Automatic Loss and Resumption of South African Citizenship

If you lost your South African citizenship because you took another country’s passport without a retention letter, you can now get it back through the Department of Home Affairs’ online reinstatement portal, and straightforward cases are being processed in as little as an hour. A May 2025 Constitutional Court ruling means the law now treats you as if you never lost your citizenship in the first place. The portal simply updates your record on the National Population Register so you can apply for a South African passport or Smart ID again.

What the 2025 Ruling Changed

In Democratic Alliance v Minister of Home Affairs, decided on 6 May 2025, the Constitutional Court struck down Section 6(1)(a) of the South African Citizenship Act 88 of 1995.¹ That was the provision that stripped your South African citizenship the moment a foreign country naturalized you, unless you had obtained the Minister’s written permission beforehand.

The court’s order was retroactive. Section 6(1)(a) was declared invalid from 6 October 1995, the day it first took effect, and anyone who lost citizenship under it is deemed never to have lost it.¹ So if you became a citizen of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, or anywhere else after October 1995 and never got a retention letter, you are legally a South African citizen right now. Your records just need to catch up.

The retention letter requirement itself is gone. The South African Embassy in Berlin has confirmed that anyone planning to acquire foreign citizenship no longer needs to lodge a DHA-1664 retention application.² You can now take a second nationality without asking permission first.

Using the Reinstatement Portal

Even though you are deemed never to have lost citizenship, your entry on the National Population Register may still show you as a former citizen. That flag blocks passport and Smart ID applications, so the Department of Home Affairs built the Citizenship Reinstatement Portal to fix it.

The portal’s second and final phase went live in February 2026 with fully automated, real-time processing.³ You do not need to visit a Home Affairs office. The process runs like this:

Go to the Department’s online platform at myhomeaffairsonline.dha.gov.za.²
Verify your identity remotely by scanning your passport and taking a selfie through the portal’s biometric system.
Once the system confirms your identity and your prior citizenship, your status on the Population Register is changed back to “citizen.”
You receive notification that you can apply for a South African passport or Smart ID.

For clean cases, the whole thing can be done in about an hour.³ If the automated system cannot verify your details, your file is referred to a specialist inside the Department for manual review, which will take longer.

No expiry date has been announced for the portal, so there is currently no deadline to worry about. That could change, so if you know you were affected, there is no reason to wait.

Who Can Use the Portal

The reinstatement portal exists specifically for people who lost citizenship under the invalidated Section 6(1)(a). In practice, that means adults who acquired another country’s citizenship voluntarily after 6 October 1995 without a prior retention letter.

Some people never lost their status in the first place and do not need the portal at all. Section 6(1)(a) applied only to adults, so children whose parents naturalized abroad kept their South African citizenship. Citizenship gained solely through marriage to a foreign spouse was also excluded, and people born with dual nationality never performed the voluntary adult act that triggered loss.⁴ If you fall into one of these groups, you are already a citizen on the register.

The portal also does not cover people who lost citizenship in other ways. If you formally renounced your South African citizenship under Section 7 by lodging a declaration with the Minister, that renunciation stands and the portal will not restore your status.⁴ For those cases, the path back is Section 13 resumption.

Section 13 Resumption for Everyone Else

If you renounced your citizenship voluntarily, or lost it through some route other than the invalidated Section 6(1)(a), the formal resumption process under Section 13 of the Citizenship Act still applies.

Section 13 is open to former citizens who originally held citizenship by birth or descent.² The core requirement is that you must have returned to South Africa for permanent residence before applying. Former citizens who originally became citizens through naturalization or registration have to hold a valid permanent residence permit before they can apply.

The application is filed on Form BI-175.⁵ You should expect to submit your former South African identity document, your expired South African passport, and proof of the foreign citizenship you acquired. Applications can be lodged at any regional or district Home Affairs office in the country.² Once approved, you receive a Certificate of Resumption of South African Citizenship as formal proof.

Ignore Outdated Embassy Pages

Several South African government and consular websites still carry pre-ruling guidance. As of early 2026, at least one consular page continues to warn that taking foreign citizenship without a retention letter causes automatic loss.⁶ That reflects the old law, not the current legal position.

If you find conflicting information on an embassy or Home Affairs page, the Constitutional Court’s order in Democratic Alliance v Minister of Home Affairs is the controlling authority.¹ Start with the reinstatement portal at myhomeaffairsonline.dha.gov.za rather than working from an information sheet that may not have been updated since May 2025.

1
SAFLII. Democratic Alliance v Minister of Home Affairs and Another (CCT 184/23) [2025] ZACC 8
2
Embassy of the Republic of South Africa. Resumption of South African Citizenship
3
South African Government. Home Affairs Rolls Out Final Phase of Citizenship Reinstatement Portal
4
South African Government. South African Citizenship Act 88 of 1995
5
South African Embassy. Application for the Resumption of South African Citizenship (BI-175)
6
South African High Commission in the United Kingdom. Application for Retention of South African Citizenship