You have no rights if you have a double X chromosome and you have all the rights if you have an X and Y chromosome. In other words, if you are a woman, you can't own land but if you are a man you can.

I think that's fundamentally wrong and needs to be tossed out of the window forever. But let me tell you the story. . .

In South Africa we have a constitution that protects the rights of all people. And yet women living in areas where land is allocated by a chief are still not entitled to own that land. I was chatting with a Bapedi chief the other day and he chose his words very carefully when I asked him directly if a woman could have title to land within his chiefdom.

He said that if a woman's husband died and there were no surviving sons then the woman would not be thrown off the land but would be allowed to live their until the end of her natural life. If she had unmarried daughters then they could live their too until they got married or until they died.

Apparently, under traditional rites, women are not entitled to land under any circumstances and, yes, they are discriminated against quite openly. No-one questions it: it's just the way of the world.

And it's not just land ownership where women are disadvantaged: take the case of a woman in KwaZulu-Natal who is currently appealing to the Constitutional Court because she was married in 1968 under customary law and if she gets divorced her husband keeps everything and she gets nothing.

Since her marriage, the laws have changed and from November 2000 people who married under customary law are married in community of property and if they split up their joint assets are split down the middle.

The Durban High Court has already ruled in her favour on the grounds that the customary law is constitutionally invalid and she is now asking the Constitutional Court to confirm this.

Another case in point concerns a domestic worker, Elsie, who has worked for me for years and was married to a wonderful chap called Joe. It was a late marriage (Elsie was in her 40s) and sadly, it was a childless marriage as well. Elsie and Joe were together for 18 years and started building a house together in Hammanskraal. They had just completed the main structure when, inexplicably and tragically, Joe died.

Elsie now faces a huge dilemma: she wants to complete the house and live in it until she dies. But she's not allowed to own the property because it's in area that's deemed as traditional land.

Whatever she invests in the property (and it will cost her about R50k to complete, maybe more) will not go to her heirs. She can apply to have the land granted to her brother but there's no certainty that this will happen because he lives in a different area and is not entitled to the land. What does she do?

The conflict between traditional law and our constitution is manifest.

Having been brought up by a single mother I personally find any discrimination against women despicable and distasteful. I'm sure my three brothers agree with me, too. All four of us can remember only too well how my mother's salary was just a fraction of her male counterparts purely because she was a woman.

Being white, we fortunately didn't suffer the other indignities that black women must endure under tribal laws – indignities such as not being able to own the land in which they've invested as much money and effort (if not more) as their husbands.

If a woman is childless or is a mother to daughters does this mean that she should not have all the vested rights that come with owning a piece of property for which she has slaved? She should have the right to pass on that property to her heirs who in turn should have the right to do with it what they will within the boundaries of the law.

Some weeks ago I wrote a column about animals being slaughtered in the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban or Cape Town and I got an outcry from black readers who said, in essence, that they're sick of white people interfering and if they want to kill a goat in the kitchen courtyard then they have the right to do so.

What they seemed to miss is the conflict that develops when cultures clash (I must add that I did get some wonderful responses from various chiefs around the country who said that slaughtering an animal in the suburbs simply wouldn't happen because such action flies in the face of traditional values, but that's another story).

What does South Africa do in the case of traditional lands and its ownership?

If we ask the chiefs to grant the same rights to women in terms of land ownership that they grant to men then we run the risk of unbuckling a fundamental part of the traditional culture. If we don't do so then we go against our own constitution and we continue to discriminate against women in perhaps the most basic of all rights: the right to own land.

While I can't answer the question, I certainly can pose it and, I guess it leads us to that inevitable conclusion from George Orwell: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others".

At the moment, men are more equal than women in terms of land ownership in traditional areas and my personal opinion is that it these must change – and change soon.

Do you think it's fair for women not own their own land? Is it fair that they can be entirely stripped of their property rights?

I certainly don't think so. In fact, I think it's high time that we set about removing the double standards from our constitution and our treatment of others and I think that every man in this country must work hard to stop this sort of foolish discrimination that enslaves women.

And if those traditional laws preclude equality then these laws must change.

*Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and don't pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at paddyhar@telkomsa.net.

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Brilliant article. - Anonymous

The Constitutional Court has held that all monogamous customary law marriages are in community of property - not, as was previously the case, only marriages entered into after 15 November 2000 (which default to "in community" unless otherwise agreed). That will give women in such marriages much greater rights to a share of marital assets.

The Court also struck down as "discriminatory and unfair" provisions in KwaZulu-Natal laws that the husband has ownership and full control of all family property. - Uta

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