Locked out Life on hold for thousands without ID

At 45, Philimon Mashava has never had a bank account or a phone in his name. He has never had a birth certificate and, without documents, his stateless existence has meant missing out on school and countless job opportunities.

- Nyasha Chingono HARARE

Being locked out of citizenship is an issue for an estimated 300,000 Zimbabweans, according to Amnesty International. Mashava has survived by street trading. Born in Chipinge to a Mozambican father who returned home and a Zimbabwean mother who died young, his five children are on track to inherit his statelessness.

“Getting an ID has always been tough because my father’s relatives are in Mozambique and there is no way of getting in contact with them,” Mashava says from his home in Hopley, 10km from the centre of the capital, Harare. “I just grew up without a birth certificate. This is my life.”

And his children’s too, as without official papers, Mashava’s 16-year-old son cannot sit his school exams.

Thousands are living on these margins. Descendants of foreign nationals who moved to the country to provide cheap migrant labour, they have for decades struggled with statelessness, their situation worsened by discriminatory laws, such as the 1984 Citizenship of Zimbabwe Act, which deprives people of foreign origin from citizenship.