Entitlements, Disputes, and Provision for the Future: Making Wills and Negotiating Inheritance in South Africa's Middle Class
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: History and Cultures
Abstract
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa's black middle class has grown exponentially, as a new stratum of black citizens has moved into government and corporate employment. As more South Africans accumulate substantial property, its disbursement becomes a new terrain on which battles of kinship obligation are fought. This project approaches class reproduction through an ethnographic focus on wills and testaments: the processes through which they are made, and the disputes surrounding their execution. The result is an innovative lens that attends to the role of experts and bureaucrats in shaping the dynamics of class. It extends my interest in class reproduction, explored in my forthcoming book (CUP 2015) based on fieldwork in South Africa since 2006. In South Africa, as the post-apartheid black middle class ages and considers family futures, the project is especially timely.
The project addresses key anthropological concerns. It combines political-economic (inequality) and cultural (lifestyle) perspectives on the middle class, and these with scholarship on state institutions. And it extends existing work on class and status reproduction by transcending generations.
How do black middle-class South Africans pass on the property that shapes their kin's status and life chances? As will-making is promoted ever more widely, how do institutions that facilitate it inflect experiences of kinship and property before death forces the issue? How does this compare with the established white middle class?
Within families, how are competing definitions of ownership, rights and entitlements judged? When expressions of future plans also become expressions of state regulation, how does this affect access to family property (e.g. township houses)? Who is included and excluded, in the bottleneck of bureaucracy and legal process?
How and why are particular possessions valued? How are people's roles and entitlements constituted in the process?
Amidst increasing inequality and precarity, how is will-making talked about? How have concerns about property and inheritance been reflected in the media?
Given the South African black middle class's diverse history, how does will-making today compare with the past?
Examining class reproduction over time means combining ethnographic and historical methods. For the former, I will begin with long-term observation in the Johannesburg High Court where disputes around wills are heard, and trace cases out from the formal probate process to fieldwork with individuals and families. Meanwhile, I will work with will consultants and lawyers, and interview judges, members of financial organisations, and the experts responsible for designing their online will templates. The former Dean of Law at Wits University (where I am a Research Associate) has expressed support, and is facilitating access to lawyers and judges. Taken together, the ethnographic research moves between institutional and personal processes, offering a bottom-up perspective that challenges easy meta-narratives.
The historical research builds on ongoing collaborative work with my proposed mentor and colleagues at Wits University, on probate records as a source for South African black middle class history. This aims to capture all relevant records over a century of South African history. My proposed project explores qualitative case studies and aggregated quantitative data, offering a longer view on the accumulation and dispersal of property. Foregrounding the complex and unexpected roles of state officials and institutions raises questions for ethnographic fieldwork. For example, as executors, state officials diligently spent inheritances on behalf of deceased (e.g. minors' school fees). Meanwhile, ethnographic fieldwork on probate processes, and the intersection of personal and official, will generate questions for the archive. Outputs will illuminate will-making among today's middle class, but with the depth of historicisation.
The project addresses key anthropological concerns. It combines political-economic (inequality) and cultural (lifestyle) perspectives on the middle class, and these with scholarship on state institutions. And it extends existing work on class and status reproduction by transcending generations.
How do black middle-class South Africans pass on the property that shapes their kin's status and life chances? As will-making is promoted ever more widely, how do institutions that facilitate it inflect experiences of kinship and property before death forces the issue? How does this compare with the established white middle class?
Within families, how are competing definitions of ownership, rights and entitlements judged? When expressions of future plans also become expressions of state regulation, how does this affect access to family property (e.g. township houses)? Who is included and excluded, in the bottleneck of bureaucracy and legal process?
How and why are particular possessions valued? How are people's roles and entitlements constituted in the process?
Amidst increasing inequality and precarity, how is will-making talked about? How have concerns about property and inheritance been reflected in the media?
Given the South African black middle class's diverse history, how does will-making today compare with the past?
Examining class reproduction over time means combining ethnographic and historical methods. For the former, I will begin with long-term observation in the Johannesburg High Court where disputes around wills are heard, and trace cases out from the formal probate process to fieldwork with individuals and families. Meanwhile, I will work with will consultants and lawyers, and interview judges, members of financial organisations, and the experts responsible for designing their online will templates. The former Dean of Law at Wits University (where I am a Research Associate) has expressed support, and is facilitating access to lawyers and judges. Taken together, the ethnographic research moves between institutional and personal processes, offering a bottom-up perspective that challenges easy meta-narratives.
