Ejercicio de Habilidad Verbal — UNMSM

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South Africa's highest court has ruled that husbands can take the surname of their wives, overturning a law that barred them from doing so. In a victory for two couples who brought the case, the Constitutional Court ruled that the law was a "colonial import" that amounted to gender-based discrimination.

Henry van der Merwe was denied the right to take the surname of his wife Jana Jordaan, while Nicolas Bornman could not hyphenate his surname to include Donnelly, the surname of his wife. The two couples had argued that the law was archaic and patriarchal, and violated equality rights enshrined in the constitution that South Africa adopted at the end of apartheid in 1994. They successfully challenged the law in a lower court, but asked the Constitutional Court to confirm its ruling. The Constitutional Court noted that "in many African cultures, women retained their birth names after marriage, and children often took their mother's clan name" but this changed after the "arrival of the European colonisers and Christian missionaries, and the imposition of Western values".

Parliament will now have to amend the Births and Deaths Registration Act, along with its regulations, for the ruling to take effect. South Africa had made a significant advancement in gender equality, but some laws and practices that perpetuated "harmful stereotypes" still remained in place, as it denied men a choice available to women.

(Adapted from Chothia F. (2025). South African court rules that men can take wife's surname. BBC.)

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