Government declares Kanjabanga a Namibian

BAME PIET
Staff Writer | Friday March 16, 2012 00:00

 

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.

He said that the officers insisted that he should follow that process or never get a new passport. He said that he protested and insisted that when he was given his first passport he actually renounced his Namibian citizenship. 'I requested that the immigration officer must check my file when I was granted passport No. L036461, as I know for sure that I renounced the Namibian citizenship then. The officer who assisted me would not accept my explanation and I requested that her superiors be called,' he said.

He added that the superiors came and he tried to explain to them the circumstances under which he obtained his old passport. But they also insisted that he should apply for resumption of citizenship. They said that he had not renounced the Namibian citizenship when he reached 18 years of age.He said that he requested a meeting with the director of Immigration and Citizenship and explained his case to him, but the latter still insisted that he should apply for resumption of citizenship, as he did not renounce it when he was 18 years of age.

'I advised the 2nd respondent that as far as I am concerned, I did renounce as above stated and I would not apply for resumption which I found inappropriate, demeaning, traumatising and purely inhuman to be told that a country and a place I have known to be my home is not my home and I am living in it illegally'.Kanjabanga said that he has never regarded himself as a Namibian, has never lived in Namibia and has no connection with the country besides that his father originating from there.

'Although I have visited Namibia to check on my cousins and other relatives, I do not in any way have connections in Namibia. I do not even speak any of the Namibian languages, the only languages I know, which I learnt in Botswana are English and Setswana. I doubt if the Namibian government even knows about my existence,' he said.