Women Start to Tip Swaziland's Legal Scales

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-02-25 15:35:00 UTC
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Chalk one small victory in the column of Swaziland's women. Five years after Swaziland's new constitution finally stopped classifying women as minors, this week, the country's high court ruled that married women can now register property in their own name.

Maybe that doesn't sound like such a big deal. But remember, we're talking about Swaziland here, a country ruled for decades by a guy -- Mswati III -- who once tried to stop the AIDS epidemic by reinstalling an ancient chastity rite banning girls 18 years and under from having sex. What with the $30 million he annually sets aside for "royal emoluments," we can pretty well infer that he's managed to stay well-shielded from women's concerns for years. (Certainly, his 13 brides don't face quite the same rending poverty the rest of the population does. Each of them get their own retinue, palace and BMW.)

Home to one of the world's worst HIV/AIDS pandemics, in Swaziland, life expectancy has been halved since 1997 to just 31 years. Thanks to brutally unequal standing before the law, women bear the brunt of the burden. By the time a woman in Swaziland hits age 24, there's a 60% chance she will already have suffered from sexual violence in her lifetime.

But women like Lomcebo Dlamini -- a lawyer who coordinates the Swaziland branch of Women in Law -- are making some inroads, as this latest court ruling suggests.

To be sure, women's advocates are careful to make clear that it's only a partial victory: the ruling applies just to women who are wed in a civil ceremony, and with a community of property agreement. An abundance of laws are desperately still in need of change, including one that requires the family of a deceased husband to inherit all marital property -- a practice that leaves the growing number of HIV/AIDS widows completely bereft. (Custom also requires that a window mourn for at least six months, never leaving the home, further stripping her of economic potential.)

Still, though, in the Swazi women's quest for justice, it's yet another notch forward.

Photo Credit: fspunga

Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
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