Botswana : New Law Make Land Owners of Wives
Gaborone
— An amendment to a Botswana land act will allow women to become equal
landowners alongside their husband.
A wife in
Botswana can now own land alongside her husband, President Mokgweetsi Masisi
said on Thursday in a boost for women that rights groups called long overdue.
Prior to
his amendment, the 2015 Land Policy stopped wives from owning land if their
husbands already had some.
"This
amendment will allow women to be independent in marriages, and also have rights
to land as any other person. We applaud this move," said women rights
activist Tunah Moalosi.
Women
face a host of barriers to owning land - be it through skewed inheritance
rights or restricted authority over assets - in 40% of countries, World Bank
research shows.
Although
most African and Asian farmers are women, only about 15% of global farmland is
owned by women, according to Landesa, a global land rights organisation, with
experts predicting increased inequality due to the coronavirus.
Botswana's
revised Land Policy gives everyone an equal eligibility to a residential plot
in a place of their choice, on both state and tribal land.
Previously,
only unmarried women or the wives of men who did not already own land were
eligible for land rights. The discrimination left millions of married woman,
widows and single mothers without access to the land where they live and work.
"The
Botswana Land Policy 2015 was discriminatory against married women and did not
give them equal treatment with men, and I am happy to report that this
discriminatory sub-section has since been repealed," Masisi said at a
virtual briefing.
The
government allots deeds for land on which people have a legitimate claim but no
legal rights, seeking to regularizes a chaotic ownership system.
According
to a government audit announced in parliament last month, 53% of the 620,660
people on the government land allocation waiting list are women. The average
waiting period for land is between 10 and 30 years, it said.
Masisi
said on Twitter that the new policy would also protect widows and orphans who
may head households.
Tshegofatso
Mokibelo, 38, a widowed financial analyst, was turned down when she last
applied for a residential plot because her late husband owned land and his
family had claimed it.
"Women also have the right to own land," she
told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"I
was denied a plot because my husband owned one."
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