{"id":167736,"date":"2020-10-05T21:28:27","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T19:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/gay-couples-struggle-marry-richards-bay\/"},"modified":"2020-10-05T21:28:27","modified_gmt":"2020-10-05T19:28:27","slug":"gay-couples-struggle-to-marry-in-richards-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/gay-couples-struggle-to-marry-in-richards-bay\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay couple\u2019s struggle to marry in Richards Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/Unknown%20photographer\/buckus__pillay.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Photo of a couple\" data-pagespeed-url-hash=\"3448330138\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/gay-couples-struggle-to-marry-in-richards-bay.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Kyle Pillay (left) and Muhammad Buckus have struggled for over a year to formalise their same-sex partnership at the Richards Bay Home Affairs office. Photo supplied<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A same-sex couple has struggled for over a year to get an appointment to marry in Richards Bay.<\/li>\n<li>They had been together for five years and had held a religious commitment ceremony.<\/li>\n<li>They were given various excuses by Home Affairs officials as to why their partnership could not be legally solemnized.<\/li>\n<li>After GroundUp started asking questions they were phoned and told they can marry on 8 October.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr>\n<p>Muhammad Buckus and Kyle Pillay have been together for about five years. They live openly as a same-sex couple. A year ago, they exchanged wedding vows at a traditional Hindu ceremony. But they have been unable to formalise their partnership, because Home Affairs officials in Richards Bay kept turning them away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have been given excuse after excuse and it seems to us that the problem is that we are a same-sex couple,\u201d says Buckus.<\/p>\n<p>On the eve of moving from Pietermaritzburg to Richards Bay, they went to the temple with a few close friends and committed themselves to each other.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe knew we also wanted to get married legally,\u201d says Buckus. \u201cWe didn\u2019t for a moment think it would be a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He and PIllay have been to their local office about five times since September last year. Buckus recounted the excuses he\u2019d been given by various officials and forwarded Whatsapp messages and voice-notes he has sent to various Home Affairs managers in the province.<\/p>\n<p>Initially, they were told there was no marriage officer. Then they were given an email address for one but she responded that there were no dates available until the following year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe went there to find out what dates were available and we were then told that officials there were not trained to do same sex marriages.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe then contacted the manager, who told us that was not so, but they didn\u2019t have a marriage register or certificates,\u201d said Buckus.<\/p>\n<p>He said they were told to \u201ctry\u201d other offices in the province but were given no guarantees.<\/p>\n<p>Then came the Covid-19 lockdown and the office closed. But after it reopened they were again given the excuse that it didn\u2019t have the necessary documents.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn one of our visits, an official tipped us off that they would never perform the marriage there \u2018because they are Christians who have staunch beliefs but they will never tell you that to your faces\u2019,\u201d said Buckus.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday last week, a day after GroundUp sent questions to the department, Buckus said he received a call and was told an appointment was available on 8 October.<\/p>\n<p>While thrilled at this development, he said he and Pillay still felt they had been victimised.<\/p>\n<p>Home Affairs spokesperson Siya Qoza said the Richards Bay office could not assist the couple earlier this year as it did not have the necessary documents to solemnize same sex marriages.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe couple was advised that the offices in Umgeni, Ethekwini and Ulundi would be able to assist them. The couple advised the officials in Richards Bay that they would wait until that office was able to assist them,\u201d said Qoza.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"article-copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2020 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/gay-couples-struggle-to-marry-in-richards-bay.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kyle Pillay (left) and Muhammad Buckus have struggled for over a year to formalise their same-sex partnership at the Richards Bay Home Affairs office. Photo supplied A same-sex couple has struggled for over a year to get an appointment to marry in Richards Bay. They had been together for five years and had held a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":167737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-167736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/gay-couples-struggle-to-marry-in-richards-bay.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}