Vannessa Murphy and Zuandra Van Tonder, who moved from South Africa to Tipperary town in May 2022, have a modern love story to tell. The couple met on TikTok at the height of Covid.
“She commented on one of my videos and then I went on to her profile and commented on hers. I sent her a message telling her she was beautiful, would she mind talking to me. She didn’t reply for like four hours,” recalls Van Tonder.
“I think we probably had about six hours’ sleep in that two weeks, that’s how much we were talking,” says Murphy. Separated by 1,300km, with Murphy living in South Africa’s Western Cape and Van Tonder in the North West province, Van Tonder then took a leap of faith and decided to drive down to surprise Murphy “conspiring how I’ll get there and everything” with three of her friends.
They got married in 2021, but not without some difficulty. “It’s like hen’s teeth trying to find a government official in South Africa who’s actually prepared to marry a same-sex couple,” says Murphy. “We’d already been rejected four times before we found somebody.”
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They say the people in Ireland are much more accepting. Murphy says: “People don’t care. If you say to someone here ‘I’m a lesbian’, they’ll say ‘And water is wet’. We are stating the obvious here, who cares? Irish people don’t judge anyone.”
Safety and security were the biggest motivating factors for the couple in making the move, following shortly after Murphy’s mother, who came to Tipperary in 2018 after rekindling her first love. Her mother got married in Ireland in October 2020. Murphy and Van Tonder tuned into the ceremony from South Africa via WhatsApp video call.
“You need to keep to yourself in South Africa because you can’t really trust anyone. It’s too dangerous,” says Van Tonder. Adjusting to life in Ireland took some time, but eventually the couple’s anxiety started to lessen.
“We had our defences up for quite some time ... we did have to change our attitude,” reflects Murphy, expressing her bafflement at “the fact that we don’t have security bars on our windows, we don’t have alarms to set when we leave the house”.
“I’ve been on anxiety medication since I was 14,” she says. “I took my last anxiety tablet, I think it was on the 7th of June, 2022. And that was only because we had a meeting at the international protection office and I was petrified.”
Although moving to Ireland in 2022 was ‘smooth sailing’, Murphy and Van Tonder’s first attempt to enter the country in November 2021 did not go to plan. After landing in Dublin Airport, the couple say they were turned away at immigration and ‘basically within an hour, ushered back on to another flight’
For Van Tonder, “Tipperary town is like a safe space.”
“The people are nice. You stand in the road talking to someone for an hour. You pet a person’s dog, you speak. Everyone is just so nice and friendly and helpful.”
Murphy doesn’t hesitate to join in singing its praises, “They’re going to have to drag us out of Tipperary town. We’ve fallen in love with this town.”
“I used to have a firearm in my car door, ready to use at any given moment, for protection,” says Van Tonder.
This lies in stark contrast to the couple’s current situation. “Here, on the other hand, I walk home at 10 o’clock at night by myself,” adds Murphy, “either talking to my mum on the phone or playing music with my earphones and absolutely not aware of my surroundings.”
Although moving to Ireland in 2022 was “smooth sailing”, Murphy and Van Tonder’s first attempt to enter the country in November 2021 did not go to plan. After landing in Dublin Airport, the couple say they were turned away at immigration and “basically within an hour, ushered back on to another flight”.
Soon after arriving back in South Africa, “there was a cash-in-transit bombing about 200 metres from our house”, Murphy recalls, and so despite feeling defeated by their first experience the couple decided to try joining Murphy’s mother in Ireland once more.
Both Murphy, who currently works in a betting centre, and Van Tonder, who is a barber, have started volunteering with the Irish Red Cross.
“They actually kept me sane, I would’ve gone off my head if I wasn’t able to do the duties because I only started working in December 2023,” says Murphy, who dreams of following in her mother’s footsteps and becoming a paramedic. She is learning how to drive to achieve this, after getting her emergency medical technician (EMT) training through the Red Cross. Murphy was shortlisted for unit member of the year in the Irish Red Cross National Volunteer Awards 2024.
Speaking of the challenges faced in her hunt for employment, she says: “I got quite a bit of actual discrimination. I went for a lot of interviews and as soon as I said that I’m an asylum seeker, ‘Okay we’re going to have to rethink this. Somebody will be in touch with you.' Somebody would phone me and say unfortunately we’re going to have to retract the offer of employment.”
For Murphy and Van Tonder, the cost of living has not been a concern since moving to Ireland. “In South Africa we needed to count our last change just to buy a loaf of bread,” says Murphy. “I don’t understand the cost of living issue that people are having [in Ireland], but, you know what, each to their own.”
Van Tonder says: “Now I never have to worry about money. And I don’t have a luxury job, I’m a barber. Same as what I was in South Africa, but I can go into any shop here and I can buy anything if I wanted.
“We pay all of our bills easily and we don’t struggle with money.”
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The couple have started learning Irish and Murphy, who has Irish heritage, has been trying to trace her family tree. “My dad’s family comes from Cork. I did a DNA test with my heritage and want to see if I can connect with anybody ... I think it was my dad’s grandparents were from Cork and my mum’s gran was from Dublin.”
Van Tonder laughs: “When I show my clients photos of her they say she’s definitely Irish. You guys look alike but you can see you’re not the Irish one, she’s the Irish one.”
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