The historical research builds on ongoing collaborative work with my proposed mentor and colleagues at Wits University, on probate records as a source for South African black middle class history. This aims to capture all relevant records over a century of South African history. My proposed project explores qualitative case studies and aggregated quantitative data, offering a longer view on the accumulation and dispersal of property. Foregrounding the complex and unexpected roles of state officials and institutions raises questions for ethnographic fieldwork. For example, as executors, state officials diligently spent inheritances on behalf of deceased (e.g. minors' school fees). Meanwhile, ethnographic fieldwork on probate processes, and the intersection of personal and official, will generate questions for the archive. Outputs will illuminate will-making among today's middle class, but with the depth of historicisation.
Planned Impact
- The main non-academic beneficiaries of this project are legal experts, practitioners and civil society organisers who work to understand contemporary challenges in relation to inheritance in South Africa, and to expand access to justice in this area. Indeed, this project is distinguished by the centrality of non-academic practitioners, simultaneously as research participants and as beneficiaries. Will-making and inheritance are recognized as an area where greater access to justice is required in contemporary South Africa, because many South Africans lack the necessary knowledge to make wills in the first place, and because there are few means to seek advice and assistance in cases of dispute or exclusion following inheritance. By means of ethnographic methods, the research will offer legal practitioners a holistic, broadly contextualised perspective on will-making, to complement the viewpoint otherwise available in day-to-day practice. It will also offer an evidence base for civil society organisers concerned to highlight problems of exclusion currently characterizing inheritance processes in South Africa. In order to ensure maximum benefit to experts and activists working to expand access to justice, the project will involve them in the planning of research, during fieldwork itself, and during writing and dissemination. Indeed, I will seek in the fieldwork phase to develop a non-academic advisory board for the project.
- Less centrally but no less significantly, the project will have impact in relation to applied researchers, such as those based in Johannesburg's Public Affairs Research Institute. PARI has recently devoted substantial efforts to understanding the middle class in the area around Johannesburg, in particular through a focus on housing. The proposed project extends this applied concern with class and property, and offers new opportunities for knowledge exchange between applied researchers and legal and civil-society networks, and between these and the academy.
- The project's outputs are intended to inform policy debates, through a policy report and further policy papers, and through a roundtable for legal and policy practitioners and activists, with an emphasis on guarding against forms of exclusion in inheritance. As I develop relationships among the practitioners and applied researchers mentioned above, I will seek guidance on how these interventions can have maximal benefit.
- The project is also intended to stimulate public debate. Popular interest in class and inheritance was evidenced in June 2014, when a research assistant on the probate records project in which I am involved appeared on South Africa's Redi Thlabi Show (Talk Radio 702). My proposed project includes a public-facing event, addressing and amplifying such recent popular interest in the middle class, inequality, and the post-apartheid future.
- I will aim in the longer term to extend the impact of the project by incorporating its insights into my teaching, not only in the UK, but also, through my secondary affiliation at the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa.
- Less centrally but no less significantly, the project will have impact in relation to applied researchers, such as those based in Johannesburg's Public Affairs Research Institute. PARI has recently devoted substantial efforts to understanding the middle class in the area around Johannesburg, in particular through a focus on housing. The proposed project extends this applied concern with class and property, and offers new opportunities for knowledge exchange between applied researchers and legal and civil-society networks, and between these and the academy.
- The project's outputs are intended to inform policy debates, through a policy report and further policy papers, and through a roundtable for legal and policy practitioners and activists, with an emphasis on guarding against forms of exclusion in inheritance. As I develop relationships among the practitioners and applied researchers mentioned above, I will seek guidance on how these interventions can have maximal benefit.
- The project is also intended to stimulate public debate. Popular interest in class and inheritance was evidenced in June 2014, when a research assistant on the probate records project in which I am involved appeared on South Africa's Redi Thlabi Show (Talk Radio 702). My proposed project includes a public-facing event, addressing and amplifying such recent popular interest in the middle class, inequality, and the post-apartheid future.
