'They recruit women who are about to die'

The women and three Egyptian men were arrested following a sting at the Home Affairs offices in Springs, east of Johannesburg.

Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said: "We welcome the arrests and hope that law enforcement agencies will continue to crackdown on such despicable acts.

"Not only are these women degrading themselves, but they also put the security of the country at risk because our documents fall into the hands of people who may use them to partake in illegal activities."

The foreigners apparently married the locals to obtain South African citizenship and later, passports, which they used to gain access to countries such as the UK and the US.

One of the women arrested yesterday was married in 2007. She did not know where her "husband" was.

"My husband gave me R500 [to marry him]. Our agreement was for him to give me [a further] R200 a month," she told The Times.

A second woman said: "I wanted money to buy food."

One of the six local women arrested was allegedly the syndicates' ringleader and had recruited the women from Duduza, on the East Rand.

"There is a huge syndicate. The [Egyptians] go to hospitals and recruit HIV-positive women who are about to die and get married to them in order to get South African citizenship," an official who did not want to be named told The Times.

A third woman said she knows the man she married: "He gave me R500 and it was supposed to be R250 every month thereafter.

''It is an income if it comes every month," she said, adding that her husband doesn't always deposit the money into her account.

The official said one of the three Egyptians was a ringleader who "organised foreigners from his country to marry South African women".

The official said it was for this reason that the UK last year required all South Africans to have visas in order to enter that country.

Investigations into the possible involvement of home affairs' officials are also under way.