Put me back in my house!

When Mavis Hadziucheri's in-laws learnt that she had buried her husband without their permission, they drove 300km south west of Harare in Zimbabwe to her home in rural cotton farming Gokwe, dug up his body and took it to a secret location for re-burial.

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A few weeks later they went back again and helped themselves to her household property and harvest. "My home has been completely destroyed. There is nothing left," narrates Mavis choking back the tears of her pain. "The cows, dishes, plates, even my clothes. Everything! They smashed down all the doors, and my cows and scotch cart. I had bought them with the income I made from farming," she adds, letting the tears run down her cheeks.

Mavis had been married for 28 years. She and her husband had no children. They had moved from their home in Harare to the rural areas so that she could farm more easily and more profitably on a larger plot of land they had secured.

When her husband died, she was alone. "I had gone to the public pay phone twice and sent word to my husband's family about his death, but they did not turn up," she explained. She went to the headman for advice. He gave her the go ahead to bury her husband, Mavis says. And no sooner had the soil on his grave settled than her troubles started.

"His relatives came and said I had behaved as if my husband did not have family." Mavis explains. She says when she went to ask the headman for a letter to enable her to get a death certificate for her husband and reclaim her property from the in-laws through settling the estate; the headman said he had given it to her in-laws.

"My in-laws had given the headman some of my cows. I went to the police and even they told me that the property belongs to their relative so they could take it. I was at a loss as to what to do," Mavis says reaching her hand to the seam of her black headscarf, as if neatening her next thoughts. Her headdress is part of the attire that has colloquially become known as the 'Sorry' that symbolises a widow in mourning.

Mavis also discovered that her husband had been married to his half-sister. Because they had different surnames, the siblings had even been able to have the false marriage registered. "I have a copy of the marriage certificate. My sister in-law is now saying she is my husband's widow and has thrown me out of the house we had in the city," says Mavis.

A third woman, her husbands' first wife, staked a claim to the estate, saying that although divorced, she was the rightful heir. "When he dies, all these women are left in a web that becomes an inheritance dispute, especially with the family of the deceased," says Susan Zwinoira, Executive Director of the Zimbabwe Widows and Orphans Trust (ZWOT).

Founded in 1996, ZWOT is a charity organisation that provides shelter, legal assistance and health support to women and children who have been made destitute by property wrangles.

"The problem stems from the practice of dowry, the paying of cows or money to the bride's family. This leaves a woman in this country with a feeling that she is the husband's property. When the husband dies, the family--because they may have contributed in one way or another to the dowry directly, or to the education of the man--will feel they own her so they want to take her over as a wife. They see her as an asset," says Zwinoira.

Despite a major wills and inheritance campaign in the late 1990s, Zimbabwean women are still being robbed of their inheritance. Women, like Mavis, who have a fighting spirit are making it a little bit possible for other women to justly claim what is theirs.

"All I want is for them to put me back in my house. I left the house with just the clothes I am wearing. I have nothing else," says Mavis.

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This article is part of a special series of articles produced for the Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign. Source: Gender and Media (GEM) Commentary Service

By Isabella Matambanadzo, Zimbabwe