Inheritance practices still hindering women’s land rights

 Akullu is a veterinary doctor of sorts in Ajia Good A village. To supplement the income she makes from treating animals, she makes cassava bread, which she vends in the trading centre of Arwot-Omito Parish in Aromo sub-county, Lira district.

 Both incomes pay for the education of her 20-year-old son. Sometimes, when the going gets tough, her church steps in to help this woman who has been abandoned by her family.

Genesis of her woes

Many years ago, when Akullu’s mother developed misunderstandings with her husband, she returned to her father’s home with her children. Akullu’s grandfather gave his daughter a piece of land on which she built a house and planted a garden.

 By 2000, Akullu’s grandfather, mother and siblings were dead and she was living with her grandmother. On August 28, 2000, when she was in Senior Five, she was abducted by a group of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels led by Dominic Ongwen.

 “While in captivity, I gave birth to a baby boy. Two years later, in September 2002, I managed to escape with my child after a landmine killed his father. At first, my uncle, who had inherited my grandfather’s property, welcomed me,” she says.

Two weeks after her return, she developed mental problems, which were diagnosed as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). At the time, like other returnees, she was receiving material and food support from the army.

 “Sometimes, I would be happy, but then, other times, I would be so angry at the world. As I was struggling with the mental health challenges, the help from the army stopped and my uncle told me I needed to find a way to support the baby and myself. In response, my grandmother gave me my late mother’s piece of land to cultivate,” she says.

 However, her uncle was not happy with the move. He began telling the villagers that Akullu’s son was an abductee who would one day kill him and take all their property if he remained in their home. Pressured, Akullu took the child to a boarding school when he was one-year-old.

“Whenever my son returned for holidays, Uncle would chase us out of the house. We would sleep in the bush. He kept saying we did not belong to his clan. One day, Uncle rushed at me with a panga (machete) to cut me. I ran to the clan leaders for help but none of them helped me. I fled the village,” she laments.

Akullu says since her father divorced her mother and refused to reclaim his children, she cannot return to his clan. On the other hand, she cannot inherit her mother’s land because her uncle has vowed to kill her.

Who can own land in Lango?

In this age of legal reform, the denial of a woman’s right to inherit customary land remains firm in many parts of the country. Traditionally, in these areas, women and girls are excluded from property ownership and inheritance, making them homeless and destitute after the death of a husband or father.

 This, in turn, has undermined a large section of the population’s economic independence, with women experiencing higher rates of poverty than men.

 In Lango, land is under customary ownership and is held in trust by the clan. While one can be given the land for their private use, they cannot sell it without the consent of the clan leaders.

 Beatrice Akello, the executive secretary of the Lango Cultural Foundation (LCF), admits that the Lango, just like a number of tribes in Africa, face problems when it comes to women’s land ownership rights.

 “There have been a lot of land injustices in which women are not allowed to own land. For instance, recently divorced women or single mothers, who return to their father’s homestead, are being given small portions of land which are not the same size as the land allocated to their brothers,” she says.

 Besides the unfairness in the size of land, a woman does not have permanent rights on the land she is given and cannot make decisions as a landowner.

 “The ownership is not 100 percent because she cannot sell, hire, or rent out the land. In our cultural setting, the clan leader’s role is to safeguard our land rights, but some clan leaders find it easier to give land to a son or nephew, rather than supporting the claims of a widow or children of a single mother,” Akello adds.

 If a divorced woman returns to her father’s home with her offspring and is given land, when she dies, in most cases, the land is redistributed to her male relatives from that home, as happened in Akullu’s case. 

 Harmful cultural norms

Joyce Ediam, a project officer at the Lira Field Office of Land and Equity Movement Uganda (LEMU), says in Lango culture, a girl is expected to get married and get her land rights from her husband’s clan after she bears children.

 “That alone takes away her rights in her paternal family. The expectation is that she will remain at her husband’s home. When she develops misunderstandings with her husband and returns to her father’s home, she expects to be given land. In most cases, her land-hungry brothers will question her decency and discipline, and eventually, resent her,” she says.

 Secondly, many married women in the rural areas do not know that the Land Act 2010 establishes spousal consent in case their husbands want to sell or rent out land. Those who try to use their authority to stop the husband are often physically abused.

 “Another norm that hinders women’s land rights is that although a widow can remarry, she can only inherit her husband’s land if she remarries one of his relatives. If she chooses to get married to a man from another clan, she has to forfeit her late husband’s property,” Ediam adds.

 Naturally, the clan leaders would not support a widow who remarries outside her husband’s clan.

The way forward

Since 2014, Akullu has tried to reclaim her mother’s portion of land, in vain.

 “I have reported to the local council authorities and informed some of Uncle’s younger brothers. They all escorted me to the land, but when Uncle saw us, he threatened to kill all of us. He said no one should disturb him about giving me land,” she says.

