Pension Law and Death Benefits: Law, Practice and Policy Harmonisation in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) discusses the complex area of pension law relating to the distribution of death benefits in the SADC region, with a focus on developments in South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Eswatini and Lesotho. When a member of a pension fund dies in any of these five countries, there are specific provisions in the law that regulate how their death benefits should be distributed.

The book is predicated on the specific practices in these countries but also on the obligations of SADC countries to harmonise their laws governing pension funds. It demonstrates how these countries have harmonised their laws, policies, and practices in death benefits to prevent regulatory arbitrage and promote greater integration. Given this harmonisation project, the book discusses how judiciaries and tribunals in these countries have developed the law in a manner that promotes these goals.

Pension Law and Death Benefits: Law, Practice and Policy Harmonisation is aimed at pension members and their families, industry players and students.

In relation to pension members, many families are negatively affected by decisions of pension funds to distribute death benefits when their breadwinners die. This book helps any beneficiary and families in these countries to understand their rights and responsibilities and to protect those rights.

With regard to industry players, the book is relevant to pension fund trustees, regulators, judges, legal practitioners, policymakers, human resources managers and officers, benefit consultants and other advisors of pension funds.

For students and academics, the book is relevant to those interested or studying pension law, labour law, human resources, financial planning, business studies, social security law and other related areas.

Pension Law and Death Benefits: Law, Practice and Policy Harmonisation in the Southern African Development Community is a timely scholarly work that helps clarify the difficult questions that trustees have to grapple with in this fraught area of pension law, namely, how to identify dependants, what an equitable distribution of death benefits among them is in any given set of circumstances, and what the most efficacious method of payment of a death benefit is to dependants, especially minors. The exploration of case law in this regard is particularly enlightening for legal practitioners, trustees and ultimate decision-makers on these difficult questions – Judges and policy-makers – alike.

Advocate Vuyani Ngalwana, SC

-Former South African Pension Funds Adjudicator (2004–2007)

Mhango shows us that the death benefit regulatory policy is complex in ways that require careful attention to the substance of specific regulatory regimes and unique country situations. This book is a major contribution to the pension law of Eswatini.

Doris Tshabalala, High Court Judge, Eswatini

-Former Insurance and Retirement Funds Adjudicator, Eswatini

• Chapter 1: Introduction – Mtendeweka Mhango
• Chapter 2: South Africa’s Death Benefit Regulations – Mtendeweka Mhango and Ntombizozuko Dyani-Mhango 
• Chapter 3: Botswana’s Death Benefit Regulations – Mtendeweka Mhango
• Chapter 4: Malawi’s Death Benefit Regulations – Mtendeweka Mhango
• Chapter 5: Eswatini’s Death Benefit Regulations – Mtendeweka Mhango and Mothepa Ndumo 
• Chapter 6: Lesotho’s Death Benefit Regulations – Mtendeweka Mhango
• Chapter 7: Concluding Remarks – Mtendeweka Mhango