- I will aim in the longer term to extend the impact of the project by incorporating its insights into my teaching, not only in the UK, but also, through my secondary affiliation at the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Maxim Bolt (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Bolt M
(2019)
Recognising the family house: a problem of urban custom in South Africa
in South African Journal on Human Rights
Bolt M
(2022)
'Creature of statute': Legal bureaucracy and the performance of professionalism in Johannesburg
in Critique of Anthropology
Bolt M
(2021)
Fluctuating formality: homeownership, inheritance, and the official economy in urban South Africa ?
in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Bolt M
(2022)
Engineering the middle classes: State institutions and the aspirations of citizenship
in Critique of Anthropology
Bolt M
(2022)
Handbook of Economic Anthropology
Bolt M
(2021)
Homeownership, Legal Administration, And The Uncertainties Of Inheritance In South Africa's Townships: Apartheid's Legal Shadows
in African Affairs
| Description | NEW KNOWLEDGE: While the number of people making wills is rising, most people die intestate. Through legal organisations' will-writing workshops and government-run public events and media appearances, will-making is a key focus of attempts to shape citizens as legally aware individual decision-makers. But this is often disconnected from a public discourse about inheritance, as private and determined according to norms other than 'Government's'. Wills are often rejected as secretive, enshrining individual freedom antithetical to cross-generational obligation. Wills do have some appeal: protecting spouses and children against male elders in lineages, or even against extra-marital children; protecting extra-marital families, even against spouses; using individual freedom of testation, paradoxically, to underwrite unconstitutional customary preferences privileging men. Even so, the attraction is diminished by popular awareness of limited state capacity. Family dynamics are often better enforced than the law. Houses are the most important item of inheritance. While this is not unusual, for black South Africans it requires historical context. 'Family houses' lie at the heart of a gulf between social norms and law, which marginalises urban black people despite the formal end of segregation. Under apartheid, black people were prohibited from owning property, instead renting state-owned township dwellings through permits listing all residents. Together with customary notions of property, this produced an understanding of houses as held collectively and across generations. As apartheid segregation unravelled, houses were devolved as private property to promote inclusion through new asset owners in a market. But the law required individual, exclusive owners. Popular understandings diverged from official ones, deepened by distrust in the administrative process. Ending segregation meant including everyone in the same legal code, but this often enshrined the norms of the white elite. Intestate succession is seen as profound injustice because it prioritises nuclear family over kin group, and asset over patrimony. Urban customary norms are marginalised, but custom is also often used to justify male control and marginalise widows. All of this is made still more complicated by the patchy nature of regulation and enforcement. State institutions struggle to share information and enforce decisions. Fraud is common. People's unequal abilities to navigate the system, and even manipulate it, become central determinants of who benefits and whose version of kinship is counted. I conducted extensive ethnographic research within this system, shadowing officials, property valuators and wealth managers; sitting in on legal advice consultations; attending court hearings; interviewing a wide range of state and civil-society employees, as well people encountering the system as members of the public. Some black homeowners can be considered thoroughly middle class in occupation and financial accumulation, but others only really have the house as an asset. The research required substantial emphasis on the latter, and the intensity of fights where the only property is indivisible. Plans shift between customary norms and registers of state law, each situationally reinterpreted. While among the more established white population, fights to inherit houses are routine, they do not draw on a self-consciously reified notion of 'custom' as a counterpart to 'law'. Historical depth will emerge as a very large number of archival documents are processed and analysed. NEW RESEARCH RESOURCES IDENTIFIED: The project included archival research using probate records. This was originally intended to focus on the National Archives, which proved a rich resource as expected. However, in addition, I discovered that the Johannesburg Magistrates' Court holds an estimated 165,000 black estates files covering the late 1970s to the early 2000s. NEW RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS: Central to the project has been a close collaboration with legal NGO ProBono.Org. This was key not only to understanding the provision of legal advice and will-writing services in Johannesburg, but also to developing the research findings' significance for legal/procedural reform relating to housing and inheritance. Research informed ProBono.Org's professional practice, and together we initiated a campaign with senior government officials and lawmakers to make the law more responsive. The result was a virtuous circle of research and impact. |
