Paper short abstract:

Changes to formal inheritance gave the South African state new prominence in property transmission. Key to that role in people’s economic futures is a wider field of legal practitioners. It mediates how Johannesburgers encounter the state, stratifying them and their plans for accumulated wealth.

Paper long abstract:

The transition from apartheid fundamentally transformed what it meant for most South Africans to accumulate and transfer wealth, following changes to ownership rights and the privatisation of urban state housing. Changes to formal inheritance extended those changes into further questions about families’ economic futures. Deracialised law and expanded administrative reach gave the state unprecedented prominence in popular plans and struggles over property transmission. Legal bureaucrats make more decisions, arbitrate more disputes, and strive to keep people in the formal system. But what institutional context shapes how the administrative state actually forges economic futures? Understanding a broader legal field is crucial: practitioners with different relationships to the law, who mediate access. The wealthy never even set foot in state institutions, their affairs handled by attorneys in international firms and wealth management companies. Poorer South Africans, by contrast, face long queues, rules that appear counterintuitive, and opaque jargon. Some are lost in the cracks of an overstretched institution: fraud is common; redress is complicated and often unfeasible. Local downtown attorneys pick up bewildered clients. A pro bono helpdesk offers advice and passes matters to a legal NGO, whose paralegals allocate select cases to firms. Other marginalised people, trying to navigate the system and unable to secure lawyerly assistance, turn to community advice officers or still further figures of guidance, from party constituency offices to portacabins behind police stations. The legal field shapes how South Africans encounter the state, stratifying them and their state-administered plans for the futures of their wealth.