FINDERS KEEPERS? WHAT SOUTH AFRICAN LAW REALLY SAYS ABOUT FOUND MONEY AND LOST PROPERTY

In June 2017, a Walter Sisulu University student was due to receive her monthly NSFAS food allowance of R1 400. Instead, more than R14 million appeared in her student account. Over the weeks that followed, she spent about R818 000 of it. In 2022 the East London Regional Court convicted her of theft. On appeal, the Eastern Cape High Court confirmed that conviction, although it replaced her prison term with a wholly suspended sentence.

Most of us will never wake up to R14 million that isn't ours. But almost all of us, at some point, will find something that belongs to someone else: a wallet on a taxi seat, cash still sitting in an ATM, a parcel left at the wrong door. In those moments, a little voice from the school playground tends to pipe up with "finders keepers". It is worth knowing that South African law has never agreed with it.

Losing something does not mean losing ownership

The starting point is simple: when you lose something, you do not stop owning it. Ownership only ends if you deliberately give a thing up, intending never to own it again. Our law treats those two situations very differently.

If something has truly been abandoned, the first person to take it, intending to keep it, becomes its new owner. A couch left on the pavement with a "free" sign is a good example. But lost property is not abandoned property. The owner can claim it back from whoever has it, using a remedy known as the rei vindicatio. That includes someone who innocently bought it from somebody else. The Appellate Division explained in Chetty v Naidoo 1974 (3) SA 13 (A) that an owner need only prove two things: that they own the item, and that the other person has it. It is then up to the person holding it to show a legal right to keep it.

Applying those principles leads to some interesting questions. Imagine you buy a second-hand couch and later find R5 000 stuffed inside the lining. We are not aware of a South African court that has decided that exact situation. On ordinary principles, though, the seller sold you a couch, not cash they did not know existed. The money arguably still belongs to whoever hid it there, or to their estate.

At the other end of the scale, some legal commentators take the view that abandonment can be presumed where a small amount of loose cash is lost, such as a R5 coin or even a R200 note, so the finder may become its owner. The more valuable or identifiable the item, the weaker that argument becomes. Nobody would seriously suggest that a wedding ring or a wallet full of bank cards has been abandoned.

When keeping it becomes a crime

Picking up a lost item is not a crime. Very often it is the decent and sensible thing to do. The risk lies in what happens next.

Theft, in our law, is the unlawful and intentional appropriation of someone else's property. A finder who decides to keep a lost item as their own can, in the right circumstances, be convicted of theft. That is especially likely where the owner could easily have been traced, such as when the wallet contains an ID card with the owner's name on it.

The person who buys from the finder is not in the clear either. Section 37(1) of the General Law Amendment Act 62 of 1955 makes it an offence to acquire stolen goods without reasonable cause to believe the seller was the owner or was authorised to sell them. The Constitutional Court adjusted how that section is proved in S v Manamela and Another 2000 (3) SA 1 (CC), but the offence itself remains firmly on the books. A suspiciously cheap phone offered on a street corner can therefore land the buyer in trouble too.

The same rule applies to your bank account

This is where the student's story comes back in. It is tempting to believe that money in your account is your money, no matter how it got there. The Supreme Court of Appeal rejected that idea in Nissan South Africa (Pty) Ltd v Marnitz NO and Others 2005 (1) SA 441 (SCA). It held that an account holder is not entitled to money transferred into their account by mistake. The NSFAS case shows how seriously the criminal courts take the point: spending money you know was paid to you in error can end in a theft conviction.

It also helps to understand why these mistakes happen so easily. A transfer will generally go through as long as the account number is valid at the selected bank. And the bank cannot simply take the money back out of the recipient's account without the recipient's permission. If a large, unexpected amount lands in your account, the sensible course is to leave it untouched and report it to your bank in writing. Be wary of anyone who phones asking you to send it back to them directly. Let the bank handle the return.

What about a reward?

Commentators suggest that a finder who returns lost property is probably entitled to claim the reasonable expenses of looking after it, such as the vet bills for a runaway dog you took in for a week. A reward, though, is a matter of contract, and South Africa has a famous case on exactly this point.

