This is a compilation - by a layman, not a lawyer - of information about South African laws concerning heraldry.

Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie

Principles which can be extracted from the legislation, and three and a half centuries of actual practice, are that

Right to Arms
Under Roman-Dutch law, everyone, regardless of social status, has the right to identify him/herself by means of a coat of arms. Evidently, this principle is long-established in the Netherlands: J.T. Anema refers to the 17th-century Dutch jurist Hugo de Groot, who wrote in Inleiding tot de Hollandsche rechts-geleerdheid ("Introduction to Dutch Jurisprudence") (1631) that, since olden times, the well-born had had the right to bear arms in public and other classes had followed their example.

Arms as Property
Both the Protection of Names, Uniforms and Badges Act 1935 and the Heraldry Act 1962 refer to arms and badges as being "property", presumably of the intellectual kind. In these Acts, armigers are referred to as "owners".

Individual Ownership
Personal arms belong to individuals, and not to families collectively or to everyone with the same surname. This is confirmed in the Bureau of Heraldry's General Information and Instructions to Applicants. Unfortunately, the term "family coat of arms" is widely used, and it even appears in the Heraldry Act, which defines it as "any coat of arms borne by a natural person" (note the singular "a").

The fiction of "family arms" linked to surnames was encouraged and exploited by traders in armorial merchandise, known as "wapensmouse" ("heraldry hawkers") or "bucket shops". The problem was eventually dealt with by an amendment to the Heraldry Act in 1980, which prohibits trade in representations of purported family arms unless the arms have been certified as authentic by the Bureau of Heraldry.

Impersonal arms are also individual and not collective. Municipal arms belong to municipal councils and not to the communities of the towns which they administer. Association and institution arms belong to the organisations and not to their members, though members may display the arms, e.g. as blazer badges, to show their membership.

Assumption
There are two means of establishing a new coat of arms: (1) assume them, or (2) have them granted by a competent authority.

The validity, under Roman law, of self-assumption was confirmed as early as the 1350s, by the Italian authority Bartolo de Saxeferrato, in his Tractatus de insigniis et armis ("Treatise on Insignia and Arms"). In his view, people were allowed to assume arms for identification just as they were allowed to use names to identify themselves.

The Bureau of Heraldry's General Information and Instructions to Applicants confirms that anyone "may simply adopt any unique or distinctive coat of arms", as long as it does not imitate any other existing arms.

Grants
In some countries, the authorities can and do grant arms as a form of privilege or honour. South Africa has no such system, though it existed at various times in the past.

In 1804, during the second period of Dutch rule (1803-06), the Batavian, i.e. Dutch, commissioner-general in South Africa "authorised and empowered" the local authorities of Cape Town and the colony's rural districts (drostdyen) to use armorial seals.

More recently, the Heraldry Act 1962 authorised the state president to grant arms to official bodies, and the provincial administrators to grant arms to municipalities. These authorisations to grant arms were withdrawn when the Act was amended in 1969.

From the time that the Cape Colony became a British possession in 1814, until South Africa left the Commonwealth and became a republic in 1961, South Africans could obtain arms from the British authorities: the College of Arms (England), the Lyon Office (Scotland) and, until 1943, the Ulster Office (Ireland).

South Africans of British ancestry, like those of British descent in other parts of the world, can still obtain grants of personal arms from the College of Arms and the Lyon Office.

South Africans are also - and, evidently, have always been - free to obtain grants of arms from foreign sources. Notable examples have been: German-born Johann Kirst, who obtained a grant from one of the Holy Roman Emperor's Counts Palatine in 1767, and the Orange Free State republican government, which obtained its arms and flag from the King of the Netherlands in 1857. There are also some recent instances of South Africans obtaining grants from the Chief Herald of Ireland.

Inheritance
As in other countries, personal arms are hereditary, and are transmitted from one generation to the next. However, a woman does not transmit her paternal arms to her children unless she is an heraldic heiress, i.e. her father has died and she has no brothers or nephews to carry on the family name or the arms. (How does this centuries-old principle fit in with the Constitution, which prohibits gender-based discrimination?)

A woman who is armigerous in her own right can transmit her arms to her children, and there are some recorded instances of this in South Africa, e.g. De Bowen (née Waldron) and Middleton.

Transfer
Impersonal arms can be transferred from one body to another, and be registered in the new owner's name.

There are several examples in municipal heraldry. The arms granted to Cape Town in 1804 were discontinued when local government was abolished in 1827, revived by the new municipality formed in 1840, and granted to it by the College of Arms in 1899.

The municipalities of Vryburg and Vryheid respectively took over the arms of the short-lived Stellaland Republic and the Nieuwe Republiek, of which they had been the capitals. Both arms were later registered in the names of the municipalities.

In the 1970s, several new divisional councils, which were formed by amalgamating existing councils, each took over the arms of one of the authorities that it had absorbed, and re-registered them in its own name. The Matroosberg DC, for instance, took over the former Worcester DC's arms. In 2006, the former Prieska municipality's arms were re-registered in the name of the Siyathemba municipality into which it had been incorporated.

When the Simon's Town municipality was dissolved in 1996, it transferred its arms to the local historical society, which registered them in its own name.

Usurpation
Usurpation, i.e. taking someone else's arms and using them as one's own, is as unacceptable in South Africa as it is in many other countries.

Nevertheless, there are examples of usurpation from the 18th century onwards. Probably the most flagrant episode of usurpation, albeit it probably unintentional, was in the mid-1940s, when the popular magazine Die Brandwag published a long-running series of articles on Afrikaner family histories. They were illustrated with coats of arms which, apparently, many people assumed in the belief that they had been borne by their ancestors. As later research showed, many of them actually belonged to European families with similar surnames but no proven genealogical connection.

As a precaution against possible usurpation, before registering arms the Bureau of Heraldry publishes details in the Government Gazette, with a notice inviting anyone who considers that registration "will encroach upon rights to which he or she is legally entitled", to lodge a formal objection within one month.

Legal Protection
In Grondslae van die Persoonlikheidsreg ("Fundaments of Personality Law") (1953), W.A. Joubert wrote that a man's name and seal form part of his legal dignitas, and that if they are misused by others he can take actio injuriarum, i.e. apply to court for an interdict or damages.

The first statute law in this regard was the Protection of Names, Uniforms and Badges Act 1935, which enabled associations and institutions to register "badges", to establish their "sole and exclusive right" to them. Misuse of registered badges by others was actionable. A "badge" could take any form, and several dozen of those registered between 1936 and 1963 were coats of arms.

Registration of municipal arms by the provincial administrations was introduced after World War II: in Natal in 1949, in the Transvaal in 1951, and in the Cape and the Orange Free State in 1953. In each province, municipalities could register their ownership of their arms by publishing details in the province's Official Gazette. Protection existed only within the province concerned.

Since 1963, associations, institutions, local authorities, national and provincial governments, and individuals, have been able to register their arms at the Bureau of Heraldry, under the Heraldry Act 1962. In the case of inherited personal arms, satisfactory genealogical evidence must be provided to prove descent.

Penalties
The Heraldry Act 1962 contains penalty clauses which registered armigers can invoke if their arms are usurped or misused by others. As there is no special court to deal with these cases, any such actions would have to be referred to the local magistrate's court or, perhaps, the High Court.

National and provincial governments, and municipalities, can have offenders prosecuted, the penalties on conviction being imprisonment (for ridiculing or showing contempt for the national arms) or a fine.

Private citizens and organisations, as well as national and provincial governments and municipalities, can sue for damages, and obtain court orders to stop offenders. However, the amounts of the fines and damages were last updated in 1980 and are negligible by current standards.