Home Affairs warns Marriage Act is being used as an immigration backdoor

South Africa’s Marriage Act is being exploited as a route into the country, the Department of Home Affairs says, with officials warning that transactional unions are increasingly used to secure residency for foreign nationals.

Department raises alarm at government event

At a government event in KwaZulu-Natal, Department of Home Affairs Chief Director Sihle Mthiyane said the legislation that governs marriage in South Africa is being abused as a “backdoor for immigration.” He listed the legal framework that intersects with the issue, including 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 the Border Management Act (Act 2 of 2020).

What Home Affairs calls “marriages of convenience”

Mthiyane described a growing trend of what the department calls “marriages of convenience”: “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,” he said.

He warned that some of these unions are facilitated by South Africans who arrange marriages to help foreign nationals obtain residency and that some clergy who preside over ceremonies may not be able to check the background of the parties involved. “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.

Enforcement and investigations in KwaZulu-Natal

Provincial Manager Cyril Mncwabe told the department that in the third quarter of the 2025/26 financial year the KwaZulu-Natal office finalised 813 cases flagged for investigation. He said these cases involved marriages between South African nationals and foreign nationals that had been identified for checks and reports to determine whether they were “marriages of convenience.”

Legal entry, overstays and abuse of refugee laws

Mthiyane said many foreign nationals enter South Africa legally on visitor visas and that illegality often begins after arrival when people overstay. He added that when law enforcement agencies act, some individuals then exploit other legislation. “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,” he said.

Call for coordinated response

Mthiyane urged cooperation to stop the abuse of the Marriage Act, saying it is “something that we need to work together and stop because it is facilitated by us as South Africans.” The department’s comments emphasise that marriages involving foreign nationals should be processed through Home Affairs to allow checks that officials say cannot be done by pastors or other parties conducting ceremonies.