I discovered an interesting snippet about The Beast yesterday (Monday 11 May). But first a little backstory.

We have an ongoing problem with identity theft here - illegal immigrants get themselves listed as "married" to South African citizens and so doing, obtain permanent residence status. Our Department of Home Affairs therefore asked women to check their marital status on the department's website. I duly verified on the site that I was still single.

Last year, in the months preceding my discovery of The Beast's treachery, I attempted several times to verify his marital status. I was  having niggling doubts and worries and basically felt the need to run this simple check to quell some of my fears. So I plugged his ID number in and...the site came up with an error. The service was offline. Over the next few months I tried several times but the damn service was down every time and eventually I forgot about it.

 About a week ago a friend sent me two links, one being to verify that you are not listed as Deceased. We discovered prior to this year's General Elections that several hundred people were accidentally listed as Deceased - making it rather difficult for them to vote. :-)

 The other link was to verify marital status. So I checked mine and yes, I'm still single. Then I entered his ID number. His status read:

 MARRIED (SINCE SATURDAY FEBRUARY 13, 1999)

I wasn't all that surprised to see that he is still officially married. I had a feeling that J (the woman he married last year) might not have divorced him. However what did surprise me was the date - 1999.

So, if the Home Affairs website is to be believed, The Beast is still legally married to his second wife.

I'm almost sure his marriage last year to J was conducted as a Muslim ceremony only. In this country, customary and religious marriages have to be registered with Home Affairs to be fully recognised under the law. If I understand correctly, this allows men to legally marry more than one woman under customary or religious law but they are still only able to marry one woman at a time in the legal sense.

If J and The Beast didn't register their marriage with Home Affairs then they were married by religious law and not the law of the Land. She, being a staunch Muslim, would most likely find the religious ceremony more important than the legal one. So I very much doubt she knew or even suspected he was still legally married.

In any case, I feel this still qualifies as bigamy and is yet another example of the depth of The Beast's treachery. How I hate that man.