If you do not have a will, you can have one drawn up for nothing from 14 to 18 September. Attorneys around the country will draft a basic will free of charge as part of the annual National Wills Week. Currently, two-thirds of South Africans do not have one.
Asked why not, 43% of people say they do not own enough to make the exercise worth the trouble, though 98% say they want to leave a legacy behind when they pass away.
Michelle Govender, Head of Philanthropy and Major Partnerships at WWF South Africa, thinks the gap comes down to the word itself. “Most people hear the word legacy and picture a house or an investment portfolio. That picture excludes anyone who has neither.”
What It Takes
A gift left in a will to conservation carries no minimum. It costs you nothing while you are alive, and you can write it as a share of whatever is left once your family have been provided for, rather than a fixed sum you may not have. An attorney can add it as a clause or attach it to a will you already have as a codicil, in a few minutes. You can change your mind about it at any point afterwards.
“People ask themselves what they own, when the more useful question is what is the thing they want to be remembered for, or what do they want their legacy to be long after they have left this world,” Govender says. “Nature is the home all of us already live in, and directing a share of an estate towards looking after it is as impactful as handing down a house to your loved ones.”
Where the Money Has Gone
A bequest left by the late Leslie Hill funds a trust that has secured close to 290 000 hectares of the Succulent Karoo for formal conservation. If you have driven through Namaqua National Park in the Northern Cape or the Knersvlakte Nature Reserve in the Western Cape, you have been on land bought with money someone left behind.
In the Overberg, money from the Elizabeth Harding Bequest pays for work with farmers who agree to leave remnants of renosterveld standing, with the restriction written into the title deed so that it binds whoever owns the farm next. Twenty-three of these agreements now protect more than 5 000 hectares of one of the most threatened vegetation types on earth.
Not everyone leaves money. Mike Harrison, a retired aeronautical engineer who lived on the sea outside Rooiels, left the land itself. He had spent seven years in the 1990s fighting off a developer who wanted to subdivide the mountain slopes above the village, and towards the end of his life he asked an attorney to draft a will that would keep his own 22 hectares out of the same danger. The title deed he left behind rules out subdivision and commercial use permanently. That ground holds 600 metres of coastline, four hectares of endangered wetland and at least 13 plant species of conservation concern, and it closes a gap between the Kogelberg and the coast.
Those three landscapes belong to a country that holds nine biomes in total. The Cape fynbos that renosterveld forms part of is the biologically richest vegetation per unit area anywhere on earth. The Succulent Karoo carries a third of the world’s succulent species. Offshore, three oceans meet across more than 150 marine ecosystem types. A tenth of the land surface supplies half the country’s surface water and underpins two-thirds of its economy, which is what reaches your tap and your grocery bill. Healthy versions of these systems absorb the floods and droughts that arrive more often each decade, and whoever comes next inherits all of it in whatever condition this generation leaves it.
“Imagine if all of us, as ordinary people who want to leave this world better than we found it, gave just 1% of our estate. What a world that would be. Now that is a legacy future generations could look forward to,” stresses Govender.
Getting Your Free Will
Contact details for participating firms are published on the Law Society of South Africa’s website ahead of the week. Take along a list of what you own and the identity numbers of the people you want to benefit, and give some thought beforehand to who should act as executor.
The free service covers new basic wills only, so it will not be used to amend or redraft a will you already have. If you want to include a conservation bequest, suggested wording is available at wwf.org.za. Bequests to the organisation are exempt from estate duty, which means the full amount goes to the work rather than a portion of it.