In his 1968 study, African Women: Their Legal Status in South Africa, H. J. Simons noted a striking discrepancy between law and sexual practice that was particular to Natal. At that time, Natal was the only South African province in which women over 21 years of age still needed their father’s consent to marry, and in which Africans could be fined or imprisoned for adultery or seduction. “Nowhere else,” said Simons, “does the government arrogate so wide a power to intrude upon the private lives of citizens and regulate their personal relations within
their own racial group.”