Women; why put your property in a man’s name?

Former MP Susan Nampijja suffered a tragic experience when her former companion inflicted deep cuts to her head. Believing she was dead, the estranged Geoffrey Mukisa attempted to commit suicide. All because he could not let Nampijja keep property she had reportedly acquired when their relationship blossomed.

Nampijja is a daughter of Rubaga South MP Ken Lukyamuzi. Together, they can petition the powerful and when tragedy befell her, her father gave an impassioned speech in parliament. Many came to her defence.

Police was quick to act; a search was immediately set for the culprit. Though Mukisa was found unconscious, police stayed guard at his room at Malaga Hospital lest he gained strength and tried to escape prosecution. He died on his hospital bed.

But what if Mukisa had tried to usurp property from an average Ugandan woman? Isn’t it instructive that when Dorcus Inzikuru, she of the Olympic Gold Medal fame, caught her husband with another woman in her prize house in Arua, all she could do was to enlist the support of town youths to unroof the house? She must have felt she had no power to drive the man out of her house. Yet if the man had caught Inzikuru cheating in his home, the story would have been a different one.

Fortunately for Nampijja, the sole ownership of the disputed property is now in her hands. But not many are as fortunate as her.

Dora Byamukama, the East African Legislative Assembly representative says although the 1995 Uganda constitution provides for equal ownership of property for women and men most societies do not recognize that women can own property because they are considered transient citizens.

The patriarchal society in which we live has only worsened matters. The ineffective mechanisms for the enforcement of women’s rights have also resulted in the denial of basic rights for millions of women in the country. Statistics show that 97 percent of women have access to land, but only 8 percent of women own land and only 7 percent have property rights.

Byamukama says at the family levels girls and women are not given property as inheritance because of the belief that they will leave home and get married in other families where they will have access to property but this is not true. Usually once these women are married off; they are only allocated pieces of land for crop cultivation strictly.

Carol Namagembe, the Programme Officer Communications at Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE), says while women own about 40 percent of private businesses in Uganda, their role in socio-economic development is still seen to be peripheral. They still have unequal access to and control of productive assets like land with only 20 percent of registered land owned by women according to the 2010 National Development Plan yet they contribute 70-75 percent of the total agricultural production (Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2005). This affects their ability to access other productive resources and undermine the potential of women’s hard work and their ability as entrepreneurs.

The World Development Report 2012, states that the lives of girls and women have changed dramatically over the past quarter century, the report mentions areas that need to be worked on to ensure gender equality and development.

The report points to the need for property rights for women which constrain their bargaining power and the need to strengthen the laws that provide for the right to ownership of property.

Ann Kampire the Coordinator women’s Land Rights at Uganda Land Alliance says women’s property rights are limited by social norms and customs which make it hard for women to access property. She says the most affected group are those who are widowed, separated or divorced and those who have born only female children often have little or no access to ownership of property.

Namagembe says such factors which constrain women make it hard for them to prosper in their own right and it dents efforts put in place to help women enjoy equal rights as their male counterparts. If an ex-MP can go through such, what happens to a rural woman who has nobody to fight for her?

In Mukono district only, a survey carried out by International Justice Mission (IJM) between 2005 and 2007 reveals that out of 115 widows, 41 percent have experienced property grabbing, and this percentage increases to 51 percent if attempts/threats of property grabbing are included.

Scott Adams a Media Relations Fellow at IJM Uganda an organization that helps widows retain their property says some of the outstanding challenges to women’s and widows’ land ownership include the myths about land law and the belief by most women that they cannot own property. The complicated land administration processes, weak laws and the laxity exercised in handling property grabbers make it hard for women to pursue their right, to own property. Most times these women keep silent as their property is grabbed from because they have no forum to voice their views.

In order to help widows own property IJM partnered with its local government partners in 2012 to launch Project Empaanyi, a collaborative effort to directly improve the Ugandan public justice system and uphold the authority of the law in order to protect victims of property grabbing and other vulnerable poor.

This year, Uganda will mark 50 years of celebrating women’s day on March 8 and property ownership for women is one of the most stinging issues whose solution has not yet been found.

Byamukama says unless women are more enlightened about their rights, women will continue being denied this right. She says women who are able to acquire property on their own should move away from the habit of registering the ownership of property in either their husband’s or male relative’s name because this only proves the myth that property can only be owned by the men.

Patricia Munaabi the Executive Director of FOWODE says the uneven, gender inequalities which hinder the advancement of women only prove that women fight harder because they have not reached their comfortable zone yet.

Legislators are proposing amendments to the succession Act to help women own property. The long awaited domestic relations bill that recognizes joint ownership of property is yet to be passed yet if effected into law it would help many a number of women.

Story by: Rukiya Mukama (rmakuma@independent.co.ug)

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