South Africa's Constitutional Court made two Khayelitsha girls sole heirs of their father and struck down male primogeniture in 2004

Vuyo Elius Mgolombane, a carpenter, lived from 1990 with Nontupheko Bhe, a domestic worker, in a temporary informal shelter in Khayelitsha. He used state housing subsidies to buy the plot and building materials, then died intestate in October 2002 before the house was built. They had two daughters: Nonkululeko, born 1994, and Anelisa, born 2001. Under section 23 of the Black Administration Act and the customary rule of male primogeniture, the girls could not inherit. The Khayelitsha magistrate appointed the dead man's father, Maboyisi Nelson Mgolombane of Berlin in the Eastern Cape, as representative and sole heir. He said he would sell the property to pay for the funeral. The Cape High Court blocked the sale and on 25 September 2003 declared the daughters the only heirs. The Constitutional Court heard the case with two others: Charlotte Shibi, whose brother's estate of R11,468.02 had gone to a cousin, and a class action by the South African Human Rights Commission and the Women's Legal Centre Trust. On 15 October 2004 Langa DCJ, for the majority, struck down section 23 and declared male primogeniture invalid where it excluded women and extra-marital children. Black intestate estates were to pass under the Intestate Succession Act, backdated to 27 April 1994. Ngcobo J dissented in part and would have developed the rule instead. The order named Nonkululeko and Anelisa sole heirs in equal shares and ordered their grandfather to sign the transfer. No public record of the completed transfer was found^†.