Court blocks government from stripping whites of citizenship

A court ruling has blocked government efforts to strip thousands of whites of their Zimbabwe citizenship, news reports said on Monday. On Thursday, the country’s Supreme Court ordered registrars to issue Robyn Carr, 33, a new Zimbabwe passport. The government had refused in August to renew the passport of the white bank executive, saying she held British nationality and was forbidden by Zimbabwe law to hold dual citizenship. The court said Carr renounced her British nationality under Zimbabwe law and she was not required her to do so formally under British law.

The ruling affects an estimated 30,000 whites who carry Zimbabwe passports and have renounced their foreign citizenship but who still qualify for foreign nationality. Government registrars had refused to renew the Zimbabwe passports of many whites this year, arguing that they should have renounced any entitlement to foreign nationality directly to individual foreign governments.