In two press releases yesterday, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) underscored the multi-generational importance of affirming and extending property rights to South Africa’s women, and warned how the country’s property expropriation legislation posed a potential threat to children.
In the first statement, the IRR said it had written to Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities Sindisiwe Chikunga, urging her to oppose the Expropriation Act’s threat of undercompensation and to consider the IRR’s Right To Own Bill as an alternative.
The letter (read it here) has also been forwarded to Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Dean Macpherson, whose department is responsible for the Act.
The IRR argues that compensation below the level required to restore an expropriated owner to the position they occupied before the taking never affects the owner alone. It threatens all dependants of such property owners and, as such, the housing, financial security and material circumstances of countless children.
Section 28(2) of the Constitution requires that a child’s best interests be of paramount importance in every matter concerning that child.
“The constitutional problem Minister Chikunga cannot ignore is that the state power to undercompensate poses a direct threat to children whose homes and economic security depend on the adults in whose care they are,” says IRR spokesperson Hermann Pretorius. “The undercompensated loss of a home, business, savings or other asset can directly weaken the ability of a parent or caregiver to provide for a child.”
The IRR is calling on Chikunga to oppose the undercompensation provisions of the Act and to make clear within Cabinet that the state should not pursue public purposes by imposing uncompensated losses on families and the children who depend on them.
The IRR has also sent Chikunga its Right To Own Bill, which offers an alternative approach based on secure property rights, market-value compensation and expanding formal ownership to more South Africans.
“Instead of weakening the security of what South Africans already own, government should be expanding secure ownership,” says Pretorius. “That strengthens the homes, assets and economic security on which children and families depend.
“Minister Chikunga has a responsibility to be a voice for South Africa’s children in government. It is her duty to stand up against threats to their best interests, wherever they In the second statement, the IRR points out that the government’s own figures confirm that the chronic backlog in the issuing of title deeds, now running to hundreds of thousands, disproportionately disadvantages women.
This is the topic of the latest edition of Free Facts, published by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR).
Property rights are women’s rights shows the scale of the government’s failure to clear the backlog of title deeds, including a staggering more than 30,000 dating to the apartheid era, and the impact this has on the property rights of women.
Drawing on Minister Department of Human Settlements Thembi Simelane’s response to a question about the extent of the backlog as of September 2025, the IRR shows that between 1994 and 2014, the number of unissued title deeds was 423,642. Over the next decade, the backlog nearly doubled, reaching 774,064. The rate at which the backlog grew more than tripled from the first decade after 1994, when some 21,200 were added annually, to the decade following 2014, when annual additions rose to some 70,400.
As noted above, the most staggering fact of all is that the backlog goes back to the pre-1994 period.
Says IRR Strategic Engagements Manager Makone Maja: “Considering how often we hear the government’s repeated commitments to addressing the injustices of the past, it is grossly unconscionable that millions of South African households live in such grave uncertainty, unable to exercise their property rights a whole three decades after democracy began.”
The IRR points out that information from the Department of Human Settlements corroborates its argument that the title-deed backlog likely disproportionately disadvantages women. Department figures show that the number of women beneficiaries of government-subsidised housing rose 20 percentage points in 20 years, from 49% in 2003 to 68% in 2023.
It is therefore likely that this distribution is reflected in the backlog itself, skewing it mostly towards women.
Maja concludes: “This is an issue that goes to the heart of women’s rights. Women with secure tenure are in a stronger position to secure other rights, such as the right to dignity, to safety and security. Affording them certainty in their property rights would also support their pursuit of financial independence and freedom. If government is serious about empowering women, it must be serious about clearing the backlog and granting women their title deeds.”
[Image: by jilapong]
*Headline updated to correct a spelling mistake