South African LGBTQ+ activist, media personality and co-founder of the Feather Awards, Thami Dish has revealed that he is a married man. He’s exclusively shared with MambaOnline the deeply personal story of how an unexpected encounter in a Johannesburg Woolworths led him to husband Dr Wesley D Willis.
Thami, whose real name is Thami Kotlolo, and Wesley quietly tied the knot at Home Affairs on 26 June 2026, surrounded by a small group of friends, including Deputy Minister Mmapaseka Steve Letsike.
For a couple who initially imagined marriage as something deliberately simple and intimate, their union has come to carry layers of meaning that reach far beyond the two of them.
It falls in the year that South Africa marks 20 years since becoming the first country in Africa – and only the fifth in the world – to legalise same-sex marriage.
And now, Thami and Wesley hope to turn their own marriage into something bigger: an affirmation of queer love, family and visibility, including a planned historic mass same-sex wedding at Constitution Hill later this year.
A chance encounter at Woolies
Their love story began in March 2025. Wesley, an American psychologist, licensed clinical social worker and registered nurse, had relocated to South Africa in 2024 after years of visiting the country.
Originally from Talladega, Alabama, Wesley first travelled to South Africa in 2017 and says he immediately fell in love with the country.
He certainly did not expect that a few months later he would also fall in love with a South African.
The two first spotted each other while shopping at Woolworths in Johannesburg. Wesley was wandering the aisles trying to find familiar American foods – including the elusive grits he still struggles to track down locally – when their eyes met.
Thami eventually approached him. “I was like, ‘You’re cuter than you look,’” Thami recalled.
They kept bumping into one another afterwards, both physically and online, eventually exchanging numbers and beginning increasingly lengthy conversations.
Their paths even crossed unexpectedly at a police station after Thami had been mugged.
“It’s like the universe is telling you something,” MambaOnline suggested during the couple’s interview.
“Exactly,” Wesley replied.
A first date at 5am – and a proposal
Wesley initially invited Thami for coffee at Vida e Caffè.
Thami was unimpressed.
“I was like, ‘Oh, you know, these Americans,’” he laughed, admitting that a coffee date did not quite meet his expectations of what a proper date should look like.
But they kept talking. Eventually, during a conversation in the early hours of the morning, Thami changed his mind. At around 4.30am, he told Wesley he was finally ready for their coffee date – immediately.
Wesley arrived by Uber at around 5am, only to find himself outside Thami’s gate unable to reach him because Thami’s phone was on Do Not Disturb.
For a few panicked seconds, Wesley thought he had been ghosted.
He hadn’t, and Thami quickly phoned him back. The two headed to Pantry, the 24-hour restaurant in Rosebank, where they drank coffee, ate, people-watched and talked.
By the time they returned to Thami’s home, the conversation had moved to their futures: children, family and what they wanted from life.
Thami made his intentions unmistakably clear. “If we’re going to do this, you have to marry me,” he told Wesley.
Wesley said yes. It was, effectively, a marriage proposal on their first date.
To outsiders, the speed of the decision might seem startling. To them, it wasn’t.
“No, it’s not sudden,” Thami said. “What made it easier is the conversations we had been having all the time. And it just felt right.”
Wesley says one of the qualities that drew him to Thami was their shared belief that life and love did not need to be unnecessarily complicated.
“I want life to be simple, and I need somebody that recognises that life can be simple,” he explained.
They had even talked about getting married wearing tights and trainers.
“It is really all about our love and being together,” Wesley said. “There doesn’t have to be this pomp and circumstance.”
‘There must be intention’
What followed was less a conventional engagement than a deliberate process of building a life together.
They discussed finances, drew up an antenuptial contract, shared medical records and spoke openly about family, their future children’s names and their expectations of one another.
They initially looked at wedding rings before Thami reconsidered the expense. “That’s the cost of a whole baby,” he joked.
Underlying the humour was something more serious.
“Everything about us – we’ve realised that there’s a story about our lives and it can’t just be basic,” Thami said.
“There must be intention, and anybody that comes across that story must be able to be inspired or moved by it, or it must be educational and have some kind of direction.”
Getting married at Home Affairs
Because Wesley is an American citizen, getting married was not quite as simple as arriving at Home Affairs and signing a document.
The couple first had to undergo separate interviews to establish that their relationship was genuine.
Officials questioned them about their relationship and families, checked details about how they met and even went through Thami’s phone gallery.
After clearing the process, they were given a date to marry.
That date was Friday, 26 June.
They had originally hoped to marry on 28 June, the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, but because it fell on a Sunday, it wasn’t an option.
Instead, they discovered another layer of symbolism: 26 June is the anniversary of the adoption of South Africa’s Freedom Charter in 1955.
For a couple increasingly conscious of the meaning embedded in the milestones of their relationship, it felt fitting.
Before the wedding, Thami also staged an elaborate surprise for Wesley: a sheriff arrived at their home to serve him with what appeared to be a summons.
A horrified Wesley initially thought he was in serious trouble, but it turned out to be a “summons of love”, calling him to Home Affairs to marry Thami.
A family ring and a trip to Wimpy
The wedding itself contained another surprise.
As they prepared to exchange vows, Wesley produced a ring Thami had not expected. It belonged to Wesley’s grandmother.
“I almost fainted,” Thami recalled. “I was overwhelmed!”