| Exploitation Route | GOVERNMENT STAKEHOLDERS, ACCESS-TO-JUSTICE ACTIVISTS AND LEGAL PROFESSIONALS: The research findings are being put to use to find avenues for legal/administrative reform regarding houses and inheritance. This is the result of ongoing knowledge-exchange collaboration with civil-society, legal and government practitioners. A key step has been presenting a policy report to government administrative, legislative and judicial officials, civil-society and community organisations, and applied legal and social-science scholars. PUBLIC DEBATE: There is considerable scope for promoting public debate and awareness, as in radio discussion and a recent community event for 180 people in a Soweto school hall (rather than in university space, as originally planned, to ensure accessibility). It was decided not to maintain a blog or Twitter account, due to the data's sensitivity and the importance of fostering stakeholder debate on legal reform without immediate publicity. APPLIED RESEARCHERS OF LIVELIHOODS AND INEQUALITY: I co-developed a focus area on property ownership for the new Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at Wits University. This offers an important means to take the findings forward in South Africa's applied academic networks. RESEARCH-LED TEACHING: The research provides important insights on the state and the law in economic life, which will be brought into my teaching. Indeed, I have already begun incorporating them. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Description | A key finding of the research was that post-apartheid South Africa has seen a profound gap between law and custom in the inheritance of urban homes. Under apartheid, homes in black townships were overwhelmingly rentals because black people could not own fixed property. Houses were devolved to their tenants as private property, drawing the previously disadvantaged urban majority into a real estate market and creating a new stratum of black homeowners. But this meant incorporation into property law that privileged individual ownership over collective entitlement, and it soon meant the extension of inheritance law that privileged nuclear families over lineages. The result has been widespread alienation, avoidance of legal administration, the consequent vulnerability that comes from lack of legal protections, and precariousness among those beginning to accumulate property and transmit it to the next generation. The research findings have contributed to efforts to resolve this discrepancy between law and popular norms, thus increasing the effectiveness of policy, public services, legal arrangements and access to justice. Central to the impact is ongoing, close collaboration with legal NGO ProBono.Org, in a virtuous circle between research and impact. The research has transformed legal advice practice, and supported and enhanced advocacy work by enabling the organisation to raise funding. In the words of both the National Director and the Head of Housing: - 'The inputs from Dr Bolt's research resulted in services that took into account the social context of inheritance and [revealed] that a disconnect exists between the law as it currently stands and popular understanding.' - 'Dr Bolt's research and collaboration with ProBono.Org enabled us to raise funding for access to justice in the administration of deceased estates to ensure that we can build on Dr Bolt's research insights and advocate for change in the administrative process.' This partnership, based on the ESRC project's research, has been key to work with government and civil society stakeholders. With ProBono.Org, a path was articulated for resolving the stalemate around the family house. These steps are iterative, and they focus broader collaboration that involves planning, preparation, influence and advocacy. The research findings have contributed to articulating the path to resolution: 1. Establishing an initial shared baseline understanding of the family house across academic, government and legal stakeholders, ProBono.Org and I organised a panel discussion of government and access-to-justice representatives, and I presented the research findings (see Engagement Activities). This consolidated a committed group of practitioners; achieved agreement on a crucial problem; and initiated an emerging campaign for legal change. 2. With ProBono.Org, I wrote a position paper based on the research. This acted as a Terms of Reference for reform and stimulated ramifying policy debate. The position paper, and a closed practitioner forum to discuss it (see Engagement Activities), created working definitions that had not existed previously and which were taken up by members of government departments, legislators, the judiciary, the legal profession, civil society, and select academic experts. At ProBono.Org, it will be used in legal assistance 'as a resource tool' for 'insight into how the many gaps between law and popular norms affect society at an economic and social level.' It 'will inform ProBono.Org's inputs into the land question that currently dominates South Africa's policy debates' (Testimonial, National Director and Heading of Housing). The Deputy Master of the Johannesburg High Court (deputy head of regional department administering deceased estates) noted the importance of 'learning how this [family house] concept also affects [other departments'] operations and how we can address the challenges collectively'. She subsequently profiled the family house problem in cross-departmental government discussions. Establishing explicit agreement on the themes and problems in question led stakeholders to call for specific avenues for reform, with community involvement, and escalation of the issues to government. These are the next steps towards change. 3. In February 2019, with ProBono.Org, I responded to an invitation to write a submission commenting on a new national Property Practitioners Bill (see Engagement Activities). This written submission was reinforced by an oral motivation at a public hearing. The research findings were the basis for recommendations that the bill make specific provision for people whose perspectives are marginalised in the law, and who lack adequate access to justice. 4. A community event with around 180 participants, co-organised with ProBono.Org in Soweto (see Engagement Activities), addressed the need to include the views of prospective beneficiaries in a policy toolkit articulating avenues for legal/procedural reform. Reinforced by discussions on community radio (see Engagement Activities), it also raised popular awareness of the effects of the divergence between law and popular norms. While the owners of family houses are of course fully aware of the popular norms at play, participants reported that the research and the event provided them with important understanding of the law, its history and its consequences in practice. 