A recent court ruling highlights the legacy of apartheid in property disputes when a brother turned to court to have his elderly sister evicted from their family 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.
Under those laws, their parents were never recognised as legal owners despite living on the property.
The Palmridge Magistrates 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.
