The death of marriage in South Africa – a world first!
By Errol Naidoo, Joynews.
I participated in a virtual stakeholder engagement workshop on the draft “Marriage Bill” on 17 August – hosted by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). The gender-neutral single “Marriage Bill” maliciously omits all reference to husband and wife which effectively signals the death of the God-given and God-defined institution of man, woman marriage in South African law.
The ANC regime falsely claims the purpose of the “Marriage Bill” is “to rationalize the marriage laws pertaining to various types of marriages and to provide for the recognition of marriages entered into by spouses regardless of the religious, cultural, sex, gender, sexual orientation or any other belief of the spouses and provide for the requirements for entering into marriage.”
The proposed new “Marriages Act” will replace the current “Marriage Act of 1961” that regulate man, woman marriage, the “Recognition of Customary Marriages Act of 1998” that regulate polygamous marriages, and the “Civil Union Act of 2006” that regulate same-sex unions.
Although the DHA Director General stressed the proposed “Marriage Bill” was motivated by the Constitutional Court ruling pertaining to women’s rights in Muslim marriages. Muslim participants argued the “Marriage Bill” fails to address the pertinent issues raised in the ruling.
Significantly, however, the recognition and regulation of Muslim marriages could have easily been incorporated in the “Marriage Act of 1961” and the “Recognition of Customary Marriages Act of 1998” (for polygamous marriages). We do not need a single Marriage Act for this purpose.
The primary reason the ANC regime formulated the new single “Marriage Bill” was to redefine marriage to specifically equate it with same-sex and transgender unions. Following the Constitutional Court ruling in 2005, LGBTQ activists demanded government amend the “Marriage Act of 1961” to equate same-sex unions with man, woman marriage in all respects.
The Christian Church objected to this amendment. Parliament enacted the “Civil Union Act” in 2006 to recognise and regulate same-sex (and opposite-sex) unions. Religious marriage officers were exempt from solemnising civil unions if they were not registered under this specific Act.
LGBTQ activists objected to the separate legislation that recognised and regulated same-sex unions because it allegedly implied it was inferior to man, woman marriage. They further argued the exclusive distinction of man, woman marriage in law discriminates against same-sex unions.
Fast forward to 2023 and the ANC regime finally capitulates to the demands of LGBTQ radicals and their proxies in UN agencies. But instead of amending the “Marriage Act of 1961” to abolish the terms “husband and wife” and replace it with the non-binary term, “spouses,” government scrapped all three Marriage Acts in favour of a single gender-neutral “Marriages Act.”
The ANC regime sought to avoid revealing its true intentions – which is redefining man, woman marriage in law to appease the irrational demands of minority LGBTQ groups. As a consequence, Marriage – an institution in existence for thousands of years and that served countless nationalities and cultures – will cease to exist in South African law, to validate a cultural trend in existence for a mere 22 years and legally recognised by only 34 of the 193 nations of the world.
The draft single “Marriage Bill,” if enacted, will be devastating for men, women, and children, family life, religious freedoms, the Christian Church and general society for the following reasons:
1. South Africa is the only nation in the world to take the unprecedented step of stripping men and women of the exclusive legal definition of monogamous heterosexual marriage for no other reason than to submit to the irrational demands of a tiny militant group of sexual rights radicals.
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