The Constitutional Court\u00a0has\u00a0ruled\u00a0that husbands can take the surname of their wives,\u00a0overturning a colonial-era law that barred them from doing so and was deemed discriminatory.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0The law was introduced in South Africa during the years of white-minority rule.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0couples 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.\u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Constitutional Court\u00a0has\u00a0ruled\u00a0that husbands can take the surname of their wives,\u00a0overturning a colonial-era law 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