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Citizenship Reform – 1993

“South Africa’s white-dominated parliament passed into a law a bill restoring citizenship to millions of blacks stripped of their rights under apartheid” on December 15, 1993.¹ Almost seven million people living in the four homelands (Ciskei, Bophuthatswana, Transkei and Venda ) were deprived of their citizenship when the territories accepted independence from Pretoria, starting with Transkei in 1976 and ending with Ciskei in 1981. This bill would allow them also to vote in the first non-racial election. The bill was one of a package of legislations presented by the multi-party democracy talk.²

1. “South Africa’s parliament restores citizenship to blacks,” Agence France Presse — English, December 15, 1993.
2. ibid.