The gesture transformed what they had planned as an almost administrative ceremony into something profoundly emotional – connecting their new marriage with family history stretching back generations.
Thami’s original dream of an extremely low-key wedding had included going to Wimpy afterwards for a burger. Even though friends had prepared a celebratory meal at home, Thami was determined not to abandon the plan entirely.
“I still want the wedding of my dreams,” he recalled saying. So the newlyweds and a few friends went to Wimpy.
They later returned home to celebrate with loved ones before going back to work – Wesley seeing patients and the couple continuing with the ordinary responsibilities of their day.
The following morning, they headed to KwaZulu-Natal for Durban Pride and to personally tell one of Wesley’s closest friends that they were married.
Why marriage equality matters
For Wesley, marriage is something he had imagined since childhood. “I’ve always known marriage was going to be my destiny,” he said.
Having come out at just 13 in a small Alabama town, he grew up with almost no examples of openly gay couples around him.
But he knew he wanted a family. “Finding the person who fit had just been really elusive for me,” he said.
Marriage, he argues, is about far more than ceremony. It offers legal recognition, security and an unequivocal acknowledgement that queer relationships and families are equal to anyone else’s.
“I knew marriage was the title that I wanted,” he said. “I didn’t want to be like, ‘Oh, your life partner, oh, your special friend.’”
“I want my kids to know they have two dads. And I want it to be on the birth certificate. And I want all of these things that my straight counterparts have, because my life is just as equally important.”
For Thami, marriage answers a different but related longing.
After building a successful life independently, he increasingly found himself asking who he was building it for.
“What was missing in my life was a partner, a life partner,” he said. “I’ve always dreamt of building with somebody.”
A traditional queer wedding
Their Home Affairs ceremony, however, is only one chapter. While they initially didn’t plan to have any other ceremonies, they realised that their family and friends would want to be part of celebrating their love.
And so, Thami and Wesley are also planning a traditional African wedding later this year. They see it as an opportunity to visibilise a queer union for those who may not have seen it before.
For Thami’s immediate family, it will be a significant moment. “This would be the first time that we actually have, like, a queer wedding,” he said. “My parents are experiencing it for the first time.”
Rather than simply reproducing heterosexual traditions, Thami sees the celebration as an opportunity to explore how African cultural practices around marriage can embrace queer couples.
“There must be a way in which we can create our own culture and our own way of marrying and degendering a lot of things,” he said.
That could include reconsidering traditional songs and rituals whose language assumes that every marriage involves a man and a woman.
“I think it introduces a new conversation, and also creating our own culture,” said Thami.
20 years of marriage equality
Their marriage comes at an extraordinary moment in South Africa’s LGBTQ+ history.
This year marks 30 years since the adoption of South Africa’s groundbreaking constitution, which explicitly protects the rights of queer people. The 30th of November will also commemorate 20 years since the Civil Union Act came into effect, making South Africa the first African country to legalise marriage between people of the same sex.
For Thami, remembering the anniversary is not just about celebrating what South Africa achieved. It is also about remembering that rights can be lost.
“There are people who died for those things,” he said. “There are people who were vilified. They spent countless nights being told they are nothing, being told who they are not.”
Despite South Africa’s celebrated Constitution, LGBTQ+ people continue to encounter discrimination and practical barriers. Even the forms Thami and Wesley encountered while getting married still referred to “bride” and “groom”.
After 20 years of marriage equality, Thami believes these seemingly small exclusions still matter. “If we don’t find a way to make our voices a little bit louder and make it known and be seen, we won’t win anything at all,” he said.
A mass queer wedding at Constitution Hill
That belief has inspired what may become the most public chapter of their marriage story.
Thami plans to launch the Circle of Love campaign, inviting LGBTQ+ couples from across South Africa who want to marry to take part in a mass wedding at Johannesburg’s Constitution Hill on 10 December.
The aim is to commemorate two decades of legal same-sex marriage by transforming one of South Africa’s most important symbols of constitutional democracy into a celebration of queer love.
“What better way than to have it at the highest court of the land and literally invite everyone and anyone, anywhere in this country to come and get married?” Thami said.
He also hopes people who helped secure marriage equality in South Africa will be invited to witness the occasion. Holding it at Constitution Hill would itself make a statement.
“It is a form of some kind of protest – and a beautiful protest,” he said.
‘I too will be married’
For Wesley, the power of visibility is also deeply personal.
Growing up as a gay boy without married queer couples to look towards, he understands what it can mean for younger LGBTQ+ people to see possibilities for their own futures.
“If they’re able to see it now, I hope that it can inspire them to see something that’s alive, that they can aspire to and say, ‘I too will be married…’”
That, ultimately, is why Thami and Wesley have decided to share a marriage they initially intended to keep largely private.
Their story belongs to them. But they also recognise that visibility can give someone else permission to imagine a future they may never have believed was available to them.
For Thami, that is the responsibility that comes with being known.
“If I’m going to do this thing, I can’t shy away from the fact that I’m a little bit popular and somebody else somewhere is going to pick up something – and it better not be just basic,” he said.
“Let it have real meaning.”
Twenty years after South Africa told same-sex couples that their love could be recognised in law, Thami and Wesley are making that right their own – in a Home Affairs office, over a Wimpy meal, through family and tradition, and soon, as witnesses to other queer couples at Constitution Hill.
Because, as Thami puts it simply: “Let those who want to marry, marry.”
