My name is Donel Tshibangu and I am currently stateless.

My journey basically started back in 2018 when I turned 16, I was so excited to apply for citizenship, I felt like my world was about to start, my life shifting into a whole new direction.

As my dad and I walked into the Department of home Affairs South Africa, that’s where every dream and hope of mine shattered, it was as if my life was over before it even began, all my dreams and hope fell down the drain.

The officials of home affairs told me that I couldn’t apply for an ID and that I had to apply for what my parents had, which was an asylum seeker paper. That actually broke me. Both my parents are very educated people with qualifications but because of their type of document they couldn’t pursue their careers. Instead they worked for minimum wage jobs, just to survive.

That then broke me. If my parents lived that kind of life with that kind of document there was obviously no hope for me either to dream big. I felt rejected by my own home, South Africa, because it’s the only place I have ever known. For them to give me the option to get an asylum paper, as if I was a refugee, really tore me down to tears.

I had no choice but to apply for the Asylum document but I went through, trauma and hell just trying to apply for an Asylum.The Home Affairs refugee centres were filled with so much xenophobic comments, they treated some applicants like dogs and I would go months to the centre and go back home with nothing.This really caused so much depression because I didn’t understand how foreigners could be treated with no dignity or respect like that. From 2019- 2020 I had been going back and forth just trying to get a form of identity, but still I was given nothing. Then Covid hit and everything was closed.

After that period the officials said they couldn’t give me a document because I was over 18 and I had to apply as a newcomer. That led me to hate life because now I was an adult, with no form of documentation and I now had to apply as a newcomer to the country where I was actually born.

This whole experience really led me to isolate myself from all my friends and loved ones. I no longer had the will to live. I felt so useless and invaluable, I questioned myself as to what was my purpose here or why was I even here.

I couldn’t even further my studies or apply for a decent job, instead I got jobs that exploited people knowing very well they couldn’t do anything, because of lack of documents.

What gives me hope is that there are human rights lawyer organisations and I am with one of them. They help individuals facing the same situation. A couple of formerly stateless people have gotten their ID. I am 21 years of age and still stateless.

All I have is hope and prayers and hopefully eventually I can have my identity and start my life.Thank you for reading my story.

May God bless you

Donel