REGIONAL DIRECTORS
FRAUDULENT MARRIAGES
As you will remember, the problem of fraudulent marriages and possible measures to curb the problem were brainstormed at the Misty Hills Civic Services Workshop of November 2003. The following critical intervention strategies were decided upon:
- Introduce an investigative approach in regard to the registration of marriages.
- Introduce stricter measures to control marriage officers.
- Consultation with the SAPS and Justice.
- Fast track amending the Marriage Act, 1961, and the Marriage Regulations to beef up the registration requirements and procedures.
- Beef up the mainframe log on procedures to prevent corrupt officers from registering false marriages on the Population Register.
To realize particularly the first three strategies referred to above, it is critically important that you as Regional Directors personally involve yourselves in the fight against fraudulent marriages and that you actively drive the process in your respective regions. Fraudulent marriages have reached alarming proportions and we will have to unite forces and pull out all stops to curb this problem. The Department is under extreme pressure from the community, parliamentarians, our Portfolio Committee and various others to solve this problem.
The focus should be to make it as difficult as possible to register a fraudulent marriage and where it does occur, to take immediate action to correct the registration and to bring the perpetrators to book in the shortest possible time.
To achieve these objectives, you are kindly requested to ensure that the following measures, where not in place already, are introduced in your Regions with immediate effect:
- Deal with blank stock of marriage registers and certificates on the same basis as face value forms. In other words keep them in a safe or strong room, receipts and issues must be recorded and signed for in a register, stock must be reconciled monthly, etc.
- Marriage officers must first return their used marriage register books before new book(s) are issued to them.
- The registers in the used books must be carefully checked to see whether they have been captured in the Population Register and are all accounted for. Any discrepancies must be followed up immediately.
- Completed registers received from the marriage officers must be carefully screened and any suspicious trends or inconsistencies must be followed up and appropriate action taken. Particularly marriage officers that show a trend of marrying foreigners to South Africans must be investigated and should irregular activities be detected, the matter must be reported to the SAPS. Details of such cases must also be referred to Head Office immediately for consideration of revoking the marriage officer’s designation as a marriage officer.
- To facilitate control over the marriage officers operative in your Region a separate file for each should be kept containing a copy of the designation letter, a specimen signature of the marriage officer, record of marriage registers and certificates issued to him or her, record of completed marriage registers and used marriage register books received, and correspondence to and from him or her.
- Close co-operation with the Security Agencies, as well as the Justice Department in your Regions must be established (a) to ensure that you are informed of syndicate and other criminal activities that may impact on the occurrence of fraudulent marriages and (b) to promote a joint approach in the fight against fraudulent marriages in your Region.
- Copies of the documents of fraudulent marriages, captured in your region, and subsequently expunged from the Population Register by this office will henceforth be forwarded to you to initiate disciplinary and criminal action, as the case may be, against the perpetrators of the fraudulent marriages. Progress in such cases must be regularly monitored to ensure that , as far as possible, the perpetrators are brought to book without undue delay. A monthly progress report for your Region must please be submitted for my attention on or before the 7th of the ensuing month.
- Complaints received from persons alleging that they are victims of fraudulent marriages must be dealt with in accordance with the guidelines stipulated in Departmental Circular No.18 of 2003, copy attached for ease of reference.
- All marriage officers in your Region must be informed, by way of regional seminars or information circulars, of the fraudulent marriage problem and their co-operation be sought to assist in curbing the problem, particularly to refer suspicious requests for marriage to their nearest Home Affairs office.
- Copies of the bio data page of the identity documents, or passports in the case of foreigners, of the marriage couple and the witnesses to the marriage should as far as possible be attached to the marriage register.
In an effort to further strengthen the control over the solemnization and registration of marriages, this office, in consultation with Legal Services and Immigration, is looking at possible amendments to the Marriage Act, 1961, and the Marriage Regulations. The ITingwe Project Team on Information Security is dealing with the matter of securing the log on procedures. You will be advised of the outcome in due course.
You are kindly requested to assess the occurrence of fraudulent marriages in your Region and to report your findings and progress on the implementation of the above-mentioned measures to me by 30 June 2004 please.
I thank you for your co-operation in this matter and am confident that with your full commitment we will succeed in eradicating the scourge of fraudulent marriages and restore the people’s faith in Home Affairs as a reliable custodian of their records.
J R CHAVALALA
p.p. DIRECTOR-GENERAL