Unwitting Wives Are Prey in South Africa Scandal
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 4 - The first Sylvia Tshigo knew
of her marriage was the day her husband showed up at
her door in March 2003, requesting a divorce.

The 37-year-old Nigerian husband had in hand an
official marriage certificate from South Africa's
Department of Home Affairs, declaring that she had wed
him in 2000, she said. Now he wanted out of the
marriage, he told her, because his mother in Nigeria
was critically ill and he had to go home.

At first, Ms. Tshigo said, she was flabbergasted. Then
she was furious at him - and at the South African home
affairs minister, South Africa's immigration and
passport czar, for marrying her off without so much as
a fare-thee-well.

"Home Affairs is supposed to be people who can be
trusted," Ms. Tshigo, 31, said in a telephone
interview. "I am so very disappointed."

Thousands of South African women would agree. In the
last three years, the Department of Home Affairs has
ruefully admitted, 3,387 bewildered brides have
complained that their recorded "I dos" were really "I
never dids."

More than 2,000 marriages have been annulled. Another
1,000 or so are under review.

The department itself is also under review. As
investigators have discovered, marrying a South
African woman without her knowledge has been as simple
as paying a bribe, averaging about $750, to one of
many willing home affairs officials.

The certificates are valuable because a foreigner who
weds a South African is automatically entitled to
permanent residence and a work permit, without which
the foreigner could be deported. As the most advanced
and prosperous nation in the region, South Africa is a
magnet for immigrants seeking a new life - and
criminals seeking new identities.

After Ms. Tshigo's ersatz marriage, for instance, her
husband was hired as a doctor at a major public
hospital in Pretoria, enjoying the rights of a South
African citizen. "That man," she said bitterly, "he
has benefited a lot with my name."

That will not be so easy from now on. A law Parliament
adopted on Aug. 19 will require foreigners who marry
South Africans to wait five years before applying for
anything but temporary residence and work permits.

Meanwhile, though, the number of irate brides is
multiplying. In addition to the more than 3,000 cases
suspected or proved, another 779 fake marriages have
come to light in the last month alone as a result of a
public campaign by the department asking all South
African women who are single to verify their marital
status.

"We know of people who have gone to the office to get
married, and on the day of their marriage found out
they were married to somebody else," said Leslie
Mashokwe, a spokesman for the department. "Or they
have lost their ID, and the new one comes back with a
different surname."

"Can you imagine? You suddenly discover you are no
more Miss X, you are now Mrs. Whatever."

Not good for the department either. But then, the
department is used to it. Its own director general has
said corruption is endemic to the department. Its new
minister, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, has vowed to root
it out.

One survey found that refugees and asylum seekers
routinely bribe officials to process their
applications. In May, a dozen officials were arrested
and charged with selling false birth certificates.
That same month, South Africa's police commissioner
said British authorities discovered "boxes and boxes
of South African passports" at the London home of a
terrorist suspect.

But the marriage scheme beats all in terms of the
sheer number of cases that have come to light.

"We have been arresting officials who have been
involved in this scam left, right and center," Mr.
Mashokwe said. Asked how many officials were involved,
he replied, "It could run into hundreds."

In June and July, 39 officials were arrested in the
Free State Province alone, he said. Another official
was discovered to have single-handedly registered 500
false marriages in neighboring Mpumalanga. Some of
those arrested have been charged with fraud and
corruption.

The husbands came from all over: Nigeria, Egypt,
Pakistan, China, India, Bangladesh and Brazil. In
early August, investigators stumbled upon an apparent
middleman.

At the Johannesburg airport, a Pakistani man arriving
on Kenya Airlines deliberately left his luggage on the
plane so he could reclaim it at the lost luggage
office, thereby evading customs, said Ms. Nqakula, the
new home affairs minister. But airline workers opened
his bag and found at least 38 Pakistani passports, she
said in a speech.

They alerted the police, who followed the man directly
to two Department of Home Affairs offices in
Johannesburg. There, he collected permits normally
given to foreigners with South African spouses. Had he
not been caught, Ms. Nqakula said, "38 South African
women would have been married to these people,
probably without their knowledge."

The brides are not always so unknowing. In at least
245 cases, Mr. Mashokwe said, investigators determined
that the women were probably complicit in the scheme.
"These are unsophisticated women," he said. "In return
for their kindness or their inconvenience, they get
paid in groceries at the end of the month or
cellphones or air time."

Ms. Tshigo is unemployed, living in a corrugated iron
shack painted pink in Mabopane, northwest of Pretoria.
But she is plenty savvy. She put off the request of
the Nigerian, whom she identified as Benjamin Mozie.
When he called her again, she brought a police officer
with her.

But then, she said, the police told her if she pressed
charges, the judge might deport Mr. Mozie and make it
impossible for her to divorce him. That was in March
2003. She is still trying to sort out the matter.

"I don't want a divorce," she said. "I didn't marry
that man. They must simply cancel everything. Because,
my name now is not nice." In the interim, Mr. Mozie
has vanished. Olga Mzileni, chief of internal medicine
at the GaRankuwaHospital in Pretoria, said that he
stopped coming to work on May 26, 2003.

"He didn't resign," she said. "He disappeared."
Although state records show he was registered as a
general practitioner in February 2002, she said, she
now wonders if he was even a doctor.

Had he not married Ms. Tshigo, he might still have
been hired, but he would have had to obtain permission
from the state health department. A department
spokesperson said, "Maybe he wanted to speed things
up."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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*  Madiba K. Saidy, Ph.D

*  Research Scientist, Atomic Energy of Canada

*  Department of Energy & Natural Resources Canada

*  ====

*  Secretary/Treasurer

*  Joint Division of Surface Science

*  The Chemical Institute of Canada & The Canadian Association of Physicists

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***************

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