- My father (born in ZA) had to re-register his birth at 65 when emigrating to the UK on a visa. The ZA government had no record of his birth, despite him having a drivers license, passport, tax returns for 40+ years…
This is the least bit surprising coming from a country that is in steady decline.
- For reference, the US has procedures for this: https://www.usa.gov/citizenship-no-birth-certificate because people without birth certificates are still somewhat common, even children.
Vermont didn't require it until 1955!
- China didn't issue birth certificates until 1996. Because I was born there before 1996, I do not have a birth certificate. In addition, I was also birthed at home instead of a hospital. That said, it's never been a hindrance. My parents managed to obtain Hong Kong permanent residency for all of us and I guess that sort of rooted my birthday and birth place and it's been a continuous line of documentation since then -- green card and finally US passport. I think this was helped by the fact HK probably dealt with this issue a lot during the latter half of the 20th century.
- This is seen in many countries, that the bureaucracy is set up to serve its own needs. They will run normal office hours, yet the people working subsistence jobs are not able to take a day off to handle paperwork when each day they only earn enough to pay for their food and shelter.
- While listening to Trevor Noah's podcast one of the topics they were discussing was South Africa. Apparently, the apartheid South African government never included Black South Africans in the census. That was how little regard they had for native South Africans they couldn't even be bothered to count how many fellow humans existed in their country. The new government was required to carry out a census in order to know how many MPs were going to be in parliament. And they were blown away by the count. Until then, it was just a guess.
So South Africans not having birth certificates or any birth records is the least surprising.
- One should be able to exist without being in The System's database. In previous eras this need for The System to minimize existential threats to itself by knowing about every single human that might be able to challenge it (especially en masse) was accomplished by baptism. Making birth certificates indispensable to the individual is just the modern secularized version of that.
- And western KYC/AML laws that are forced upon all countries exclude those people from having bank accounts.
- > South Africa's one million invisible children without birth certificates
This really looks like a propaganda piece. Is there an _analysis_ why they don't have a birth certificate ? AFAIK the apartheid regime was in power until the 90's.
by tibbydudeza
0 subcomment
- I always wondered why the hospitals or clinics where they give birth does not register it ?.
It is an ordeal to go the local DHA offices to do anything - the system is offline :).
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