5. With ProBono.Org, I developed a policy toolkit for government stakeholders, legislators and legal practitioners, which evaluates pathways for reform in light of rigorous research and analysis. This was presented to stakeholders in March 2019 (see Engagement Activities). 6. As a result of this, ProBono.Org and I worked with the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements to respond to the issues identified in my research and develop policy proposals. To this end, an advisory panel was convened, including a range of legal practitioners as well as my own input (see Influence on Policy, Practice, Patients & the Public). In 2022, a ground-breaking High Court judgement in South Africa (North Gauteng), which could pave the way for reform of property rights dating from the apartheid era, drew on the research. It cited articles published in African Affairs and the South African Journal on Human Rights. (See Influence on Policy, Practice, Patients & the Public.) |
| First Year Of Impact | 2017 |
| Sector | Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Societal,Policy & public services |
| Description | High Court judgment |
| Geographic Reach | Africa |
| Policy Influence Type | Citation in other policy documents |
| URL | http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAGPPHC/2022/441.html#_ftn1 |
| Description | Membership of advisory panel convened by legal NGO ProBono.Org |
| Geographic Reach | Africa |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Title | Database of aggregated deceased estates data across Johannesburg's history |
| Description | With the benefit of ethnographic insight into the composition of deceased estates files, I conducted archival research to capture a large sample of files over Johannesburg's history and aggregate metrics such as regarding wealth accumulation, wealth transfer and kinship. This has enabled the preparation of a database for the UK Data Service, aggregating inheritance metrics from around 500 deceased estates files across Johannesburg's history, accompanied by an illustrative example of a deceased estates file and a document showing and explaining features of the original MS Access database. The scope of the database is, however, limited - it only uses data from from the National Archives, as these are fully public, where other archives used in the research require permission for research access. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The data provided offer a sample of what is available in the South African National Archives, and enable aggregation of trends across more than a century of Johannesburg history pertaining to wealth and inheritance. |
| URL | http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/853806/ |
| Description | Collaboration with ProBono.Org |
| Organisation | ProBono.Org |
| Country | South Africa |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | I co-organised a panel discussion on 19 September 2017 at the Ford Foundation, Johannesburg, for government officials, access-to-justice lawyers, civil society practitioners, and academics, on 'The "Family House": Kinship, Inheritance and the legacies of Township Property Regimes. The panel focused on the gap between the popular understanding of 'the family house' and the legal framework of individualised ownership. It explored the complex legal and social dimensions of property ownership and residence, as people strive to pass homes and acquire them. And it sought to track the legal-bureaucratic processes themselves and look into creating an understanding of what is happening on the ground, within and beyond the rubrics of the law. The panel informed a broader and continuing discussion on the reform of the law regulating title. My own role was organisational, and I also presented my research as a panellist. I followed this up on 28 September 2017 by appearing on ProBono.Org's fortnightly Pro Bono Law radio programme. In 2018, I will be co-organising at least one further event with ProBono.Org in July. |
| Collaborator Contribution | ProBono.Org, as well as being an important partner in my research, contributed to the project as a collaborator by co-organising the September 2017 event with me. They provided the venue and on-the-day logistics through their existing partnership with the Ford Foundation. They are also assisting in the conceptualisation and organisation of the July 2018 event. Both are key to the research project's non-academic impact. |
| Impact | Wills Workshop presentation August 2017; Family House event September 2017; Radio appearance September 2017. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research |
| Organisation | University of the Witwatersrand |
| Department | Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research |
| Country | South Africa |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | I am a member of the WISER's intellectual and research community, including as a regular participant in events, during my fieldwork in Johannesburg. During the award, I will also organise two events at WISER, contributing to the Institute's programme and profile. This builds on my longer-standing affiliation as a Research Associate, as part of which I formally acknowledge my affiliation in all publications and consequently contribute to WISER's publications profile. |
| Collaborator Contribution | WISER has provided me with an office for the period of my fieldwork in Johannesburg. In addition, the Institute will provide the venue and administrative support for two research-related events that I will organise as part of the award. |
| Impact | Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (facilities and resources) |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | African Studies Association of the UK biennial conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | As a prelude to the fieldwork phase of the project, I presented the project idea and its significance at the African Studies Association of the UK biennial meeting, a major international academic conference. The presentation, 'Making Wills and Making Futures: Inheritance and the Formal Processes of Middle-Class Reproduction in South Africa', formed part of a high-profile stream of panels on 'The Middle Class in Africa'. The presentation drew substantial attention, and generated interest for further events on related themes. NB 'professional practitioners' in this case refers to professional social-science researchers in relevant fields. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://www.asauk.net/asauk-2016-conference-programme/ |
