Untitled

Untitled

Publications & Reports

Bleek discusses changes to the Cape Colony's marriage laws and the Eastern province's desire to substitute the Roman-Dutch Law approach with the marriage regimes of English Common Law that designate a wife's immovable property as her husband's marital assets. Bleek cautions against understating the English Common Law's potential for abuse by unscrupulous husbands or fortune hunters and argues in defence of the existing Roman-Dutch Law legal regime that offers greater security to the woman in contractual marital agreement. Bleek refers to England here as a "despotic state". The old Roman-Dutch Law is "preferable" for protecting women's rights, whereas English Common Law retains cruel remnants of medieval law no longer consistent with modern thinking. The law should protect those most vulnerable. The law should discourage negligence or malicious squandering of wives and children's lawful assets that arise from a husband's "power to inflict injury" while the administrator of such common property. Roman-Dutch Law curtails this otherwise unchecked power. Lived experiences should shape the law as it evolves and must come from those to be affected by it most directly.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

14/02/1865

Two cut out columns of newsprint text, positioned vertically parallel, pasted onto a plus-sized A4 unlined sheet with visible warping. No title was subsequently handwritten onto the mount/paper backing.