Patriarchy, Patrimony and Widow-hood (and the strange mortar there-in)

The man in Africa, where the woman he marries becomes an integral part of his own family, has no business dying.

For, upon her husband’s death, the woman will know a true and lasting misery – one unleashed by her late husband’s kin and far removed from the emotional downturn caused by her husband’s demise.

These kin now come to view her as an outsider whose connection to them – real or perceived – was interred with the mortal remains of her late husband.

This estrangement initiates an interesting chain of phenomena; whose main objective is to remove the widow from any seat of authority over her late husband’s properties and their incomes.

The objective perhaps draws its validity from the scenario where no such animosity develops where an un-propertied man dies, leaving no assets rights to which attract contest.

Where property exists however, it is invariably the wish of her former kin that the widow be evicted forthwith.

In effecting this, the premier step is for the widow’s in-laws to establish, in the larger family’s eyes, the lack of consanguinity the woman bears the family. They will say of her, ‘This woman – born a stranger to us, was only appended to the tree by the now fallen branch that was our brother. A stranger again she is!’

It is this ‘stranger-hood’ that becomes the major block in the unfolding set-piece; since outside of charity – strangers have no place at table.

Hereon, matters are easily expedited if the woman involved is childless, un-schooled and un-wedded.

Where however, she has born the husband a child, or was sufficiently enlightened to insist on a legal record of co-ownership to her husband’s property, or was by the laws of marriage prevailing in that domicile legally married to the deceased – then the rules of the game must change.

- Solomon Manzi,

January, 2015