In South Africa, patriarchal law cuts some women off from owning their home
(FUCK THE GODDAMNED PATRIARCHY!!!)
In South Africa, patriarchal law cuts some women off from owning their home
How a land law seeking to fix the racial injustices of apartheid created gender barriers for Black women instead.
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As a result of a law dating back to apartheid, in some cases only a man, considered the head of the family, may inherit a house [File: Sebabatso Mosamo/AP]
By Nkateko Mabasa
Published On 21 Aug 202421 Aug 2024
Johannesburg, South Africa – For more than a decade, Johanna Motlhamme has been fighting to get her family home back after it was sold from under her, leaving her and her four children without their rightful inheritance. The 74-year-old’s plight is one that has its roots in the racist laws that prevented Black people from owning land in apartheid South Africa, housing activists have said – a plight inadvertently worsened at the start of democracy when legislation seeking to repair the racial injustices created gender barriers instead. “Thirty years after the end of apartheid, hundreds of thousands of Black families living in South Africa’s urban townships are facing the same tenure insecurity and the threat of homelessness as they fiercely contest the ownership, occupation, control and rights to access so-called ‘family homes’,” legal rights group the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI) said in a recent report (PDF).
Motlhamme’s story goes back to 1977, when the then-27-year-old married her husband in community of property, meaning spouses share everything equally. They moved into a small two-bedroom house in Soweto, a sprawling township southwest of Johannesburg, where Motlhamme lived until their divorce in 1991. At the time, Black people in cities could at most secure long-term leases of their homes as the law sought to keep the country’s majority population landless. By the time apartheid was defeated in 1994, the government had introduced new legislation, the Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Act 112 of 1991, which “aimed to provide a more secure form of land tenure to Africans who, under the apartheid regime, had precarious land rights”, according to SERI. The act upgraded the property rights of Black long-term leaseholders, allowing them to finally own their homes. But there was a caveat. “By legislative provision, only a man, considered the head of the family, could hold the [property] permit,” SERI said.
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Activists say hundreds of thousands of Black families living in urban townships face housing insecurity [File: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters]
In a decision housing activists have said was rooted in “patriarchal customary succession norms”, the new law effectively pushed wives, sisters, mothers and daughters out of inheriting. For Motlhamme, although she owned 50 percent of her township home by right and according to the terms of her divorce, the Upgrading Act did not enable a way to reflect that. So when her ex-husband registered the house in 2000, sole ownership went to him. Three years later, he remarried and his new wife moved in. Motlhamme, who had not lived in the house since the divorce, did not manage to discuss the ownership details with him before he died in 2013. Then everything changed. “My three siblings and I were kicked out when our father died. His second wife later sold the house,” Motlhamme’s eldest son Elliot Maimane, 50, told Al Jazeera.
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Many people in townships like Soweto are struggling with housing disputes, social welfare groups say [File: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters]
Video Duration 47 minutes 24 seconds 47:24
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Women and children are disproportionately at risk of being rendered homeless in South Africa, activists say [File: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters]
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Al Jazeera contacted the Department of Human Settlements for the City of Johannesburg and the Gauteng Province to comment on the challenges, but they did not respond. Meanwhile, while the government and the courts deliberate, families who have lost their homes are disheartened and growing impatient. Maimane wants the court to settle the matter of Motlhamme’s ownership of the family house as soon as possible.“The system was not fair, it was one-sided. It gave all authorisation to my dad and excluded my mother,” he said. “If it had been equal, then things would not have turned out this way.” As for his mother, Mainmane says that “she wants to see her kids living in the house and for the house to be returned to its rightful owner. We just want everything back to normal. We want to have our childhood home back.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/8/21/in-south-africa-patriarchal-law-cuts-some-women-off-from-owning-their-home