In the midst of ongoing clamp down on illegal migrants, a new trend of ‘marriage for sale’ has been identified, which enables foreigners to claim citizenship by marriage.
South Africa Department of Home Affairs recently identified the “marriages of convenience”, transactional unions devoid of a genuine relationship, that are increasingly facilitated by locals to help foreign nationals bypass immigration laws.
Earlier this year, the Department of Home Affairs in KwaZulu-Natal cited 813 cases for investigation in the third quarter of the 2025/26 financial year.
Speaking at a recent government event in KwaZulu-Natal, Department of Home Affairs Chief Director Sihle Mthiyane reflected on South Africa’s legal framework, which includes the Immigration Act (Act 13 of 2002), Refugees Act (Act 130 of 1998), Marriage Act, 1961 (Act No. 25 of 1961), Citizenship Act (Act 88 of 1995), and Border Management Act (Act 2 of 2020).
According to the Marriage Act, 1961 (Act No. 25 of 1961), the Act regulates conditions under which citizens and foreigners may conclude a marriage.
The Act provides a route to permanent residence and citizenship for foreigners who are married to citizens.
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“There are marriages that we call ‘marriages of convenience’; these are transactional marriages. There’s no love. Anyway, we can’t prove love in this context. But in this case, these are people who don’t stay together; there’s no relationship at all. It’s a transaction,” Mthiyane said.
“In most cases, these are men who enter South Africa legally. They get a visitor’s visa. There’s nothing that the border can do about that. They have submitted proper documents. But illegality starts once they are in the country,” Mthiyane said.
“What happens is there’s always someone in South Africa who’s facilitating the marriage.”
Mthiyane highlighted that some of the marriages pastors preside over are “marriages of convenience”. There is no love, nothing whatsoever.
“That is why we are saying any marriage that involves a foreign national must be concluded at Home Affairs. Because at Home Affairs, we are able to check many things that pastors are not able to check,” Mthiyane said.
He added: “The abuse of the Marriage Act is something that we need to work together and stop because it is facilitated by us as South Africans.”
Provincial Manager Cyril Mncwabe said the cases involved marriages between South African nationals and foreign nationals that have been flagged.
He explained that these are the cases where, most of the time, they have to check, do reports, and investigate “marriages of convenience”, where some foreign nationals marry South Africans.
In some cases, Home Affairs detected these as “marriages of convenience”, not necessarily just for the obtaining of documents. In quarter three, they finalised 813 such cases in the province.
Mthiyane added that contrary to the belief of many, most people in the country are not entering through porous borders.
“Yes, the country has porous borders, but people are entering the country legally; once they are in the country, they overstay.
“After overstaying, when our law enforcement agencies try to enforce the law, they then abuse one of our very important pieces of legislation, which is still important to this day: the Refugee Act,” Mthiyane said. “We don’t have many refugees in this country… We don’t have a refugee problem. The problem that we have is the abuse of the refugee laws that we have in this country.”
