LUSAKA, ZAMBIA – Loveness Mwamba, 51, says she felt like a fugitive when she was forced to evacuate her marital home.
The two apartments she built on her husband’s plot of land are now in the hands of her stepson after a local custom known as property grabbing forced Mwamba and her son out of their home when her husband died.
Today, she rents an unpainted two-room apartment with no electricity for 100,000 kwacha per month, or $20 USD, an exorbitant fee here, a place where more than 80 percent of Zambians live on less than $1 per day. Property grabbing fuels a cycle of poverty for many women in Zambia.
A Marriage Unravels
Loveness Mwamba, 51, is an attractive woman with long, black curly hair. She has a slender body, yet her muscles look strong. Today, she works as a caregiver at Bwafwano Home-Based Care, a local hospice that provides care for people living with AIDS and other chronically ill patients. A tailor by profession, Mwamba is no longer able to work as a tailor. She says her late husband sold her sewing machine to pay for her stepson’s school fees years ago.
When she leaves work and returns to the two-bedroom flat that she is now forced to call home, she says her legs ache. She has only a few minutes to sit down on an old, dusty sofa. At 51, she still provides for her three children and one grandchild.
But her tired face brightens as she describes how she met her late husband a decade ago.
In 1997, she was middle aged and divorced. She thought she had lost her chance at love. When she met Nathan Banda, a bricklayer with five divorces under his belt, she says they fell in love instantly. Mwamba quickly moved in with her new husband, and her two children from a previous marriage, into his big house on a large lot in Chansaga compound north of the city on Kabwe road. (Banda had six children from his previous marriages.)
Mwamba says when she moved in her husband had nothing in the house. She says all he had was one plate and a pan he used for cooking. “I moved in with my kitchen utensils and together we started a home,” she says.
Over the course of the next 7 years, Mwamba says they had a mostly happy marriage. They were both overjoyed, she says, when she gave birth to a son just a year into the marriage. But there were rocky points and Mwamba says her husband was frequently ill and could behave unpredictably.
“My husband would wake up and without a proper reason would tell me to move out,” she says. “At times he [would not] even eat my food, but cooked for himself.” She says she would often leave when he told her too, but members of their church would come talk to him and he would take her back.
As a result of his unpredictable nature, Mwamba says she decided to build a second apartment on the property so that she could have a place to call her own.
“I built a house using the money I made from my business as a tailor,” she says.
“My husband had one big house and since the plot was large, I decided to build.”
Last April, seven years into their marriage, Banda died. She says he was often ill and just days before his death he confessed that he had been HIV positive for more than 10 years. After he died, Mwamba was tested and learned she too was HIV positive. To date, their son is still negative.
Shortly after the funeral and her HIV diagnosis, Mwamba had a visit from some of her husband’s relatives. They accused her of killing him. They insisted she move out of the house.
“My husband’s relatives insisted that I move out,” she says. “They told me he married many wives before me, so why should I be the one to remain?”
Mwamba is not the only woman who has faced eviction after the death of a husband here. Property grabbing is a cultural tradition that has its roots in old tribal rules that mandated widows and children were to be absorbed by a man’s family, along with his property in the event of his death.
But today, as more than 80 percent of Zambians live on less than $1 a day, the in-laws and surviving relatives often use the tradition of property grabbing to evict a wife and children in order to take advantage of the newly vacant shelter. Property grabbing remains common here despite the fact that a 1989 law outlawed the practice. Here, poverty fuels the cycle of property grabbing and many local courts over-step legal bounds in order to rule based on cultural norms.
Despite its frequency, statistics on property grabbing are limited. The U.S. State Department called property grabbing in Zambia “rampant.” And in 2001, the Zambia-Emory HIV Research Project collected 184 wills from individuals in monogamous unions where one or both of the individuals were HIV-positive. Despite the fact that many wills specifically stated that their extended family was not allowed to tamper with their possessions in the event of death, property grabbing occurred in more than half the cases.
Ignoring the Will
Despite the fact that Mwamba’s husband left a will, none of his relatives paid attention to it. Mwamba, who has a photocopy of his will, confirms that Banda had intended her and their son to remain in the house. Only if she remarried would she be required to leave, according to Banda’s last will and testament. The will contains Banda’s signature and that of a witness from their church.
