Abstract
The pervasiveness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic has had significant repercussions on customary institutions in Southern Africa. While such repercussions are usually quite negative, this chapter explores a counter-intuitive case where the responsiveness of customary law provides for enhanced land rights for AIDS widows, who are often the most discriminated against in terms of land rights. With ethnographic material gathered in Southern Zambia, this chapter describes how AIDS widows are able to use the stigma and taboo surrounding the disease to (a) exit the institution of being inherited by their deceased husband’s male kin, in order to (b) enhance land rights for women and their children.
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Notes
- 1.
Some of the material in this chapter has previously appeared in E.J. Frank and J.D. Unruh, ‘Demarcating forest, containing disease: land and HIV/AIDS in Southern Zambia,’ Population and Environment 29 (2008): 108–32.
- 2.
M. Campbell, The Miombo in transition: woodlands and welfare in Africa (Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), 1996).
- 3.
L. Cliggett, ‘Social components of migration: experiences from Southern Province, Zambia,’ Human Organization 59 (2000): 1–26.
- 4.
‘Zambia: country situation analysis,’ The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), date accessed May 22, 2015, http://www.unaids.org/en/regionscountries/countries/zambia
- 5.
‘Zambia: country situation analysis,’ UNAIDS; P. Piot, M. Bartos, P.D. Ghys, N. Walker, and B. Schwartlander, ‘The global impact of HIV/AIDS,’ Nature 410 (2001): 968–73.
- 6.
‘Zambia: country situation analysis,’ UNAIDS; ‘AIDS epidemic update by region,’ UNAIDS, 2004, www.unaids.org
- 7.
‘Zambia: country situation analysis,’ UNAIDS.
- 8.
T. Jayne, A. Chapoto, E. Byron, M. Ndiyoi, P. Hamazakaza, S. Kadiyala, and S. Gillespie, ‘Community-level impacts of AIDS-related mortality: panel survey evidence from Zambia,’ Review of Agricultural Economics 28 (2006): 440–57.
- 9.
See, for example, M. Brockerhoff and A. Biddlecom, ‘Migration, sexual behavior and risk of HIV in Kenya,’ International Migration Review 33 (1999): 833–56; J. Decosas, F. Kane, J. Anarti, K. Sodji, and H. Wagner, ‘Migration and AIDS,’ Lancet 346 (1995): 826–8; A. Nunn, H. Wagner, A. Kamali, J. Kengeya-Kayondo, and D. Mulder, ‘Migration and HIV-1 seroprevalence in a rural Ugandan population,’ AIDS 9 (1995): 503–6.
- 10.
M. Lurie, A. Harrison, D. Wildinson, and S. Abdool Karim, ‘Circular migration and sexual networking in rural KwaZulu/Natal: implications for the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases,’ Health Transition Review 7 (1997): 17–27.
- 11.
C. Evian, ‘AIDS and social security,’ AIDS scan 7, no. 3 (1995): 8–11.
- 12.
Brockerhoff and Biddlecom, ‘Migration, sexual behavior,’ 833–56.
- 13.
The Tonga people are a Bantu ethnic group occupying southern Zambia and northern Zimbabwe.
- 14.
See E. Mendenhall, L. Muzizi, R. Stephenson, E. Chomba, Y. Ahmed, A. Haworth, and S. Allen, ‘Property grabbing and will writing in Lusaka Zambia: an examination of wills in HIV-infected cohabiting couples,’ AIDS CARE 19 (2007): 369–74; B. Keller, Women’s access to land in Zambia, a report prepared for the International Federation of Surveyors (IFS), 2000; G. Sealey, ‘African widows left destitute by relatives snatching property,’ Christian Science Monitor, May 13, 2003, https://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0513/p07s02-woaf.html, date accessed on January 15, 2018.
- 15.
See ‘HIV/AIDS impacts subjects women in Property Grabbing,’ Times of Zambia, September 12, 2005; Mendenhall et al., ‘Property grabbing and will writing,’ 369–74; Keller, Women’s access to land in Zambia; Sealey, ‘African widows left destitute by relatives snatching property,’ May 13, 2003.
- 16.
Under customary Tonga inheritance, cleansing is considered essential in ridding the widow/widower of the spirit of the deceased. Sexual cleansing is widely practised among the Tonga whereby a relative of the deceased has sexual intercourse with the widow/widower.
- 17.
K. Hansen, Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000).
- 18.
S. Watkins, ‘Navigating the AIDS epidemic in rural Malawi,’ Population and Development Review 30 (2004): 673–705.
- 19.
E. Frank, Negotiating futures in the time of AIDS: inheritance conflicts in Southern Province Zambia (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2006); E. Frank, ‘AIDS identities: becoming positive in Zambia,’ (paper presented at the American Association of Anthropology Meeting, San Jose, CA, November 19, 2006); E. Frank, ‘AIDS and the Transformation of Ethnography in Southern Africa,’ Anthropology News 47, no. 3 (2006): 12–13.
- 20.
F. Nyamnjoh, ‘Delusions of development and the enrichment of witchcraft discourses in Cameroon,’ in Magical interpretations, material realities: modernity, witchcraft and the occult in postcolonial Africa, ed. H. Moore & T. Sanders (London: Routledge, 2001).
- 21.
The names of those involved in the ethnographic study have been changed.
- 22.
Kujuta literally means ‘to slide’ and in the context of a death cleansing ritual, it means that a person from the deceased’s family slides their unclothed body over the unclothed bodies of the surviving spouses to cleanse the spouses of the deceased’s spirit.
Select Bibliography
Brockerhoff, M., and A. Biddlecom. “Migration, sexual behavior and risk of HIV in Kenya.” International Migration Review 33 (1999): 833–56.
Decosas, J., F. Kane, J. Anarti, K. Sodji, and H. Wagner. “Migration and AIDS.” Lancet 346 (1995): 826–28.
Jayne, T., A. Chapoto, E. Byron, M. Ndiyoi, P. Hamazakaza, S. Kadiyala, and S. Gillespie. “Community-level impacts of AIDS-related mortality: panel survey evidence from Zambia.” Review of Agricultural Economics 28 (2006): 440–57.
Lurie, M., A. Harrison, D. Wildinson, and S. Abdool Karim. “Circular migration and sexual networking in rural KwaZulu/Natal: implications for the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.” Health Transition Review 7 (1997): 17–27.
Mendenhall, E., L. Muzizi, R. Stephenson, E. Chomba, Y. Ahmed, A. Haworth, and S. Allen. “Property grabbing and will writing in Lusaka Zambia: an examination of wills in HIV-infected cohabiting couples.” AIDS CARE 19 (2007): 369–74.
Nyamnjoh, F. “Delusions of development and the enrichment of witchcraft discourses in Cameroon.” In Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, edited by H. Moore and T. Sanders. London: Routledge, 2001.
Sealey, G. “African widows left destitute by relatives snatching property.” Christian Science Monitor. May 13, 2003.
Watkins, S. “Navigating the AIDS epidemic in rural Malawi.” Population and Development Review 30 (2004): 673–705.
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Unruh, J.D., Frank, E. (2019). Rural Women as Property in Zambia: The AIDS Exit. In: Campbell, G., Stanziani, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Bondage and Human Rights in Africa and Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95957-0_14
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