Zimbabwe widows confront custom of asset seizures

Report: thousands preyed on by their relatives yearly

HARARE // As Maliyaziwa Malunga mourns her husband, she is also fighting against his relatives who plot to seize her house in a custom that affects thousands of women in Zimbabwe each year.

A Human Rights Watch report released yesterday details how in-laws routinely expect to take property and money from widows soon after their husbands’ demise. When Mrs Malunga’s husband died in 2013, his relatives locked her in her home, forced her to open her cash box and took US$4,000 (Dh14,720) and the title documents to her property.

“I lock my doors always, fearing some of those in-laws will come and harass me,” said Mrs Malunga, 53, who was still in a legal tussle with the relatives.

“It is so painful to go to courts and it is stressful. I lose sleep, my blood pressure is high and I have lost weight because of stress.” Zimbabwean widows who are thrown out of their homes by their in- laws often have little chance of justice because many marriages are under customary law and not registered, according to the report.

“My advice is for married women to go to court and have a wedding certificate and we will not have problems like this one,” said Mrs Malunga.

“Widows must fight for their rights, they should be strong and should not give up,” she added, recalling that her husband’s relatives engaged in fistfights over her house in Chitungwiza, outside Harare.

The rights report urged the government to protect vulnerable, often elderly widows.

“The impact of property grabbing on widows is devastating,” said Bethany Brown, the re- port’s author. “Women whose property was taken from them spoke of homelessness, destitution and loss of livelihoods.”

The report is based on interviews with 59 widows across Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces last year.

“My brother-in-law has taken all of my fields,” said Deborah, 58, from Mashonaland East. “Now he says that I cannot walk on ‘his’ fields. Maybe he is really happy to see us suffer.” The Legal Resources Foundation, which helps widows in Zimbabwe, said it had handled at least 1,700 such cases in the past three years.

“Women have to register their estates and they should do so immediately after the deaths of their husbands,” said Lucia Masuka- Zanhi, the foundation’s legal programmes director. “Women can assert their rights through the courts and each case will be decided on its facts.”