​It worries property law expert Prof Zsa-Zsa Boggenpoel how easily South Africa’s highly acclaimed progressive constitutional ideals and laws are often still ignored. It worries her that in doing so, the voices of vulnerable, marginalised people are silenced, and their rights watered down. She also knows that all too often people do not even have an inkling about the legal paraphernalia that are supposed to support them.

Prof Boggenpoel will deliver the next lecture in the Division for Research Development’s Forward with Research Impact series on 30 October at 13:00 at the University Museum. She will reflect on specific cases in which the issue of homeless people and their basic rights to a place to stay and privacy have been handled by authorities and the South African legal system.

“We often see how the law says one thing but in fact is far removed from what is happening on the ground,” explains Boggenpoel, a professor in Public Law at Stellenbosch University since 2018 and holder of the South African Research Chair in Property Law. “More and more I see a need to bridge this gap.”

The Chair has recently provided input into a booklet about people’s rights when it comes to evictions. Among its recent workshops has been one in September about the Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture’s 2019 report to the Presidency. On this topic, Boggenpoel feels that the country’s laws do not yet adequately allow for all facets of South Africa’s land reform conundrum to be resolved. The determination of compensation for expropriation is an issue that she has already written about as far back as 2012, in the South African Law Journal.

As can be expected, her postgraduate students focus their attention on how Article 25 of South Africa’s Constitution plays out in reality and within communities. One student is for instance deliberating the minimum standards that people can legally expect from the housing provided to them. Another student is considering whether inhabitants are consulted adequately when informal settlements are relocated. .

For Boggenpoel there is more sense in discussing how the law should be than in only thinking what it is: “The law is not as rigid as many people think it is. We daily see how courts are stretching it. We need new ways of resolving issues in South Africa.”

She believes a more progressive reading of the law could potentially help solve many of the problems and tensions that the country experiences: “My passion lies in unlocking that. I try and think of ways in which we can be more progressive in protecting marginalised groups, for instance. I want to unlock possibilities that have not been opened before. The law has potential to do that, but we need to be more creative in the way that we see things.”

A modern jurist

One of her postgraduate students recently wrote a blog post about Boggenpoel, describing her as a remarkable example of “the modern jurist” who “responsibly challenges the status quo, debates only after conducting proper research of the law and facts, thinks outside of the box and has the courage to speak her mind when necessary.”

Based on her CV and even her Twitter profile, one could easily get the impression that the law is all that Boggenpoel lives for. Photographs in her wooden-floored office space, on the other hand, provide glimpses into another important part of her life: that of working mother.

Boggenpoel, one of SU’s youngest professors, gave her inaugural lecture last year, at the age of 32. A few months later, she gave birth to her and husband Blake’s second son. She has become an expert at juggling many balls (read: postgraduate supervision, writing legal commentary, packing lunch boxes and finding lost soft toys), while also trying her best to be an involved (albeit sleep deprived) mother.

Motherhood has provided Boggenpoel with the unexpected freedom to sometimes simply switch off. To close her laptop, and to simply sit with her four-year old while he builds a 16-piece puzzle. It’s giving her a rare experience of “taking things more slowly” in a life that has otherwise been characterised by goal-driven achievement and excellence.

This Y-rated academic was head girl of Hermanus High in 2002, played Boland netball at a senior level in the mid-2000s, and was at one stage even considered for the South African Protea squad. Her master’s degree at Stellenbosch University about building encroachments and the compulsory transfer of ownership was of such a high standard that it was upgraded to a doctoral thesis, which she completed by the age of 26. As part of her studies, she received a bursary from Oxford University. She is a member of the Young Property Lawyers Forum (YPLF) and writes about property matters for the Juta Quarterly Review. In 2015 she received two awards from Stellenbosch University related to the high standard of her work.

Value of mentorship

Boggenpoel confesses to be someone who “gets energy from being busy”. Her drive is rooted in her childhood in Mount Pleasant in Hermanus. Her parents divorced when she was nine years old, and thereafter her mother, who worked in a grocery store, raised her two daughters alone. Boggenpoel is actually the youngest of three children, but her older brother died of meningitis very young. She grew up with a sense that she wanted to make life as easy as possible for her still grieving mother, and therefore put her energy into developing her talents and into securing bursaries where possible.

After school she wanted to become an accountant, but destiny stepped in. At least becoming a lawyer still accorded with her ideals to ensure a comfortable life for her and her loved ones. Becoming an academic, however, wasn’t initially part of her plan, but is in hindsight a perfect fit.

It is largely thanks to the influence and wisdom of her mentor and predecessor as Chair in Property Law, Prof Andre van der Walt. He was considered to be one of the greatest legal minds in South Africa and internationally. Van der Walt passed away in 2016. His funeral letter, which Boggenpoel keeps next to her computer, serves as a source of inspiration in trying times.

“Andre just saw things on another level. I sometimes wonder how he could see so far into the future in terms of where things are going. I am still in awe when I read work that he wrote back in 1990 or 1989, and how relevant it still is in solving things,” she explains with fondness.

“We used to have conversations about thinking differently, and how one should not be limited by what seems to be at first glance something quite rigid. I think it depends on what you want to see. You have to really allow yourself to listen. We do not hear others. We too often decide in advance what people want.”

Over the past few years she has made the Chair her own, but still misses Van der Walt dearly. She hopes that through her guidance and intensive training of postgraduate students she too can play as important a part in developing the country’s next cohort of legal thinkers as he did.