{"id":26438,"date":"2020-02-15T21:51:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T21:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/?p=26438"},"modified":"2020-02-16T22:04:24","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T22:04:24","slug":"south-africa-marriage-fraudsters-could-have-their-citizenship-revoked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/south-africa-marriage-fraudsters-could-have-their-citizenship-revoked\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa: Marriage fraudsters could have their citizenship revoked"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span id=\"authors\" class=\"article-author\" data-author=\"&lt;span class='authors-list'&gt;Sipokazi Fokazi&lt;\/span&gt;\">By <span class=\"authors-list\">Sipokazi Fokazi<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"50b5495c-9ee1-4ce0-b99c-c4a29c4bda5a\" class=\"article-widget article-widget-text\">\n<div class=\"wrap\">\n<div class=\"text\">\n<p>Marriages of convenience, which are mostly used by foreigners to gain SA citizenship will become a \u201cdangerous game\u201d to play in future, warns home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi.<\/p>\n<p>While the country has become a haven for bogus marriages Motsoaledi said a proposed new marriage statute will make it \u201cvery difficult\u201d to marry someone in absentia, which is currently the main driver of the country\u2019s fake marriages.<\/p>\n<p>So serious is he about stopping fraudulent marriages that his office has started revoking the citizenship of those found to have forged their unions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are now handling a very difficult case of somebody who got married and after getting citizenship he got divorced and went home to fetch the \u2018real\u2019 wife. So we are taking his citizenship away. But he is resisting and says that we are evil as we found out about his fake marriages after a long time. So he is threatening to go to court,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Between April 2018 and June 2019 Motsoaledi said there were more than 2,000 fraudulent marriages, almost all involving foreign nationals. About 1,100 had since been annulled while more than 600 were referred to courts to be dissolved through divorce.<\/p>\n<p>Read further: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sowetanlive.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/2020-02-15-marriage-fraudsters-could-have-their-citizenship-revoked\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/www.sowetanlive.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/2020-02-15-marriage-fraudsters-could-have-their-citizenship-revoked\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sipokazi Fokazi Marriages of convenience, which are mostly used by foreigners to gain SA citizenship will become a \u201cdangerous game\u201d to play in future, warns home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi. While the country has become a haven for bogus marriages Motsoaledi said a proposed new marriage statute will make it \u201cvery difficult\u201d to marry [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","region-south-africa","type-news-articles","item-year-668","item-theme-naturalisation-and-marriage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26440,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26438\/revisions\/26440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}