The family home in South African townships is contested – why occupation, inheritance and history are clashing with laws
Retrieved on:
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Apartheid, Male, Man, Housing, Solution, Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, High court, Public housing, Sale, House, Constitutional court, Wills, Sibling, Decision-making, Master, Confusion, Theron v Master of the High Court, Ownership, Family, Legislation, Real estate, Cryptocurrency, Property management, Life insurance, Nursing, Gum arabic, Inheritance
In racially segregated townships, living in “family houses” and passing them on depended officially on a range of permits.
Key Points:
- In racially segregated townships, living in “family houses” and passing them on depended officially on a range of permits.
- A crucial measure in undoing apartheid was transferring ownership of township houses to their long-term residents.
- In 1986, a few years before apartheid’s end, the law changed to enable outright ownership for black people in urban areas.
- The family house is central but effectively legally invisible, leaving many people uncertain about what it even means to own or inherit.
Collective home but individual property
- Often, a group of siblings is at the core – the children of an earlier, typically male, household head.
- Family members might build extra structures on the site to live in.
- A family member would come forward as family “representative” and “custodian” of the collective home.
- In many cases, relatives were unaware that this had happened, or even that an application for title had been made.
Inheritance: an added layer of complexity
- Inheritance has added another layer to the problem.
- These were finally struck down by the Constitutional Court in 2000 and 2004.
- Inheritance by the eldest son was replaced by rules for all South Africans, prioritising spouses and children in nuclear families.
Efforts to resolve the issue
- In Gauteng province, where Johannesburg is located, housing tribunals were set up in the late 1990s to decide ownership and to broker family house rights agreements.
- But it turned out that they held no legal water: from the point of view of deeds registration, custodians’ ownership was unrestricted.
- In the Master’s Office, where inheritance is administered, kin complain that their family home somehow became the property of one relative.
- In Johannesburg, officials try to explain the law, while where appropriate querying how title came to be acquired.
Towards legal recognition
- In 2022, the Shomang judgment in the North Gauteng High Court called for legally recognising the family house.
- A sufficiently flexible notion of family title would be challenging to work out, and doubtless the basis for countless disputes.