Clemence Manyukwe, Staff Reporter
Registrar General (R-G) Tobaiwa Mudede has for the first time complained of pressure from politicians with regard to the voter registration exercise, which the opposition claims has been used to disenfranchise its support base. A report by the Defence and Home Affairs Parliamentary committee also disputes the R-G’s view that the Citizenship Act requires that people born locally to parents of foreign descent must first renounce their "potential foreign citizenship" before they can be recognised as Zimbabwean citizens. Failure to renounce their foreign title, according to the Registrar General, results in forfeiture of Zimbabwean citizenship. Mudede has used this interpretation of the law to deprive millions of Zimbabweans of the right to vote. But quoting the Government Gazette General Notice 584 of 2002, under the subheading Renunciation of foreign Citizenship, the committee said a person who is a citizen by birth cannot be deprived of his or her citizenship, and cannot be asked to renounce foreign citizenship he or she never acquired. "It is recommended that the R-G should abide by the rulings and interpretation of the courts and Cabinet, as given in the Zimbabwean Government Gazette General notice 584 of 2002," reads part of the committee’s recommendation. The committee undertook the probe on citizenship after the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights told Members of Parliament that Mudede was unlawfully withdrawing citizenship from people with rightful title to citizenship, resulting in a flood of lawsuits that his department was losing.(...)
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