The High Court of Botswana has this Friday ruled, in a revolutionary decision, that women have the right to inherit property. The decision overturned an earlier verdict that had gone against three sisters who were living in their father’s home during the years between the father’s death and the time that the property was inherited by the sister’s nephew.
The story is complicated, but deserves telling, because it marks another long overdue, major movement on this planet on behalf of female equality.
It is difficult to believe that it has taken this long for something like this to happen. Yet is the clear that even now, in the second decade of the first quarter of the Twenty-first Century, there are cultures in place where human beings are still considered second-class citizens because they have a vagina and not a penis.
What occurred Friday began in 2007, when the three sisters—all over the age of 65—sued their nephew for attempting to evict them from the home in which they had lived from the time of their father’s death.
At that time, the house was willed to the father’s son, brother of the three sisters, who allowed the ladies to continue to live there. When the brother died, he could not will the home to his sisters, because the local laws did not allow females to inherit property. The brother’s will thus called for the home to be passed on to an older half-brother, who he knew would also allow the women to remain there.
But when the half-brother died, leaving the home to his son—the sisters’ nephew—the younger man sought to evict the trio of aging ladies. In this case, instead of bowing to local custom, the ladies fought back, contesting the eviction in local court, claiming that they had paid for the home’s upkeep through the years they had lived there following their father’s death, and had also paid for an expansion project at the residence.
The local court ruled against the women. In Botswana there is a dual legal system. There are civil courts run by the government, and so-called “customary courts,” functioning mostly in very rural outlying areas. Those courts have traditionally upheld the principle of “assumed male inheritance,” according to a story on this case authored on Wikipedia. That story can be found here.
The women appealed the decision, but lost their appeal as well—also handled by a local court. Supported in their case by the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), the sisters took their case to the regular government civil courts, and it eventually reached Botswana’s High Court, the article written for Wikipedia said.
“The sisters were opposed by Attorney General Athalis Molokomme. Representing the government of Botswana, Molokomme argued that though the inheritance law was discriminatory, the ‘public mood’ did not yet support its repeal,” the Wikipedia article went on.
The judge in the case, Key Dingake, ruled for the High Court that the local customary laws prioritizing male inheritance were not in keeping with the promise of gender equality in the Constitution of Botswana, and awarded the home to the sisters, the article said.
According to further reporting in the Wikipedia article, Dingake stated in his decision: “It seems to me that the time has now arisen for the justices of this court to assume the role of the judicial midwife and assist in the birth of a new world struggling to be born. Discrimination against gender has no place in our modern day society.”
The nephew who lost the case is reported to have called it “a sad day,” stating that “people should learn to respect our culture.” The Wikipedia story said, “Regional human rights campaigners expressed hope that the case would not only be a landmark in Botswana, but also set a precedent for surrounding countries grappling with similar issues,” and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa described the decision as “a huge boost to the struggle for gender equality,” while SALC’s deputy director said that the ruling “sends a very strong signal that women in Botswana cannot be discriminated against and that the days of women suffering from secondary status under the law in Botswana are drawing to an end.”
Drawing to an end? That’s what the person said.
All of which leads to the matter raised by the women’s nephew: Should people respect a culture’s values, no matter how patently unfair and discriminatory those values may be? And if the answer is no, on what basis can proposed laws permitting gay marriage be opposed in the United States?
It seems to many people incomprehensible that in 2012 anybody at all on this earth could still be earnestly debating such issues. Yet the politically divisive and combative discussions go on. As an overall global culture, we just can’t seem to “get it.” So many members of the human race are still elementary in their understandings.
What will it take for our species to “grow up?” To mature? To evolve to the point where, thousands of years after the birth of Christ, it still makes headline news when an entire culture is rattled to its bones by a simple decision to make it legal for a woman to inherit her father’s property?
Or, for that matter, for a girl to receive an education—or to advocate for it without being shot in the head by males who would seek to preserve the backwards status quo, as was 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan the day before the court decision in Botswana.
The Taliban publicly took “credit” for the shooting, announcing on Saturday that if the girl—whose “crime” was to write a blog calling for support of the right of girls to go to school—survives her wounds (she is in serious but stable condition in hospital), she would be attacked again, and this time, they would make sure that she was killed. And neither the government nor the people of Pakistan have sufficient will to stop the Taliban, and to say, “No more. Finally, at last, no more of this primitive, barbaric behavior masquerading as religious teachings and cultural ‘honor’.”
When, oh human race, when will it be declared that enough is enough?
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