SWAZILAND: Lack of legal status hinders the progress of women

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

MBABANE, 18 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - Swazi businesswomen say the floundering national economy will benefit from their entrepreneurial talents when they are no longer constrained by discriminatory laws.

Gender rights activists in Swaziland often use the story of businesswoman Thandi Khumalo to illustrate the personal and economic devastation that can result from Swazi women's lack of legal status as adults in traditional law.

"She was robbed of everything she owned because, by Swazi custom, she was a minor. Her male relatives cheated her of everything she had earned as a brilliant businesswoman. That is why we are placing our hopes on the new national constitution, which is supposed to guarantee equality for women," said Cynthia Khumalo, Thandi's niece and a businesswoman in the central commercial city of Manzini.

Thandi had built a four-bedroom home in the suburb of Fairview on the hills overlooking Manzini, where it was the largest structure at the time, and financed it with the profits from apartment blocks she had developed and various other enterprises.

Returning to Swaziland from a trip abroad, Thandi found she was locked out of her house. The new owner explained that her husband had forfeited the property to pay off a gambling debt.

The house had been registered in her husband's name as, by law, a Swazi woman cannot own property; without the sponsorship of a male relative, neither can she enter into a contract or secure a bank loan.

"My aunt loved that house. She died of heart failure a short time later," said Cynthia.

A woman attorney in Manzini commented, "As modern educated women, we feel it's insulting that we need a document to tell us we are adults. But the lending institutions require this [male sponsorship]. In retrospect, it is remarkable that women who occupied cabinet positions and government posts these past years could sign government documents."

According to the new constitution, which was signed by King Mswati recently and will come into force in January 2006, women are to shed their status as legal minors and be granted all the privileges of legal adults: "women have the right to equal treatment with men and that right shall include equal opportunities in political, economic and social activities".

The Swaziland chapter of Women and Law in Southern Africa have interpreted this to mean that banks could no longer refuse loans based on gender.

"Except for some die-hard male traditionalists, most Swazis want equality for women because of the clear economic and social benefits. Banks are out to make money - they don't like having to turn down profitable customers and not earn interest through loans because of out-dated views on women," said Constance Ndlovu, co-owner of a beauty shop in Matsapha Industrial Estate outside Manzini.

Banks loans have been unavailable to women as individuals - they had to form a corporation with other partners, which then became the legal entity receiving the loan.

"Women have always been able to own property in towns if they formed corporations, but this is an expensive and time-consuming process," said Manzini attorney Fikile Mthembu, who was the city's first woman mayor.

Swazi businesswomen are planning to use their new constitutional rights to obtain loans from financial institutions, and to press the government's Land Control Board into granting them title deeds to urban plots, previously reserved for Swazi men.

"Swazi Nation Land remains a question - we don't know if women will be successful in obtaining farm land under chiefs," said one attorney.

Eighty percent of the population live as smallholder farmers on communal Swazi Nation Land, administered by palace-appointed chiefs. By custom, every Swazi male head of a household who pledged to be the subject of a chief was entitled to a place to build a house for his family, a small field to cultivate subsistence crops, and grazing land for his cattle.

That privilege has not been extended to women. Under the "kuteka" custom, when a woman's husband died she was required to move into the household of her brother-in-law, become his wife and bear his children in a polygamous relationship. The deceased man's family acquired all his property; in some cases, families denied widows and their children any of the late husband's property, leaving them destitute.

Women's groups were successful in getting the constitution's authors to address this problem in a section devoted to the property rights of spouses: "a surviving spouse is entitled to a reasonable provision out of the estate of the other spouse, whether the other spouse made a valid will or not, or whether the spouses were married by civil or customary rites".

A widow will no longer have to enter into a "kuteka" arrangement with a brother-in-law. The constitution states that "a woman shall not be compelled to undergo or uphold any custom to which she is in conscience opposed".

Matsapha beautician Ndlovu said, "These things are now written down in black and white, and the king has signed this constitution. There is no going back."

[ENDS]