A bank account and having her details added to her children's birth certificates. These are the two things a 36-year-old mother, who has been stateless her entire life, looks forward to after receiving her birth certificate on Tuesday following a prolonged legal battle with the department of home affairs.
“I still can’t believe it. I didn't sleep at night. I said to myself, I will believe this when I have that paper in my hand,” said Primrose Moyo Modisane after collecting her birth certificate at the home affairs department in Germiston on Tuesday.
After 36 years of being “stateless”, Modisane said everything went smoothly and swiftly and within 10 minutes, they had issued her a birth certificate.
“I can see that there are my name and surname, but I still can't believe it. After all this time, they have been chasing us, they have been pushing us, but now they can’t even take 10 minutes to just print it,” she said.
Primrose discovered her lack of documentation when the department visited her school in Ekurhuleni during her matric year in 2008.
She was born in Zimbabwe when her mother moved there. However, she was never registered for a birth certificate. Her mother, who was also undocumented, relocated to South Africa when she was a child. They lived with her grandmother in Vosloorus.
In April the Pretoria high court ruled Modisane was a citizen by descent through her grandmother, Barbara Modisane, a South African born in the 1940s in the then-Transvaal.
The court ordered home affairs to recognise her citizenship, register her birth and issue her with a birth certificate and identity document within 30 days. But that didn't happen.
More than four months later, and despite extensive documentation, DNA tests, school records, sworn affidavits and even the support of parliament’s portfolio committee on home affairs, she remained undocumented.
She said she received a call from home affairs on Monday, a day before she had scheduled to host a press briefing with her co-campaigners to highlight her struggle.
It's been a difficult journey for me. I knew that I won't get any jobs that I want because I don't have qualifications. I'm not educated enough to get those serious jobs. I ended up working as a domestic worker
— Primrose Moyo Modisane
Her legal battle was aided by Lawyers for Human Rights.
Her late mother, Phumulani Tshuma, received her documentation weeks before dying of untreated cancer in 2023. This was after years of being denied hospital access because of her undocumented status.
Primrose’s two daughters were also denied birth registrations until the court intervened. Their father is South African.
She said she will visit her mother's grave and open a bank account after she has completed her application for a smart ID.
“It's been a difficult journey for me. I knew that I won't get any jobs that I want because I don't have qualifications. I'm not educated enough to get those serious jobs. I ended up working as a domestic worker,” she said.
Primrose plans to study online and hopes one day she will equip herself with qualifications that avail opportunities for better jobs. She said before she starts studying, she will focus on obtaining her driver's licence and “take it from there, step by step”.
She recalled that growing up, she didn't have any problems until officials from the department of home affairs visited their school while she was in grade 12. At the time, her peers acquired their identity documents and were able to register to write their grade 12 examinations.
“This is when I noticed that I was stateless. My case was different; I didn’t have any documents, so that's when all my problems started,” she said.
She described her life without an identity as “absolute hell.”
“You can't go to government clinics, you can't go to a hospital. I can't get my children to a school where I want them to be, because I can't apply for exemptions.”
She said her pain worsened when she saw people around her applying for jobs, registering to study, whereas she knew she couldn't do any of those things.
“When I see people around me, like if someone tells me tomorrow I am going to register to do this, and for me it was like even if I want to, I can’t.”
She said obtaining the birth certificate was life-changing and she hoped to turn her life around as she could now do all the things that she couldn’t do before.
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