WINDHOEK, July 8 (AFP) - As AIDS continues to claim lives in rural Namibia, the government is trying to get rid of an age-old custom dictating that women and children lose their homes, cattle and crop fields to their inlaws after the husbands die.
"The practice of evicting widows and their children from the land and stripping them of their properties should not be allowed in an independent Namibia," said Penehupifo Pohamba, the southern African country's first lady, this week.
"I appeal to our traditional leaders to assist people under their jurisdiction to ensure that the practice is done away with. They should deal firmly with people who are alleged to have been involved in property grabbing," she told a national conference on women and children's property rights.
The practice, common in rural areas in northern Namibia, is leaving thousands of women in dire straits as the AIDS pandemic affecting one in four adults, or 210,000 people, claims lives.
Some 57,000 Namibian children have been orphaned by AIDS in Namibia, exacerbating poverty already in the vast and arid country.
"These orphans, together with their mothers become victims of some traditional norms and customs that rob women and orphans of their livelihood", said Pohamba.
This was the case of Loide Amushila, who is living with HIV and lost everything when her husband died from AIDS.
"After my husband died, his family kicked me out of my traditional homestead together with my four children", said Amushila, now an AIDS volunteer with an organisation supported by a local church.
"We had nowhere to go, we had to leave our mahangu (millet) fields and our few cattle behind, they took everything".
"I am now doing AIDS counselling going from homestead to homestead, I earn a little income and my children can go to school," said Amushila who lives in the village of Oshakati, some 600 kilometers north of Windhoek.
According to a recent study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on Namibia, property stripping from widows and orphans has been practised in Namibia over generations.
But the spread of AIDS, drought and increasing poverty are leading to an increase in property stripping.
"As a result some 44 percent of widows and orphans lost cattle which represent wealth and status, 28 percent lost small livestock and 41 percent lost farm equipment," the study said.
Depriving widows and their children of these possessions undermines their capacity in rural areas to have shelter, produce food and secure a livelihood, the FAO said.
Namibia has adopted legislation like the Communal Land Reform Act, which gives women equal land rights and a new marital law granting women equality in civil marriages.
But in many areas it is customary law that prevails, giving chiefs and other traditional authorities the power to rule over land rights.
"The law for communal land stipulates that in a customary marriage the allocated land right reverts back to the regional chief or traditional authority if a person dies," Norman Tjombe of the Legal Assistance Centre told AFP.
"The chief or traditional authority must relocate the land right either to the surviving spouse, who must consent to the allocation of the right to him or her, or to the child of deceased if there is no surviving spouse or if the spouse does not accept the allocation of the right", according to Tjombe.
Tjombe said the law must also grant property rights to women in customary marriages.
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