More than a century ago, thieves stole diamond jewellery from City Jewellers in Cape Town, a business owned by the American Swiss Watch Company. A director of the company placed an advertisement in the Cape Argus offering £500 to anyone whose information to the police led to the arrest of the thieves and the recovery of the jewellery. A man named Bloom gave the police information that did exactly that, and then claimed the reward. He was turned away, first by the Cape court and then by the Appellate Division in Bloom v The American Swiss Watch Company 1915 AD 100. He had not known about the advertisement when he spoke to the police, so he could not have been accepting the offer.

The story has a twist. A second man, Lee, had seen the advertisement and also went to the police, but only after Bloom had already given them the same information. Lee lost too. In Lee v American Swiss Watch Co 1914 AD 121 the court read the advertisement as offering a single reward to the first person to supply the information. That person was Bloom, and his failure to qualify did not allow Lee to step into his place.

The lesson is that a publicly advertised reward can create a binding obligation to pay, but only to someone who acts in response to the offer, knowing about it, and who meets its terms. If you see a "R1 000 reward" poster for a lost dog and return the dog, you are in a good position to claim. If you only learn about the poster afterwards, Bloom's case suggests you may be out of luck.

Buried treasure is a different story

Every South African has heard the legend of the lost Kruger millions. So what if you really did dig up a chest of old gold coins?

Our common law has a special rule for true treasure: valuables hidden so long ago that their owner can no longer be found. A landowner who finds treasure on their own land keeps it. If someone else stumbles on it by chance on another person's land, it is traditionally shared equally between the finder and the landowner. If the original owner or their heirs can be traced, it is not treasure at all. It is simply lost property, and it goes back to them.

Then the state may enter the picture. Section 35(2) of the National Heritage Resources Act 25 of 1999 provides that all archaeological objects, palaeontological material and meteorites belong to the state. Nobody may collect, own, sell or export them without a permit from the relevant heritage resources authority. The Act treats material remains of human activity that are older than 100 years as archaeological. A hoard buried during the Anglo-Boer War could therefore well belong to the state, not to whoever finds it. Fossils, of course, are far older still. If you live near the Cradle of Humankind and your dog unearths something that looks very old and very bony, it is not destined for your mantelpiece.

South Africa is not unusual in this. In 2025, two hikers taking a shortcut through the Krkonoše Mountains in the Czech Republic spotted an aluminium box poking out of a stone wall. Inside were 598 gold coins, and nearby lay a second cache of gold bracelets and cigar cases. Under Czech law, archaeological finds belong to the regional administration from the moment they are discovered. The hikers handed everything to the regional museum. They did not get to keep the gold, but the law entitles them to a finder's reward.

The same year, a man digging a swimming pool in his garden near Lyon, France, unearthed five gold bars and a number of gold coins. This time the story ended differently. Each bar carried a unique number, which allowed the police to establish that the gold had been legally acquired and was not stolen. Nobody could say who had buried it, and because French law gives treasure found on your own property to the landowner, he was allowed to keep it.

The two stories neatly illustrate our own law. A hoard old enough to count as archaeological under the Heritage Act would, like the Czech coins, belong to the state. Gold buried far more recently, like the French bars, which had been made only 15 to 20 years earlier, would fall outside the Act. If its owner could not be traced, it would be governed by the common-law treasure rule, under which a landowner who finds treasure on their own land keeps it.

Doing the right thing is usually easy

When you find something, the most useful thing you can do is try to get it home. An ID card, a business card or a name tag will often lead straight to the owner. Shopping centres, airports and stadiums usually have security or lost-and-found desks. Failing that, you can hand the item in at a police station, ask for a reference number and keep a note of where and when you found it. If you post about it online, blur any ID numbers or card details, because publishing them can expose the owner to fraud.

And if you are the one who has lost something, report it at a police station, as insurers generally want a reference number. Block your bank cards and SIM straight away. If your ID or passport is gone, apply for a replacement at the Department of Home Affairs.

"Finders keepers" may work in the playground, but in South African law the loser keeps what is theirs, whether it is a wallet, a mistaken payment or a fossil in your back garden.

If you are caught up in a dispute over lost property, money paid into the wrong account or an unusual find, contact Gittins Attorneys on 010 001 2002 or reception@gittins.co.za.