| Description | American Anthropological Association annual conference 2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | At the American Anthropological Association annual conference, 29 November - 3 December, Marriott Wardman Hotel, Washington DC, USA, I presented my research under the title 'Passing on the family house: law, kinship, and the formal processes of middle-class reproduction in Johannesburg, South Africa'. This was part of a panel I co-organised on 'Engineering the Middle Classes: State Institutions, Wealth, and the Aspirations of Citizenship'. The session built on the earlier panel I co-organised at ECAS 2017 (see 'European Conference on African Studies 2017'), by extending the scope from Africa to a broad global comparison. My research and the panel generated momentum for further collaboration and possible publication on the theme of class formation and the state. NB 'professional practitioners' here refers to social scientists. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Anthropology research seminar, University of the Witwatersrand |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On 28 September, I presented a research paper entitled 'Passing on the family house: law, kinship, and the formal processes of middle-class reproduction in Johannesburg, South Africa', at the Department of Anthropology Seminar, University of the Witwatersrand. NB 'professional practitioners' here refers to professional anthropologists and other social scientists. Discussions pointed towards further collaborative possibilities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Co-organised workshop at the University of Birmingham on Law, Custom and Urban Property in Africa |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I organised a workshop at the University of Birmingham building on my research themes and findings. Nine practitioner experts from African countries, working in the area of law, custom and urban property, participated in the two-day event. One represented ProBono.Org, South Africa, a key collaborator in my research and impact. The event enabled knowledge exchange and collaborative discussion with a similar number of academic experts from the University of Birmingham; with representation from the London-based legal charity Advocates for International Development; and with keynote Professor Ambreena Manji, a legal scholar from the University of Cardiff and President of the African Studies Association of the UK. The event built important connections and calls for further collaboration among the African and UK-based participants. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | European Conference on African Studies 2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | At the European Conference on African Studies, 28 June - 3 July, University of Basel, Switzerland, I presented my research under the title 'Administered futures: inheritance and the formal processes of middle-class reproduction in Johannesburg, South Africa'. This was part of a panel I co-organised on 'Engineering the Middle Classes: State Institutions, Wealth, and Aspirations of Citizenship'. Timed halfway through my fieldwork, this offered an opportunity to disseminate initial findings. Organising the panel also brought together scholars working on related issues, with a central thematic focus on class formation and the state. The panel showcased the importance of the theme in current debates, generated interest and debates, and was an important first step in convening a broader group with global rather than African reach at the AAA conference 2017 (see 'American Anthropological Association annual conference 2017'). NB 'professional practitioners' here refers to academic experts in related fields in the social sciences and humanities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Family House event September 2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | With the legal NGO ProBono.Org, I co-organised a panel discussion on the gap between the popular understanding of the 'family house' and the legal framework of individualised ownership in formerly black urban townships. It was held on 19 September 2017 at the Ford Foundation, Johannesburg. Around 50 members of the legal profession, academics and other stakeholders attended. The event focused on the complex legal and social dimensions of property ownership and residence, as people strive to pass homes on, acquire them, or prevent others from doing so. It sought to tract the legal-bureaucratic processes themselves and look into creating an understanding on what is happening on the ground, within and beyond the rubrics of the law. Including representatives from the Gauteng Provincial Department of Human Settlements, the Johannesburg Registrar of Deeds, the Master of the High Court Johannesburg, the Social and Economic Rights Institute of South Africa, Lawyers for Human Rights, and my own presentation of my research, the panel informed an ongoing discussion on the reform of the land property cadastral in South Africa. Specifically, it precipitated a further community-focused event on the township 'family house'; my own radio appearance on 28 September 2017; and a forthcoming 2018 impact event taking the discussion forward with government officials and legislature members. NB the regional reach of this activity refers to Gauteng Province, South Africa. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Family House policy toolkit - stakeholder discussion |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A policy toolkit based on my research, co-authored with ProBono.Org as part of an ongoing collaboration, was launched to stakeholders at Hogan Lovells law firm in Sandton, Johannesburg. The audience included the South African Law Commission, the Gauteng Deeds Office, national and provincial Departments of Human Settlements, the South Gauteng Master of the High Court, community advice practitioners, and representatives from law and financial firms. