RIGHTS-SWAZILAND: Wife Killings Leave Women Vulnerable

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

MBABANE, Mar 20 2000 (IPS) - When a 65 year-old shop keeper went berserk and shot to death his wife and two sons because his religion would not permit divorce from his estranged spouse, the crime struck a nerve among Swaziland’s women.

A rash of wife murders has shaken the traditional kingdom and left women feeling increasingly vulnerable.

Years of frustration and emotion flowed at an unprecedented public gathering of women, ostensibly a prayer meeting held in the commercial hub Manzini.

“Legally, women in Swaziland are minors,” says Zakhe Hlanze, a research associate with Women and Law society, “but they have been protected against spousal abuse by traditional social structures.

With the old system in tatters, where elders can no longer intervene because the extended family living in a single homestead has fragmented, we are finding a rise in crime against women.”

Statistics compiled by the Manzini-based Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse bear this out. Rapes, physical abuse and incest are on the rise.

Some of this is due to victims coming forth for the first time to seek assistance and counseling. Police have also been sensitised through training programmes to recognise signs of spousal abuse, and to refer victims to the organisation.

“But mostly we are finding gender abuse can be traced to insecurities men feel in a society in flux, where old certainties have been undermined. These fears are being channeled toward physical and sexual abuse against weaker victims.”

Spouse and child victims are blamed for being a burden, for simply requiring the basics of food, clothing and shelter, which can be beyond the means of male heads of households who face the plight of joblessness.

In Swaziland, unemployment has hovered stubbornly at 45 percent for a decade.

Vusi Ginindza, an editor the Times of Swaziland, finds blame for gender violence in the traditional marriage system, ku-teka, where divorce is unknown.

“We must re-examine this system in the light of modern reality,” he feels. In earlier times, women married for life into polygamous households were maximum procreation was required for family and even national survival. If a woman was beaten by her husband, she could return to her parental homestead for a cooling- off period.

If the abuse persisted, the cattle dowry paid by her parents to the husband would be returned, and the woman left permanently.

But such “divorce” meant no alimony, and this is not an option for modern women who depend on their husbands to pay children’s school fees and provide other support.

Because women are legally minors, they cannot take out bank loans to finance businesses. Documents must be signed by husbands or male relatives, who then own the enterprise. Land and property cannot be registered in a woman’s name, and the husband, son or male relative must step in as surrogate.

Later confiscation by the male “owner” of a woman’s property, once she has developed it, is not uncommon.

But such concerns were less urgently felt by the women gathered at the Manzini prayer meeting than the matter of sheer survival.

A seamstress named Lonkhululeko Mdluli stood and read an emotional poem that asked,”How many must die before we stand up and condemn? Is it not ironic that a woman and her children were killed on the very day when women were supposed to celebrate International Women’s Day?”

Dignitaries like Health Minister Dr Phetsile Dlamini testified to the high emotional and financial costs all Swazis must endure because of gender violence. Manzini Mayor Fikile Mthembu said gender violence should not be dismissed as domestic violence only.

“The attitude that the male sex is superior…leads to a feeling of entitlement, which, if not fulfilled, can lead to abuse,” she said.

Dr Patricia Malepe, Swaziland’s foremost psychiatrists, doubted that violence against women could be blamed on a single issue like the frustration of men prohibited by their religious sects from divorcing spouses.

“We must look at all the conditions that pressurise men, and we must speak to men,” she says. “What is it they are feeling, and what can be done to address problems before they emerge as rage?”

The Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse conducted a study late last year that for the first time interviewed perpetrators of gender violence.

Previously, victims alone were questioned. What was discovered was a mentality of denial in men, who blamed women as a gender rather than specific women for their problems. Rapists felt their victims had invited their attacks, or to had rescinded on “promises” to keep quiet after the act. Only one rapist showed remorse for his crime, or sympathised with his victim.

The others, according to Dr Malepe, showed the social conditioning that made an admission of wrongdoing against women impossible because they felt there was no such thing as a wrongful act against women.

“When the old order that protects the individual breaks down, people will demand a new one as a matter of survival,” says Women and Law’s Zakhe Hlanze.

She admits how difficult ingrained attitudes can be to change, but progress is on the horizon in legislative form. One law being drafted by government is a Land Act that will permit women to register land in their own names. This will free financial institutions to grant loans to women’s co-operatives, something banks are reluctant to do now in the absence of land as collateral.

But can men’s attitudes be changed through legislation? “We will see new thoughts in men’s minds when women reveal their latent economic potential, and manage the businesses and agricultural co- operatives that all our studies and pilot programmes show they are capable of running,” says Celeste Ndwandwe of the women’s financial empowerment group Umtapo WaboMake.

As for the sentiments in men’s hearts, some of the prayers of the congregation gathered in the Manzini park to denounce gender violence was aimed at instilling courage in men to face inevitable social change.

The poem read to the gathering called upon women to overcome men’s insecurity by “showing them that they are loved, and they are not worthless because they cannot find work in today’s economy.”

Beyond such tolerance, the message was clear: Swazi women are tired of being victims, and silence is seen as acquiescence to violence and death.