legally tenable to the end. The South African policy of separate development implies that every one of the peoples in this part of the subcontinent should develop its own territory by means of its own governmental institutions to full independence, or sovereignty in the sense of international law. To satisfy the conditions of statehood there should be a specified people in a specified territory with its own government independent of other governments (Nieuwoudt 1971: 35; Venter 1974: 128 et seq.) 1 In order to define the people of each of the new Black states which are coming into being through a process of “dismemberment” of the unitary state, the Transkei Constitution Act (1963) and the Citizenship of the Bantu Homelands Act (1970) were promulgated. According to these two acts every Black person in South Africa is a citizen of one of the homelands (Vorster 1974: 49 rightly typifies these homelands as “nasciturus‐states”) while he remains a South African national (section 2 (2) of Act 26 of 1970 to be read with section 2 (4) of the same Act and with section 7 (3) of Act 48 of 1963). This paper is confined to only Transkeian citizenship and nationality. The concepts of citizenship and nationality, as applied to Transkei, will be observed, with a distinction between the present situation and the legal situation after independence.