“There are several features which make a will,” says Jean Couvaras a lawyer at the Legal Resources Foundation. Among the requirements Couvaras says are a signature and a witness who is not named as a beneficiary.
Nelson Mwape, YWCA gender based violence coordinator, says wills like Banda’s should be respected. Only in cases where the deceased does not leave a will are relatives to intervene and appoint an administrator to divide the estate.
According to the Intestate Succession Act of 1989, property should be divided with 20 percent assigned to the surviving spouse, 50 percent to the children, 20 percent to the parents of the deceased and 10 percent other dependents in equal shares. The law further states that if the estate contains a house, the surviving spouse and children shall receive the title to the house.
After many months of debate, and with the help of one of Banda’s surviving sisters, they were able to convince the family to allow her and the children to stay on the property. For several months, things appeared to be settled.
But then Mwamba says her brother-in-law and stepson, Joseph Banda, 28, appeared with new demands. Before she knew it, Banda’s first wife, who was ill, and son moved into the main house, and Mwamba was forced out to the second apartment she built a few years earlier.
But not long after she moved in, Mwamba says Joseph’s mother, her husband’s first wife, died. Then her stepson became insistent that she get off his father’s land for good.
“They started pestering me to move out,” she says. “They insulted me, telling me I was a prostitute and that I killed my husband. Then suddenly I received summons from the court by my stepson.”
Earlier this year, the court ruled that Joseph Banda and Mwamba were to share the property. But despite the judge’s ruling, the harassment continued.
Her stepson told her she could only stay in the house if she married him, but she refused.
“Then, my stepson started acting strange. He cut down the maize stalks I had grown. He took the stones I had crushed and used them to build another house on my husband’s plot,” she says.
Local Judges Blur Law and Tradition
Mary Kapugwe, 32, Mwamba’s former neighbor says she encouraged her to take her stepson to court and to seek help from the police.
So Mwamba visited the Victim Support Unit at the Chansaga police post where she says she was told to take her stepson to court. So, she too filed a summons.
“But, he lied in court,” Mwamba says angrily. “He and my brother-in-law told the court that I got back [together] with my first husband,” she says.” But it’s a lie.”
Local custom and the law dictate that if a woman remarries or becomes pregnant she has to leave her late husband’s property. Despite testimony from Mwamba and her ex-husband, who told the court that they had never even considered getting back together, the judge ordered Mwamba out of the marital home.
“The surviving spouse is [to] remain with the property until they remarry or die,” says Mwape, adding that the law is supposed to protect women who are entitled to 20 percent of the property.
But a lack of training and adherence to local customs often interferes with the legal process.
“I wanted justice to prevail, but after hearing my case, even the judge told me to move out of the house,” Mwamba says as she unfolds the courts order documents.
According to Couvaras of the Legal Resources Foundation, local court judges do lack effective training to rule on property cases and as a result often rule based on their understanding of traditional and cultural norms and practices, rather than the law.
Presiding judges, who often enjoy prominent local status, have substantial power to invoke customary law, render judgment regarding marriages, divorces, inheritances and other civil proceeding, he says.
According to a 2006 report by the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection, property grabbing is considered a “normal, traditional practice.” But Raymond Havwala of the Young of the Women’s Christian Network says property grabbing is illegal and unlawful. Havwala says that many people here remain unaware of the 21-year-old law that criminalized property grabbing. With so many unaware or culturally committed to property grabbing, it remains a major factor in the cycle of poverty many women, widows and single mothers face in Zambia.
Women who are victims of property grabbing often become destitute after their eviction. Mwape says he knows of many women who have turned to prostitution to pay the bills while others force their children into the streets to beg for food. For Mwamba, she was fortunate to find a good job at Bwafwano Home-Based Care, but her salary is barely enough to pay for her new apartment and feed her children.
Mwamba says she is adjusting to life in her new apartment. Her rent is 100, 000 kwacha, or $20 USD, per month. Because the rent is so high, she says she is able to spend less than $10 USD on food for her three children each month.
“I could have at least been happy if the court ordered that we sell the houses and share the money,” she says.
Mwamba is eligible to appeal the local court’s decision to the magistrate court, a fact she says she was unaware of. “We will help her, together with International Mission Justice, to get her to appeal,” says Mwape on learning of Mwamba’s case from The Press Institute.
Mwamba says she had no idea that organization like the YWCA could help women like her. Her case will be heard by the magistrate court in Lusaka next month.
