- Title
- The Legal and Social Context of Urban Movement, Housing, and Coping Mechanisms through Inheritance Practices amongst Women from Phokeng, Gugulethu, and Fingo Village
- Creator
- Hellemann, Phemelo C
- Subject
- To be catalogued
- Date
- 2025
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/484263
- Identifier
- vital:78890
- Identifier
- https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2024.2420216
- Description
- South Africa’s urban restrictions in the twentieth century under colonial and apartheid administrations disenfranchised African women by limiting their mobility and access to housing. Oppressive land policies, pass laws, and patriarchal customary practices assigned low status to African women. The article uses an African feminist lens to analyse how colonial, racial, and traditional structures determined African women’s legal status in acquiring housing in urban areas. It then examines the strategies that women of Phokeng, Gugulethu, and Fingo Village used to access housing despite these restrictions. The Phokeng case examines how women navigated the dual identity of urban and rural living. The Gugulethu case shows how multigenerational living and matrilineal inheritance strategies around leasehold property empowered women to embrace female headship in the home from 1948. The Fingo Village case demonstrates the unconventional customary practices by which women could become custodians of family freehold property. These case studies demonstrate how inheritance became a mode of power and agency for African women. This African feminist comparative account adds to the literature on African women’s urban land narratives.
- Format
- 17 pages, pdf
- Language
- English
- Relation
- South African Historical Journal, Hellemann, P. C. (2025) ‘The Legal and Social Context of Urban Movement, Housing, and Coping Mechanisms through Inheritance Practices amongst Women from Phokeng, Gugulethu, and Fingo Village’, South African Historical Journal, pp. 1–18. doi: 10.1080/02582473.2024.2420216, South African Historical Journal volume number 1 18 2025 1726-1686
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Terms and Conditions Statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)
- Person PID
- https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3352-3249
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