Botswana: Wedding day departure

Despite Jenny Curtis and Marius Schoon's defiant enthusiasm, the banning orders did eventually take their toll. When ‘Marius received a tip that he was going to be arrested’, due to his communication with Breytenbach while at Pretoria Central, he decided that his only viable option was to flee the country. Consequently, Jenny Curtis decided that they would need to get married straight away ‘so that, should Marius be caught and imprisoned, she would be able to visit him’. However, figuring out how to marry two people who were under banning orders was by no means straightforward. As Jack Curtis explains, ‘This presented a knotty problem. A magistrates’ court was out of the question for the wedding, and any minister of one of the established churches was likely to hedge at being party to an illegal gathering.’ In fact, as early as March of 1977, both Curtis and Schoon applied to the minister of justice for an exemption to marry. In a provocative attempt to give these applications additional weight, the couple had their letters hand-delivered by Helen Suzman, the Progressive Party MP, who could add a personal touch to the appeal. Suzman attached a note: ‘You once said in the House that you are “a kindly man” – maybe you will react accordingly to the requests I was told were contained in the letters.’ In addition to requesting an exemption to marry, the couple also requested permission to visit Marius's sister in Natal, and ‘Schoon also requested a variation of his restrictions to enable him to live with Curtis at her address’. Unsurprisingly, none of these requests for exemptions was granted. Even though the applications were submitted during April, the minister of justice made no reply whatsoever, through all of April and May. Therefore, the couple decided that the wedding needed to proceed illegally. On 3 June 1977, Jenny Curtis and Marius Schoon were married.