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Family House position paper - stakeholder panel discussion |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | In July 2018, I presented a position paper on the 'family house', co-written with Tshenolo Masha, ProBono.Org's Head of Housing. Family houses are homes in formerly black townships that had been rentals under apartheid, when black people could not own urban property, and that had subsequently been devolved as private property. How these are passed on has become one of the more acute issues relating to urban inheritance today. Popular customary notions of the family house are collective and built on patrilineal kinship, diverging from individual-focused property law, and inheritance law prioritising the nuclear family over the lineage. The paper drew on my research, along with ProBono.Org's professional experience. The event was a closed stakeholder discussion for government departments, legislators, the judiciary, the legal profession, and civil society, as well as select academic experts. The paper, pre-circulated and distributed at the event, was responded to formally by core stakeholders (e.g. Deputy Master of the High Court, Registrar of Deeds, Human Settlements, Senior Magistrate responsible for black estates, Gauteng Provincial Legislature). The paper and discussion feed directly into a forthcoming event in late March 2019, which presents a policy toolkit to stakeholders. Doing so responds to a clear need identified by participants, who called in feedback for specific amendments and avenues for reform, and community engagement in developing these. NB 'Regional' here refers to Gauteng Province, South Africa. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Family house community event, Soweto |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | With collaborator ProBono.Org, I organised a community-focused event in February 2019 for around 180 participants in Soweto, Johannesburg. It included third-sector community representatives. The event was focused on township family houses - homes in formerly black areas that had been rentals under apartheid, when black people could not own urban property, and that had subsequently been devolved as private property. How these are passed on has become one of the most acute issues relating to urban inheritance today. Popular customary notions of the family house are collective and built on patrilineal kinship, diverging from individual-focused property law, and inheritance law prioritising the nuclear family over the lineage. In our Family House position paper, we undertook to approach community members as we develop avenues for reform, since these are the people most affected by current arrangements and prospective change. The event gathered a range of community views on family houses, property and inheritance law, and what would constitute positive change. A key objective was to test the assumptions and solutions in the policy toolkit being developed for policy-focused impact, to be presented to government stakeholders and other professional practitioners in late March 2019. It was also reported by attendees as having provided important clarity on the law and its history, enabling planning based on a better understanding of state systems. It thus promoted and influenced debate on the family house and raised awareness of the law's consequences in the public sphere. NB 'Local' here refers to Soweto, South Africa. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Interview for community radio, Pretoria (broadcast internationally online) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | With ProBono.Org Head of Housing Tshenolo Masha, I appeared on Capital Live community radio in Mamelodi township, which also has an international following via its digital streaming. This was for a half-hour discussion about our work on 'family houses' - homes in formerly black areas that had been rentals under apartheid, when black people could not own urban property, and that had subsequently been devolved as private property. How these are passed on has become one of the most acute issues relating to urban inheritance today. Popular customary notions of the family house are collective and built on patrilineal kinship, diverging from individual-focused property law, and inheritance law prioritising the nuclear family over the lineage. The radio show raised awareness ahead of our community-focused event on the family house. It was also followed by a radio interview that Tshenolo Masha conducted about our family house work, on Jozi FM in Soweto. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://www.radio-south-africa.co.za/capital-live-sa |
| Description | Invited talk at the Senior Research Seminar, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk to professional anthropologists and postgraduate anthropology students. This research dissemination led to discussions about further research possibilities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Lecture at Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh (also released as online video) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Around 50 professional academics and postgraduates, including those visiting from abroad, attended a public talk in the University of Edinburgh's Centre of African Studies, for the opening session of their spring term seminar series. The online video reports around 30 further views. NB 'Professional practitioners' refers to academic experts. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/The+Making+of+a+Black+Middle+ClassA+Race%2C+Law+and+Property+in+Johanne... |
