{"id":168135,"date":"2020-10-08T18:34:52","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T16:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/gay-couple-legally-say-i-do-after-year-long-battle\/"},"modified":"2020-10-08T18:34:52","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T16:34:52","slug":"gay-couple-legally-say-i-do-after-year-long-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/gay-couple-legally-say-i-do-after-year-long-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay couple legally say \u201cI do\u201d after year-long battle"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/Third%20Party\/muhammad_buckus_and_kyle_pillay_marry_2020.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt data-pagespeed-url-hash=\"3264545752\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/gay-couple-legally-say-i-do-after-year-long-battle.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Muhammad Buckus (right) and Kyle Pillay were married legally at Home Affairs in Richards Bay on Thursday after a year-long battle. Photo: Supplied<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Gay couple, Muhammad Buckus and Kyle Pillay, were legally married on Thursday.<\/li>\n<li>The couple struggled for over a year to get an appointment to marry at Home Affairs in Richards Bay.<\/li>\n<li>They said the only glitch was that the system wouldn\u2019t allow the two men to change their surname immediately.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr>\n<p>A same-sex couple in Richards Bay finally said their \u201cI do\u2019s\u201d legally at Empangeni\u2019s Home Affairs office on Thursday. Muhammad Buckus and Kyle Pillay, who have been together for about five years, were given \u201cthe runaround\u201d for a year by officials.<\/p>\n<p>This week, GroundUp <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/gay-couples-struggle-marry-richards-bay\/\">reported<\/a> that Buckus and Pillay had exchanged wedding vows in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Pietermaritzburg in September 2019. They moved to Richards Bay soon after and immediately started making enquiries at the local Home Affairs office as to when they could legally solemnise their partnership.<\/p>\n<p>The couple said they were given \u201cexcuse after excuse\u201d, including that there were no qualified marriage offices to do same-sex marriages and that there was no documentation nor certificates.<\/p>\n<p>GroundUp then sent questions to the department and the next day the couple were given an appointment for 10am on Thursday, 8 October.<\/p>\n<p>Buckus said a Home Affairs official from Pretoria contacted them on Wednesday and \u201creminded us that we had the appointment and said he was checking that everything was ok and said he would phone us afterwards\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Buckus said that while they appreciated the \u201cVIP treatment\u201d, they just \u201cwanted to get married like any other person can\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>After their legal ceremony on Thursday, Buckus said: \u201cWe are relieved\u2026The marriage officer was very kind to us. The only glitch was the issue of changing surnames. The system picked up that it was two men and wouldn\u2019t allow it. So we just left our surnames as is,\u201d he said.<\/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-couple-legally-say-i-do-after-year-long-battle.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Muhammad Buckus (right) and Kyle Pillay were married legally at Home Affairs in Richards Bay on Thursday after a year-long battle. Photo: Supplied Gay couple, Muhammad Buckus and Kyle Pillay, were legally married on Thursday. The couple struggled for over a year to get an appointment to marry at Home Affairs in Richards Bay. They [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":168136,"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-168135","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-couple-legally-say-i-do-after-year-long-battle.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168135","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=168135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}