Registration of Marriage forms for South Africans

Hi, my husband and got married in England on the 14 June 2014. NOBODY told us that we would have to register this marriage in South Africa. My husband is South African, I am English. He needs to get a new South African Passport and one of the supporting documents required is the copy of the marriage certificate and it must be 'apostilled' whatever that means
Now the fun bit is that we are supposed to be able to download this regiatration of marriage form from the Department of Home Affairs website - what a stinking joke!! The website doesn't even exist in the UK domain.

We desperately need this form to get the marriage registered
Can anyone help how we get ovee these damn obstacles
Thank you

You need the consular seevice,which is based in Whitehall, London.

Don't expect anything to be turned around quickly. You can expect to wait months for this this, if not well over a year.

A passport renewal also takes many months.

Your husband will know how tedious and slow home affairs is.

Why doesn't he apply for British citizenship? He doesn't need a valid passport for that.

Does he want to hang into his SA citizenship? If he doesn't, he still has the right of permanent residency in SA if he was born there.

Thank you for your email
We already have the new passport papers ready for filling in. My husband is already a British Citizen and has a British passport BUT we have been told that we need to register our 6 and a half years of marriage with the Department of Home Affairs. I grew up in South Africa and had a permanent residence permit (no longer valid) so I know EXACTLY how Africa 'works'
My husband cannot give up his South African passport as he needs to enter South Africa on his South African passport to go and visit his parents every other year. Once his parents pass on, he won't be able to throw his SA passport far enough away, it's useless for anything else and he knows it. He was born in Gauteng 46 years ago. His brother and family have already moved to Australia and taken up Australian citizenship.

The consular office don't send out marriage registration forms. I think that I will have better luck contacting my mother in law and getting her to send us a form to fill in.
I would be grateful for any other advice you could think of.

I gave up my SA citizenship in 2012 and enter and exit SA on my British passport to see my parents. I have a letter from home affairs London, issued free of charge, stating I am allowed to do this and have the right to permanent residency as I was born there. Never had any issues other than being asked to see the letter when leaving the SA after each visit.

Yammie1973 wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 20, 2020 9:20 pm

Hi, my husband and got married in England on the 14 June 2014. NOBODY told us that we would have to register this marriage in South Africa. My husband is South African, I am English. He needs to get a new South African Passport and one of the supporting documents required is the copy of the marriage certificate and it must be 'apostilled' whatever that means
Now the fun bit is that we are supposed to be able to download this regiatration of marriage form from the Department of Home Affairs website - what a stinking joke!! The website doesn't even exist in the UK domain.

We desperately need this form to get the marriage registered
Can anyone help how we get ovee these damn obstacles
Thank you

Hi

My husband is South African and just about to apply for new passport. We know that processing time is really long. I was wondering how did your experience go? We also got married in Poland and not sure how it will go for us as we need to register the marriage while applying for a passport. Did you manage to register yours easily?
I will be starting a new thread about this but I was hoping to see your experience so far. Many thanks.

Hi
My husband and I have not had any luck. We live in the UK and all the SA Embassies are closed for the foreseeable future. We have to register our 2014 marriage as well as apply for my husband's new SA passport. So far I am unable to locate any marriage registration forms including from my mother-in-law in Somerset West who has given up trying to get the appropriate forms for us. My husband has his British Passport, so he may well just apply for a letter from the Home Office and enter SA on his British Passport and letter. It's a nightmare even thinking about trying to register our marriage and get a new SA passport. The consular services for South Africa is worse than a backward 3rd world country!!

I will see if our postal application will be successful as per guidelines on the website of South African embassy in London (re-opening on 29 March)

I managed to find marriage registration form to fill in over there so I will give it a go. it is very straightforward.

I am only confused with the supporting documents as one of them is letter of retention of South African citizenship which we just applied for simply because of soon coming British Citizenship application. It seems that is also needed for SA passport application.

I am so worried as I heard many bad experiences with the passport application. Hopefully we will receive British Passport sooner

Thank you for your response.