South Africa's one million invisible children without birth certificates

Comparisons to Other Countries’ Documentation Gaps

• Commenters note the US and other states have ad‑hoc processes for people without birth certificates (fires, midwife births, older cohorts, overseas births).
• China before 1996 and rural China more broadly had many births without hospital certificates, but alternative local documents (hukou, village attestations) usually anchored identity.
• Amish and some religious groups in the US illustrate that even today, some people deliberately remain lightly documented, though this is constrained by law.

Citizenship, “Natural Born” Status, and Legal Ambiguities

• Long subthread on US citizenship law: children of citizens born abroad, territorial status (Philippines, Panama Canal Zone), and shifting statutes (Expatriation Act, Cable Act, INA).
• Disagreement over whether figures like John McCain were “citizens at birth” vs later statutorily recognized.
• Examples show how technical legal definitions and missed paperwork can create years of unnecessary immigration hardship.

Risks of Statelessness and Disenfranchisement

• Several posts link lack of documentation to vulnerability: detention, deportation, inability to vote, or being written out of social benefits.
• Historical parallels drawn to stateless populations in WWII and their role in enabling mass atrocities.
• Some see modern US voter-ID and citizenship controversies as early warnings about using documentation gaps to disenfranchise.

Banking, KYC/AML, and Crypto Proposals

• KYC/AML rules are criticized for excluding undocumented people from financial systems while failing to seriously hinder well‑resourced criminals.
• One side argues crypto could give “invisible” people a form of digital money and savings.
• Others counter that crypto doesn’t solve the core problem: without legal identity, children still can’t attend school, access healthcare, or join official leagues, and face usability and volatility issues.

Bureaucratic Failure and Lost Records

• Multiple anecdotes from South Africa, Europe, and North America describe records “disappearing” or people only being “properly entered” into systems years later.
• South African Home Affairs offices are portrayed as slow, often offline, and hard to access for people in precarious work.

Is South Africa in “Steady Decline”? – Disputed

• One camp cites severe load‑shedding, water outages, high crime, corruption, underinvestment in infrastructure, manufacturing weakness, and falling GDP per capita as evidence of decline.
• Another camp emphasizes dramatic post‑1994 gains: near‑universal formal access to water, electricity and schooling; expanded middle class; free public healthcare; end of racial legal discrimination; and recent political shifts (coalition government, some privatization) as signs of long‑term improvement despite serious problems.
• Debate touches on foreign investment trends and whether current woes stem mainly from apartheid’s legacy vs contemporary governance.

Historical and Demographic Context

• Apartheid‑era authorities allegedly undercounted or ignored Black South Africans in censuses, making today’s “invisible children” unsurprising to some.
• Discussion of who counts as “native” in South Africa (Khoisan vs Bantu vs later European and Asian settlers) becomes contentious, with concern that such debates can be weaponized in modern politics.

Philosophical Concerns About Identification Systems

• Some argue people should be able to exist outside “The System,” comparing modern birth registration to older religious registries.
• Others respond that large‑scale welfare states and social insurance systems practically require robust identification to avoid abuse and collapse, making some form of universal documentation hard to escape.