 Akullu adds that her uncle told the local authorities that she should ask her dead parents to resurrect and allocate her land.

“He even cut down the trees that I had planted when I returned from LRA captivity. He told his brother who was supporting my bid that his days were numbered if he continued to side with me. The clan leaders have tried their best to help me but they cannot handle Uncle,” she laments.

Ediam says her organisation is holding capacity building training sessions with some clan leaders to reawaken their commitment towards helping women attain their land rights.

“Our training is based on a book called Principles, Practices, Rights and Responsibilities. The clan leaders of Lango wrote that book, establishing the management, ownership and usage of land,” she says.

Akello says the LCF is putting in place strategies on how best to balance culture and development and give women platforms to air out their concerns on matters that affect them.

 “However, the government needs to work with us to come up with policies that can help women if we are to put an end to the land injustices. Also, our cultural norms, especially the mindset of the people of Lango, need to be worked on,” she says.

 Believing that change is a gradual process, Akello says women should talk about their property rights in whatever platform they find themselves in, whether it’s a village meeting or funeral.

 “Changing someone’s mind to what you think is right might take time. If we women accept to change the norms that hinder our socioeconomic development, then we will become change agents in our society. We have seen that a woman who buys and owns private land and does productive work in it, can take care of her family even if she does not have a husband,” she adds.

 Frances Birungi, the executive director of Uganda Community Based Association for Women and Children Welfare (UCOBAC), says socioeconomic development can only be achieved if both genders are allowed to exercise their land rights equally.

 “We are not pushing for culture to change, but we need to identify those aspects that discriminate against women, and transform them. We need to do this by working together with the men who are the power holders in society, and the traditional leaders. Culture has to evolve with the times because nowadays, a husband and wife have to contribute to the development of the home,” she says.

Birungi adds that equal land rights will have serious implications on the food security situation in the country.

 “The government should appreciate the role women play in the development of the country. Also, although land is a big factor of production, the land sector is underfunded. This, in turn, means that when there are fewer funds to spread around, tackling women’s land rights takes a back seat. The government needs to increase the allocation of funds to the sector,” she says.

The organisation is running the Stand for Her Land campaign, which seeks to achieve land justice for women equality in practice. Rita Kemigisa, the advocacy and communications officer for the Stand for Her Land campaign in Uganda, says the global initiative seeks to close the implementation gaps between the law and practice.

“Increasingly, we are seeing that many people do not have an understanding of the laws and practices that govern land and women’s land ownership rights. When someone is ignorant of the law, they cannot claim their rights on land. That is why we are sensitising communities and duty bearers to enhance their knowledge of these laws and practices,” she says.

Women make up more than half of this country’s agricultural labour force, yet the land, especially customary land, is under male control.

“To rectify this situation, we are training communities on gender transformative approaches, helping them identify some of the harmful traditional norms that rob women of their land rights,” Kemigisa says. 

 In many rural areas, where development has come faster than the pace at which culture is changing, land rights for women will improve nutrition in families and break the cycle of poverty.

However, since in these areas land is the only source of production, communities need to be supported to combat harmful cultural beliefs if both genders are to benefit.

They say

Frances Birungi, the executive director of Uganda Community Based Association

For two years, between 2011 and 2013, I convinced the people that the disappearance of the swamp was the cause of our problems. I reminded them that the droughts and raging winds came after the swamp had been destroyed. The wind would take the roofs off some homes and schools,” Tumusiime says.

Beatrice Akello, the executive secretary of the Lango Cultural Foundation (LCF)

There have been a lot of land injustices in which women are not allowed to own land. For instance, recently divorced women or single mothers, who return to their father’s homestead, are being given small portions of land which are not the same size as the land allocated to their brothers.”

Joyce Ediam, a project officer at the Lira Field Office of Land and Equity Movement Uganda (LEMU)

Another norm that hinders women’s land rights is that although a widow can remarry, she can only inherit her husband’s land if she remarries one of his relatives. If she chooses to get married to a man from another clan, she has to forfeit her late husband’s property,” Ediam adds.

Important

The Lango are a Nilotic ethnic group. They live in north-central Uganda, in a region that covers the area formerly known as the Lango District until 1974, when it was split into the districts of Apac and Lira, and subsequently into several additional districts. The current Lango Region now includes the districts of Amolatar, Alebtong, Apac, Dokolo, Kole, Lira, Oyam, Otuke, and Kwania. The total population of Lango District is currently about 2,884,000.

The Lango people speak the Lango language, a Western Nilotic language of the Southern Luo group.

Early history

The Lango oral tradition states that they were part of the “Lango race” during the migration period. This group later split into several distinct groups before entering Uganda. The name “Lango” is found in Teso, Kumam, Karamojong, Jie, and Labwor vocabularies, reflecting that how these groups once used to belong to the Lango race.