In what a Cape Argus report calls a landmark victory for poor and working-class women across Cape Town, the Western Cape High Court, sitting as the Equality Court, has declared the city’s historical housing policy – the ‘Housing Scheme Constructed by the Local Authority’ – to be unconstitutional and discriminatory against women. An interim order was granted in which the court ordered the sale agreements under this housing policy ‘be amended and rectified to reflect both the married male beneficiaries and their female spouses (as at the date of allocation) as co-purchasers in equal shares of the housing units’. The application was brought by Gadijah Abdullah, with the support of the Legal Resources Centre and the Women’s Legal Centre (WLC) Trust.
WLC director Sehaam Samaai explained that this matter was not confined to Muslim marriages but any union where the rights of working-class women to benefit from property ownership were historically not recognized. She said Abdullah was one of many who were unable to get support from housing because she was not listed as a beneficiary. ‘We are saying that is unconstitutional because why is the city promoting a policy that gives unequal rights to parties who are cohabiting or are married. The consequence of this is, she can’t get a subsidy again, even though her name is not there, it’s not her house but they allocated her name towards the subsidy,’ Samaai said. The city was further interdicted against the transfer of these housing units to men as sole beneficiaries until the final order is granted. The city has since issued a statement recognizing that over 12 000 women may be affected by this measure of ‘historical’ discrimination, placing the error at the feet of national government.
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