Elderly siblings locked in bitter fight over Apartheid-era township home

APARTHEID laws came to the forefront during a legal dispute between two elderly siblings, who were at loggerheads over a family property left by their parents.

- ZELDA VENTER

Under those laws, their parents were never recognised as legal owners despite living on the property.

The Palmridge Magistrate's Court recently dismissed an eviction application brought by the applicant, identified only as G, against his sister T and other occupiers in relation to a long-occupied family home in Moshoeshoe Township in Katlehong.

The matter concerned an attempt to evict the respondents, who are family members, from a property where occupation and ownership arrangements were historically shaped by apartheid-era racial exclusion, gender discrimination, and unequal access to formal property rights.

Although the applicant was reflected as the legal owner, the court heard that this status was due to historical permit systems that recognised him as the principal holder by virtue of being an adult male at the time. His mother, a coloured woman residing in a Black township, could not be recognised as a permit holder under the discriminatory laws then in force.