SIAYA, Kenya — Rebecca Anyango stood outside the house she has called home for 26 years, asking how long it will remain hers.
As a widow, she said her late husband’s family has threatened to evict her for years, telling her she has no inheritance rights. She said the family filed a lawsuit this year, and that she is 70 and has no legal representation. She pointed to where her husband is buried, a few steps from the door, and asked: “Where do I take the grave?”
Anyango is among thousands of widows in western Kenya who face the prospect of losing everything after their husbands die, often living in rural areas with little education and limited awareness of their rights. In such cases, women who refuse relatives’ demands can be isolated and stripped of their land, rights violations the article says run against Kenya’s constitutional guarantee of land ownership for all citizens.
Cultural practices described in the article include “sexual cleansing,” in which a widow is made to have sex with another man—often a brother of her late husband—based on the belief that the “dark cloud” of widowhood will lift. Another practice is “wife inheritance,” in which a widow is taken in as a wife by her late husband’s brother. The article says women who do not comply are often punished through disinheritance.
Simiyu Waddimba, an anthropology teacher at the University of Nairobi who authored a paper on wife inheritance, said: “If the woman is not aware of what protects her, then she will be disinherited.”
Some local government action is beginning to challenge the practices. In November, the local assembly in Siaya County unanimously passed a Widows Protection Bill, which would criminalize forced disinheritance or forced remarriage if signed by the governor. The legislation is championed by county legislator Scholastica Madowo, herself a widow and one of four elected women in the 42-member local assembly. Madowo said the “atrocities that the women go through” inspired her to act, and she said the practices are “actually a violation of their rights unless the woman does it willingly.”
The article also describes how Madowo faced campaign opponents who insinuated something about her widowhood, including allegations that she had killed her husband. Madowo’s bill would establish welfare committees to help widows access legal aid so they can challenge disinheritance.
In neighboring Kisii County, the article recounts the case of Anne Bonareri, who was stripped of her home and commercial property that had been in her late husband’s name. Bonareri said that within hours of her husband’s death in 1997, her in-laws took his possessions, and that she was left with “one photo of the father.” She said: “They took everything, and I was left with one photo of the father.”
Bonareri said that the day after the burial, her husband’s elder brother came to claim her as a wife. When she refused, she said armed men were sent to attack her, and later she worked three jobs to buy a small piece of land and build a new house. Her daughter, Emma Mong’ute, founded the Amandla MEK Foundation in 2019 to help women by offering legal advice and connecting them to pro bono lawyers. Mong’ute said the organization has had some success helping women retain land and that disinheritance creates a cycle of poverty for hundreds of thousands of children in Kenya. She said her group would consider pushing for a bill like the one in Siaya County.
Advocates in Kenya say disinheritance is often rooted in a knowledge gap about land succession rules. Easter Okech of the Kenya Female Advisory Organization in Kisumu County said most widows are disinherited because they do not understand land succession laws that recognize widows and children as the true inheritors. She said she now offers legal training for women so they can represent themselves, and that some women are doing so in ongoing cases. Okech also encourages people to write wills—often absent in rural areas—and to use a neutral executor.
Some widows in western Kenya said they have fought back on their own. Marie Owino, 87 and a former teacher, said she knew her rights under the law and that her confidence and financial independence meant her in-laws “didn’t dare” to disinherit her after her husband died 33 years ago. She said she still lives in the brick house she and her husband shared on their 100 acres, describing it as a boundary she set long ago. She said: “Once you have established yourself that you can, then I’m telling you all those people will give you respect.”
The article also points to similar tensions elsewhere in Africa over inheritance and the interaction between general law and customary law. It quotes Misheck Dube, a former associate professor at the University of Limpopo in South Africa who has researched widowhood, saying while general law protects the inheritance rights of surviving spouses and children, customary practices can still administer estates according to traditions that often harm widows.
— Associated Press journalist Farai Mutsaka contributed from Harare, Zimbabwe.
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