Home Affairs Faces Contempt Finding Over Delayed Citizenship Implementation

PRETORIA HIGH COURT FINDS DEPARTMENT OF HOME AFFAIRS IN CONTEMPT FOR DEFYING CITIZENSHIP ORDER

A June 2026 judgment from the Pretoria High Court has found the Department of Home Affairs in contempt of court after the department deliberately refused to comply with a judicial order to grant South African citizenship to a permanent resident.

The case centered on Sakharov, a foreign national who obtained permanent residence in South Africa in December 2013 and had been married to a South African citizen for more than five years. When he approached the DHA in November 2023 to inquire about citizenship requirements, officials refused to accept his application, directing him instead to submit paperwork verifying only his existing permanent residence status.

Sakharov pursued a High Court review in April 2024. The court heard the matter on the unopposed motion roll in September 2024 and granted a declaration that he was a South African citizen by naturalisation. The order required the DHA to register his birth, issue written confirmation of citizenship, and provide an identity document within 30 days. The department was formally served with that order. It did not comply.

What followed made the contempt finding almost inevitable.

Rather than fulfilling the judgment, the DHA filed an application to have the court order set aside, arguing that Sakharov’s review application had not been properly served on it. Sakharov responded with a counter-application seeking a contempt finding. The court examined the service record and found that his application, including the notice of set down, had been properly served on both the State Attorney and the DHA in May 2024. The department’s claim of ignorance was rejected outright.

The DHA’s substantive defense fared no better. The department argued that Sakharov should have first verified his permanent residence permit before applying for citizenship, a requirement drawn from its own internal standard operating procedure. The court dismissed this entirely. Relying on the Supreme Court of Appeal’s earlier decision in Minister of Home Affairs v Jose and Another, the judgment confirmed that once the statutory requirements of the Citizenship Act are satisfied, the DHA has no discretion. The obligation is mandatory. An internal SOP cannot override a statutory entitlement.

The contempt finding rested on four established legal criteria: the existence of a court order, knowledge of that order, non-compliance, and wilful bad faith conduct. The DHA admitted it knew about the order and confirmed it had deliberately refused to comply, on the basis that it considered the order unenforceable because Sakharov had not followed its internal procedure. That admission was enough.

The operational consequences are immediate. The court ordered the DHA to comply within 15 days of receiving the judgment, with adverse consequences specified for continued non-compliance. The decision is unambiguous: citizenship is a statutory right, not a discretionary grant. Once a foreign national holds permanent residence and meets the requirements set out in the Citizenship Act of 1995, the department’s obligation is triggered automatically.

The ruling also exposes a systemic delivery failure. The DHA has been imposing procedural requirements that do not appear in the Citizenship Act or its regulations, using internal processes to frustrate rights conferred by an act of Parliament. For permanent residence holders whose citizenship applications have been rejected on the basis of non-compliance with DHA internal requirements, the judgment provides clear legal grounds to challenge those rejections.

Whether the department moves to comply within the 15-day window, or tests the court’s patience further, will be the next measure of whether this ruling changes anything in practice.