Kanjabanga, who is also an active member of opposition Botswana National Front (BNF) has sought intervention of the High Court to declare section 4 and 5 of the Citizenship Act Cap 01:01 unlawful and unconstitutional. He also wants the court to declare the sections null and void and of no force and effect as they violate Sections 3 and 15 of the Constitution of Botswana. In a suit before Justice Terrence Rannowane, Kanjabanga is arguing that the said sections are discriminatory as they do not allow individuals to acquire citizenship by birth and descent from their mothers.
The attorney also wants the court to award costs to the respondents and order them to renew his passport seven days after the ruling.Kanjabanga's father immigrated to Botswana from Namibia in the 1940s and married the lawyer's mother, a Motswana, in the late 1950s in Palapye. Kanjabanga was born and bred in Palapye. He attended primary and secondary school there before going for national service (Tirelo Sechaba). He then went to the University of Botswana on a Botswana government scholarship. According to Kanjabanga, shortly after his old passport expired in June 2011, he approached the immigration office to renew it for an e-passport. The officers learned that his father was a Namibian and told him that he too was a Namibian holding dual citizenship. The officers told him that he should have renounced the Namibian one. "I was informed that since I did not renounce the citizenship when I was 18 years of age, I have to apply to the Minister of Home Affairs for resumption of citizenship as all these years I have been staying in the country illegally," he said in his affidavit.
