Get married for love, not citizenship: Marrying foreign national for money is a crime, says Nzuza

The Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Njabulo Nzuza says South Africans should not marry foreign nationals for financial benefits.

Nzuza was speaking to reporters at the end of the African National Congress (ANC) National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting on Tuesday.

He described these types of marriages as fraud against the state and warned South Africans that they too would be arrested if caught.

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Not marrying for love is fraud

“Not marrying for romantic reasons or for love is a crime, you are committing a crime against the state” he said.

According to Nzuza, government investigates couples that seek to be married to make sure that they are really in love before approving the marriage.

“The government spends money sending investigators to come and check you that you are really romantically involved. We ask you questions – how long have you been staying with this person – and so on and so on. So we come to the conclusion” he said.

He said the high number of fraudulent marriages between South Africans and foreign nationals made it tough for South Africans who want to marry foreign nationals for love to have their marriages speedily finalised.

“By the way, if everyone was truthful and we did not have this fraud, other legitimate people would be having their marriages approved quite quickly and they would get citizenship,” he said.

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Problems in the transactional marriage

Nzuza said in his experience, many of these types of marriages would have problems because the foreign national would have a “real” romantic partner.

“They then divorce you and then get their true love to come into the country then you then come to us and say Home Affairs officials are corrupt,” he said.

Another reason that these marriages would fail is because the foreign nationals would stop taking care of their South African spouse as time passes – leading to tensions between the couple.

Meanwhile, Nzuza said the main problematic borders in South Africa were the borders between South Africa and Zimbabwe and the border between South Africa and Mozambique.

“We call them vulnerable segments,” he said.

He said there were also problems with neighbouring countries protecting their citizens who had purchased stolen cars from South Africa.

He said they described the transaction as “innocent buyer.”