Perspectives on the Recognition of Male and Female Primogeniture in Post-1994 Democratic South Africa

This paper looks at the aspects of pre-1994 apartheid laws that deliberately and brazenly discriminated against women and a girl child from inheriting, taking leadership responsibility in society, and the inhering property of their deceased fathers just because of their gender. The paper accentuates that post-1994 progressive transformative constitutional and legislative prescripts and interventions have restored women's dignity by placing them on equal footing with their male counterparts, hence being gender neutral. Women and girls now have the right to inherit properties, and the jurisprudence of the South African courts has affirmed equal recognition for both male and female primogeniture. Methodologically, this paper used mainly a literature review approach. To this end, the Google search engine and the internet were utilised, whereby keywords on the issues at hand were inserted to search for relevant literature in the subject area, relevant materials generated were retrieved, analysed, and interpreted, and relevant aspects were used to address the problems of discriminatory tendencies against women in inheritance spaces. The paper found that post-1994 jurists in South Africa have been very meticulous in ensuring that the prescripts in laws are being deployed and used to emancipate women and girl child from all discriminatory practices. Similarly, most apartheid laws that prevented women from inheritance, successions, and leadership are being declared invalid and unconstitutional. By so doing, preventing violations of women's rights and protect the right of women to dignity as enshrined in the Constitution.