Imagine waking up one day and hearing your wife say: “I don’t know who you are. We’re not married. In fact, we never were.”
Sounds like something out of an Orwellian dystopia? Actually, it can happen right here in South Africa.
My wife, Nazira, is South African. I am Indian. We married in a small civil ceremony in Bangalore last year. It wasn’t grand — just the two of us, my close friends and her daughters, Amal and Tasmiya. Two adults in midlife, both having been married before, both hoping that maybe this time life was offering something gentler, something more lasting. We walked out of the registrar’s office with a certificate, a few photographs, the company of friends, and a feeling of unexpected happiness.
Plans are what people make; life is what happens.
A few months later, she returned suddenly to South Africa. India, she said, wasn’t for her — too loud, too crowded, too far from the quiet childhood memory she carried inside her. I understood. At this age, love is more about accommodation than possession. You try to understand each other’s fears. You try to meet each other where you can.
Around then, I suggested she register the marriage in South Africa, as required by law. Her reply seemed strange:
“It’s all very well for you, Rohit. If we ever got divorced in India you’d owe nothing, but in South Africa you’d get 50% of everything I own.”
Divorce was the last thing on my mind. I had married to grow old with Nazira. I believed she had too. So I pushed the comment aside.
We slipped into a long-distance marriage — the kind that runs on video calls, multiple time zones, and the small comfort of hearing your loved one’s voice at the end of the day. I visited Johannesburg when I could. She visited Bangalore once.
She preferred to keep her South African life separate from our marriage. I didn’t meet her mother Shereene, her sister Fahmeeda, or any of her friends. It was disconcerting, but I respected it. When she needed emotional support, I was there. When she needed financial help, I gave what I could. After all, I was her husband — if I didn’t stand by her, who would?
During a visit in September, I was invited to give a guest lecture at the University of Johannesburg. Standing there, speaking to students who welcomed me so warmly, I felt — for the first time — that maybe South Africa recognised me too. Little did I know that at the same time, my wife had already decided she had never married me.
We finally spoke about divorce. She said we didn’t need one in South Africa, because she wasn’t married.
In India, our marriage was recognised instantly: an apostilled certificate, a spousal visa, even eligibility for an Overseas Citizen of India card —something granted only when a relationship is unquestionably real.
South Africa, however, requires both spouses to be physically present to register a foreign marriage. There is no process for a foreign spouse to register alone. No exception. And when the South African spouse refuses to participate, the foreign spouse has no way forward — not even to correct false civil records.
Still, I tried. For months, I wrote to Home Affairs, DIRCO, the High Commission in Delhi, and eventually even the Minister of Home Affairs. More than fifteen letters. I wasn’t demanding anything — just asking:
What does a foreign national do when the South African spouse won’t come to Home Affairs? And isn’t the South African citizen required to declare a foreign marriage and her true marital status?
Most replies never came. A few polite acknowledgements. No answers.
As the silence grew heavier, I did something I never imagined myself doing — I wrote to the President. I genuinely believed there had to be a humane way to disclose a marriage when one spouse refused to cooperate. Who better to clarify that than the Presidency?
I copied the Chief Justice — who better to understand a legal impossibility? I copied leaders of the Muslim community in South Africa, in case there was any cultural nuance I had missed. And I copied anyone else who might help me make sense of a situation that made no sense at all.
Then, with no warning, Nazira blocked me on WhatsApp. I respected her silence. But more was to come. I learned that my wife had applied for an Interim Protection Order in the Randburg Magistrates’ Court. From 8,000 kilometres away. I have not set foot in South Africa since September.
Now suddenly I was no longer her husband but was now accused of harassment — for trying to register our marriage and writing to state institutions. In her sworn affidavit for the Interim Protection Order, Nazira stated that she was single — and the Magistrate’s Court accepted that status exactly as presented, issuing a signed and stamped order on that basis.
It is a peculiar kind of loneliness to wake up and discover that your attempts at transparency have been recast as threats. That you are legally married in one country and legally “unmarried” in another — the country where your wife lives.
I am not writing this to blame her. People act from fear, shame, panic, confusion. Some withdraw. Some run. Some cannot face the truth of what they once wanted.
I am writing because I cannot believe I am the only foreign spouse who has found himself trapped between two legal systems, with no way to move forward.
What happens in cross-border marriages when one spouse simply stops cooperating? When silence becomes a weapon? When administrative gaps create legal danger? When a marriage becomes inconvenient for one person — and invisible for the state?
A marriage should not vanish because one person walks away. A foreign spouse should not lose his voice because the administrative framework has no place for him. And honesty — expressed through official channels — should never be recast as harm.
I still believe in South Africa. I still believe in fairness. And I still believe that somewhere between fear and bureaucracy, there must be a more humane path for people like me.
Because in the end, a marriage is more than a document.
But when a dusty sheet of paper in India becomes the only proof of it, you cannot help but ask:Mr President, please help — my wife says she isn’t married to me.