Cobus Coetzee
A CHILD without a country. For five years Daniela Rodriguez-Lima has been “stateless”, but her parents kept reminding her she was “Cubafrican”.
Kenia Maria Rodriguez and her husband, Daniel Lima, fought for five years to get the Department of Home Affairs to declare their daughter a South African citizen.
Last week the North Gauteng High Court declared Daniela was a South African citizen and told Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba to issue her with a South African ID number and re-issue her birth certificate.
Daniela’s parents are Cuban nationals who cannot pass on their citizenship to their child due to having emigrated from Cuba.
In terms of Cuban law, the child’s parents are considered “permanent emigrants”, because they have been living and working outside of Cuba for more than 24 months.
“We always joked she was a Cubafrican but we can say now she is truly a South African,” Rodriguez said. “But, in fact, she has always been South African, she was born here.”
Daniela’s parents moved to Cape Town nine years ago.
They have a family-run coffee shop called El Greeyo in Brickfield
Road in Salt River and Rodriguez lectures in civil engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
Rodriguez had to hold back the tears when she talked about the past five years.
“We just kept going. We were determined to get her recognised as a South African,” she said.
The constitution states that every child has the right to a name and nationality from birth. The court found the failure to register Daniela as a citizen of South Africa was unlawful and ordered the department to enter her into the national population register as a citizen.
Liesl Muller, from SA Lawyers for Human Rights who represented Daniela in court, said the decision to decline Daniela citizenship was a “violation of her constitutional rights”. “The child was born in the country without a nationality,” she said.
Before the court case the department told the family to apply for permanent residence and then naturalisation – since her mother was a permanent resident. The family submitted three permanent residence applications but the child remained “stateless”.
Rodriguez said she could not wait for Daniela to get her new ID number and birth certificate. “Our lives were on hold for many years. We could not leave South Africa without her and she had no papers. We missed job opportunities,” she said.
Rodriguez asked Daniela if she was Cuban or South African and she was quick to answer: “I am from here.”