The special window that lets couples record unregistered customary marriages at Home Affairs closes on Monday, 31 August 2026, and the department indicated on Thursday that it will not treat the customary marriage deadline as an absolute bar to applications lodged after that date.
Thulani Mavuso, Deputy Director-General for Operations at the Department of Home Affairs, told Newzroom Afrika on Thursday that couples who miss the cut-off will still be able to approach the department.
“We will not prevent them from registering that particular marriage,” Mavuso said, adding that this applied even after the period had closed.
The window was created by notice in the Government Gazette. Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber prescribed a registration period running from 1 September 2024 to 31 August 2026, using the power in section 4(3) of the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act to set a longer period than the standard three months.
Two full working days remain before it lapses, Friday 28 August and Monday 31 August.
What a missed customary marriage deadline costs a surviving spouse
Registration does not create a customary marriage. Section 4(9) of the Act states that failure to register does not affect the validity of the marriage.
What registration creates is proof. Section 4(8) makes a certificate of registration prima facie proof that the marriage exists, and of the particulars recorded in it.
Without that certificate, a surviving spouse has to satisfy an official or a court that the marriage happened, frequently while the deceased’s family argues that it did not.
That risk compounds the problems that arise when a person dies without a valid will, because an unproven marriage can leave a spouse outside the estate altogether.
Mavuso said the difficulty usually surfaces when one spouse dies and the department is asked to conclude a marriage posthumously. He said families often contest those applications, and that women tend to lose out, with marital assets ending up with the wrong side of the family.
The same proof gap reaches retirement money, where fund boards must identify dependants before paying a death benefit. It is one of the routes by which money ends up sitting in the pool of unclaimed pension benefits.
Mavuso said registration also helps establish the legal relationship between parents where official consent is required for a minor child, including passport applications, which sit alongside the unabridged birth certificate requirements Home Affairs applies to children’s travel documents.
The registration numbers behind the two-year drive
Official data indicates the drive started slowly. Statistics South Africa’s Marriages and Divorces release for 2024, published on 19 March 2026 under Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke, records 2 634 customary marriages registered at Home Affairs during that calendar year, a fall of 25,5% from the 3 537 registered in 2023.
That is the second lowest annual total in a decade. The high point over the 2015 to 2024 period was 4 376 registrations in 2022 and the low was 1 585 in 2020.
The window opened on 1 September 2024, four months before the end of that reporting year, and the gazette notice itself was published only on 29 October 2024. The 2024 count is an early and partial reading of the drive rather than a verdict on it.
Registrations are also heavily concentrated. Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal together accounted for 1 422 of the 2 634 registrations, or 54,0%, a figure calculated from the provincial totals in the release.
Customary marriages registered at Home Affairs, 2024
| Province | Registered |
|---|---|
| Limpopo | 718 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 704 |
| Eastern Cape | 397 |
| Mpumalanga | 324 |
| Gauteng | 266 |
| North West | 82 |
| Western Cape | 62 |
| Free State | 41 |
| Northern Cape | 33 |
| Outside South Africa | 2 |
| Unspecified | 5 |
| Total | 2 634 |
Source: Statistics South Africa, P0307 Marriages and Divorces, 2024.
Eight of the nine provinces recorded fewer registrations than in 2023. The Free State fell 51,8%, from 85 to 41. The Eastern Cape fell 39,1%. The Western Cape was the sole increase, rising from 32 to 62.
The release also groups the 2024 registrations by the period in which the marriage itself took place. On that grouping, 945 of the 2 634 were marriages concluded between 2018 and 2024, while 901 were marriages concluded before 1998, the year the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act was passed.
Late registration is therefore already the norm rather than the exception, and the department has been processing decades-old unions as routine work.
Home Affairs and a UKZN law academic differ on what Monday changes
The department’s position that late applications will still be accepted is not shared across the legal profession.
Siyabonga Sibisi, a senior lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s School of Law, told TimesLIVE that the open extension is precisely what allows spouses to walk into a Home Affairs office without first obtaining a court order compelling registration.
“In the absence of any extension, home affairs cannot register old customary marriages,” Sibisi said.
Zama Mopai, a customary law expert and lecturer at the University of Venda, told the same publication that couples should not panic, because unregistered customary marriages remain valid after the deadline and the practical consequence is difficulty proving the marriage, not invalidity.
Both positions can hold at once. Section 4(5) of the Act allows a registering officer to enquire into the existence of a marriage on application by anyone with sufficient interest, and section 4(7) allows a court to order registration.
What is unresolved is whether a Home Affairs official may register a lapsed marriage across the counter once the prescribed period ends, or whether applicants will be pushed towards the enquiry and court routes, which are slower and can carry legal costs.
What still has to be decided
Home Affairs has not said whether Minister Schreiber will gazette a further extension after 31 August, and none of the department’s public statements this week indicated that one is planned.
The department has also not published how many customary marriages were registered across the full two-year window. That figure would show whether the drive worked, and it is not yet available. Stats SA’s next release, covering 2025 registrations, is scheduled for 11 February 2027.
Couples registering before Monday must produce evidence that customary negotiations or practices took place, which can include proof of lobola negotiations or of the marriage ceremony, together with witnesses who can confirm the union.
Requirements vary by circumstance, and Mavuso said marriage officers at Home Affairs offices will advise applicants according to their situation. Neither the department’s statements this week nor the gazette notice sets out a registration fee.
