Home Affairs probes hundreds of 'marriages of convenience'

THE Department of Home Affairs in KwaZulu-Natal has made significant strides in addressing immigration concerns, finalising 813 cases for investigation in the third quarter of the 2025/26 financial year.

- THOBEKA NGEMA

Provincial manager Cyril Mncwabe disclosed these figures during a recent meeting of the KZN Council Against Crime held in Durban.Mncwabe highlighted that the head office normally sends cases to KZN for investigation.

“Those are the cases where most of the time we have got to check, to do reports and investigate something like marriages of convenience ... some of the foreign nationals getting married to South Africans and it’s detected in some instances that those are the marriages of convenience, not necessarily just for the obtaining of our documents as a country,” Mncwabe explained.

“In quarter three, we have finalised 813 such cases as a province.”

Mncwabe highlighted that in the same reporting period, they conducted 148 law enforcement operations.

He also said that they are supposed to ensure that 100% of detected employers are charged in contravention of the Immigration Act.