Husbands Can Take Surnames of Wives – South Africa’s Top Court
The Constitutional Court has ruled that husbands can take the surname of their wives, overturning a colonial-era law that barred them from doing so and was deemed discriminatory.
The case was brought by two couples who sued the Department of Home Affairs for gender discrimination, after the men were denied the right to assume or hyphenate their wives’ surnames. The law was introduced in South Africa during the years of white-minority rule.
The couples argued that the law was archaic and patriarchal, and violated equality rights enshrined in the constitution that South Africa adopted at the end of apartheid in 1994. The court said that many African cultures traditionally allowed women to keep their birth names and children to take maternal clan names, but colonial laws suppressed these practices. Parliament was instructed to amend the Births and Deaths Registration Act to give effect to the judgment.
