Husbands in South Africa can now adopt their wives’ family name, if they wish, the South Africa’s highest court has ruled.

The recent ruling by the Constitutional Court on Thursday, September 11, overturns a previous law enacted by a lower court last year.

The law, which was introduced during the apartheid years of white-minority rule, allowed women to change their family name when they got married.

However, the new development comes after two couples sued the Department of Home Affairs for gender discrimination. During court proceedings, Justice Loena Theron called the previous law a "colonial import" which treated men and women unequally in marriage.

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."

"The custom that a wife takes the husband's surname existed in Roman-Dutch law, and in this way was introduced into South African common law.

This custom also came into existence as a result of legislation that was introduced by countries that colonised African countries south of the Sahara," the court said.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Home Affairs Leon Schreiber and the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Mamoloko Kubayi have supported the couples' application, while arguing that the law was indeed outdated.,