| Description | Malinowski Memorial Lecture, London School of Economics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | In May 2018, I gave the annual Malinowski Memorial Lecture in anthropology at the London School of Economics, to an audience of over 120 academics (referred to above as 'professional practitioners'), postgraduate and undergraduate students, and members of the general public. I presented my research as the basis of a broad argument setting out an anthropological approach to formality and formal institutions/processes. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2018/05/20180517t1800vSZT/Fluctuating-Formality-anthropology-and-the-str... |
| Description | Paper presented and thematic panel stream organised (Legal Bureaucracies) at African Studies Association of the UK conference 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | In September 2018, I organised a thematic stream of four panels at the African Studies Association of the UK biennial conference, focused on 'Legal Bureaucracies'. Within this, I presented my own research, drawing attention to the important ways that officials who administer legal bureaucracies attempt to shape citizen expectations and norms. This generated substantial interest, and will lead to a follow-up panel at the European Conference in African Studies in June 2019. NB 'professional practitioners' refers to academic experts. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.asauk.net/conferences/asauk-2018/ |
| Description | Paper presented and thematic panel stream organised (Legal Bureaucracies: Connection and Disruption in and Beyond the State) at European Conference on African Studies, 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Paper presented and thematic panel organised at international conference. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Paper presented and thematic panel stream organised (Work, Wealth and Welfare in South Africa) at African Studies Association of the UK conference 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I presented a key aspect of the research - how the legal and administrative systems surrounding inheritance affect life chances and the dynamics of class reproduction in urban South Africa. This formed part of a thematic stream of panels I organised that drew together insights on everyday economic life and the state. This was an important venue for developing an emerging field of research, and for highlighting the crucial significance of property and inheritance for understanding economic life and state administration. NB 'Professional practitioners' refers to academic experts. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.asauk.net/conferences/asauk-2018/ |
| Description | Paper presented at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, USA |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Paper presented at a major US conference, 16-18 November 2021, in a panel on 'Contemporary Issues in Customary Law'. The paper was entitled 'Customary Norms and the Making of Everyday Pluralism in South Africa's Legal Bureaucracy'. NB 'professional practitioners' refers to professional academics here. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Participation in Strategic Forum of the ROLE UK (Rule of Law Expertise UK) programme, Advocates for International Development |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | Invited participation in the strategic forum of ROLE UK, which mobilises UK legal expertise for development. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Radio appearance September 2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Following the Family House event I co-organised with ProBono.Org (Family House event September 2017), on 28 September 2017 I appeared on a fortnightly law-focused radio programme, an initiative of ProBono.Org and law firm Norton Rose Fulbright South Africa. This enabled me to follow up on the Family House event and disseminate my research findings more widely - largely to a legal-practitioner and access-to-justice civil society audience. My thirty-minute appearance focused on divergences between the law and popular practice surrounding inheritance, returning to the key issue of the township 'family house'. The programme is hosted by Patrick Bracher of Norton Rose Fulbright South Africa on Radio Today, broadcasting on 1485 MW (AM) in Johannesburg and countrywide on #DStv Audio Channel 869, and streaming globally on: www.1485.org.za and 1485.mobi. The podcast webpage is online at the URL below. Along with the Family House event, this radio interview paves the way for a larger impact event in July 2018, on divergences between the law on the one hand, and popular practice and conceptions of fairness on the other, in relation to inheritance and township housing. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/production98089/episodes/2017-10-02T01_44_07-07_00 |
| Description | Submission on South African national bill |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | With collaborator ProBono.Org, I wrote a submission providing research-based comments on a new Property Practitioners Bill. The research findings underline a gap between law and popular norms, and between formal provisions and popular access, in relation to property and inheritance. These findings were the basis for recommendations to make specific provision for marginalised urban people in the new legislation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Wills Workshop presentation August 2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On 17 August, I presented my research at a practitioner-focused Wills Workshop organised by ProBono.Org, for attorneys assisting as volunteers with drafting wills and staffing a helpdesk at the Master of the Johannesburg High Court (the government office that handles deceased estates). The event was held at Hogan Lovells Attorneys, Johannesburg. NB the local reach of this activity refers to Johannesburg, South Africa. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Writing workshop on 'Engineering the Middle Class' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This small, closed writing workshop in March 2019 drew together key participants in the conference panels I had previously organised on 'Engineering the Middle Class'. Focused on how to explore this theme comparatively and contextually, it is a step towards producing a published collection of research-based contributions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |