Govt to abolish dual citizenship

GOVERNMENT will not seek to re-align the Citizenship Act with the new Constitution, but will instead move for the amendment of the supreme law to abolish provisions allowing dual citizenship.

This was said by Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede while making a presentation on the Constitution and dual citizenship to the Zanu-PF parliamentary caucus at the party’s headquarters on Wednesday.

The new Constitution allows for one to hold dual citizenship and Mr Mudede said this posed a number of security challenges to the country.

“As the Ministry of Home Affairs, we have decided that we are not going for realignment (of the Citizenship Act to the Constitution), but for amendment,” he said.

Mr Mudede said some of the challenges that the dual citizenship posed included cases of tax evasion, evasion from justice, involvement in cases of human trafficking, international terrorism and problems in immigration control. He said Sections 36, 37 and 43 of the (new) Constitution had to be amended.

Mr Mudede queried why provisions requiring foreigners who acquired Zimbabwe’s citizenship to take an oath of loyalty were removed in the new supreme law.

“We need to amend this (new) Constitution,” he said.

“You cannot align the Citizenship Act to this (new) Constitution. The question of loyalty is a serious one; anybody who takes citizenship in any other country subscribes to the oath of loyalty. That provision was removed from the (new) Constitution and now we have somebody who is being given citizenship when they did not subscribe to the oath of loyalty.”

In his response, Zanu-PF chief whip Cde Lovemore Matuke said the party supported the intentions to amend the Constitution.

“As a party position, we are going to support you and make sure we defend this position when it comes up for debate,” he said.

Dual citizenship is one of the issues that were included in the new Constitution as a compromise, despite the majority of people speaking against it during the Constitution making outreach.