Getting married in a Civil Marriage or Civil Union, has the goal to get your commitment captured in the Population Register.
This is the job of the Department of Home Affairs of the country in which your birth / citizenship records are held.

Here's the basics.

People from South Africa:

If you are a ZA citizen, or a permanent resident with a bar-coded ID, we have you on system with your ID number.  This means we can run a check against your ID number here, and see to whom you're connected, and what your name / surname is on system.

If you were previously married, and your partner or spouse passed away, the theory is that in registering their passing the system would have updated you to a widow or widower.  This does not always happen correctly, so we do need to run a check.

If you were previously married, and your partner or spouse and yourself got divorced, the theory is that the Department of Justice, your expensive lawyer, or at least the Clerk of the Court would care enough to update the system with DHA.  This rarely happens, so you will need a little form (we'll send it to you on request), which you drag off to the Court where you got divorced, they fill in that they are issuing the document to you, you fill in that you received it, and then you go to the closest DHA to there, with your thumb print (haha), and all your docs, and they update your marital status to show Divorced.  We hear you.  You don't live there anymore.  You can't ask anyone there to go check on your behalf.  You are busy with your thumb and can't send it to a DHA branch...  We start by doing the check first, and THEN we panic.  When you panic, check in with us, there are ways to fix this.

People from Elsewhere:

IF you are a permanent resident, South Africa will have some record of your current marital status.  The authority on your status though, is your country of origin.  Before you can get married here, you will need to get a Letter of Non Impediment from your country of origin.  The format of this thing changes between countries, and the countries who are part of the Hague Convention's Human Trafficking mitigation agreement, will require an Apostille stamp on their outgoing documents.  You will need to google your country of origin and see how they do things, or talk to an expert.   Check in with us, we may have some pointers after doing this for a while. 🙂

IF you are a permanent resident with a bar-coded ID doc, and you're marrying a South African, the two of you can skip the Immigration Interview process entirely.  This is probably the nicest thing that can happen to you.  You still need the Letter of Non Impediment though.

IF you are a permanent resident without a bar-coded ID, so you don't have an ID number, you will still need your Letter of Non Impediment, but as a special bonus, you also get to do the Immigration Interview.  We help to set that up.  So check in with us.

If you are from elsewhere, and have no official ties with South Africa, you can keep reading here.  There's also some cool news for Permanent Residents, so keep going.

IF your country does not issue LONIs (yep, letters of non impediment, single status letters, or the like), there are official avenues to get this confirmation, so please, again, check in with us.

Now - South Africa allows, encourages, welcomes and brags about the equality of Trans, Gay, Lesbian and Bi folks.  We're all good to marry you to the love of your life, as long as there are only the 2 of you (we haven't figured out the logistics of throuples and polycules yet, but give us a minute) you are both single, and over 18, and legally in the country.  IF your country of origin would have a hissy fit and implode if they knew you were one of the alphabet people (LGBTQIA+), and IF they were going to want to check that your future spouse isn't related to you by adding both your names to the documentation and it would out you, we have in the past worked with DHA Civic /Immigration to accept official documents that show your single status (Tax Certificates or such), but do not put your life in danger.  Again - you guessed it.  Connect with us.

So - what can we check on the South African Population Register?

Finally!
Here's what we can do.
We can see the marital status of anyone with an ID number who gives us permission to look for the purposes of verifying their marital status on system.

We can not check, if you're a foreign national, what your marital status is in side South Africa, but if you were married TO a South African, we could check their status, and you'd show up as your date of birth. Cool hu?

We can see if the South African partner's surname has changed and if they are showing up as married to you.

We have a "compliance officer", a person who growls and makes sure that all the possible laws are followed, with the utmost integrity.  The compliance officer's job is to keep us as compliant as we possibly can be, to avoid reputational and legal risks to you, to Tie the Knot Cape Town Overberg & Beyond (Pty) Ltd, and to the Marriage Officers who work here.

Please nod knowingly, like you understood everything.

Okay!  Now that you read everything there is to read?

Here's your marital status check request form.