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South Africa's one million invisible children without birth certificates

(www.france24.com)
116 points mooreds | 2 comments | 14 Oct 25 01:13 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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stroebs ◴[21 Oct 25 14:12 UTC] No.45656069[source]▶
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.

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returningfory2 ◴[21 Oct 25 16:27 UTC] No.45657783[source]▶
What is ZA? Zambia?
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botanical ◴[21 Oct 25 16:39 UTC] No.45657917[source]▶
ISO 3166-2 code for South Africa. It's from Dutch: Zuid-Afrika. It's used quite often to refer to South Africa; RSA or SA is also used.
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1. SideburnsOfDoom ◴[21 Oct 25 16:47 UTC] No.45658024{3}[source]▶
"SA" is ambiguous. People do use to to refer to "South Australia" (the state) or also "Saudi Arabia" ISO 3166-2 country code.

ZA is not ambiguous, it has that going for it.

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2. botanical ◴[22 Oct 25 09:25 UTC] No.45666648[source]▶
True, but I meant in South Africa, SA is the most used. Less so with RSA or ZAR. ZA is somewhat used but SA (I would say) dominates in conversation and in written text.