Negotiating Law and Custom: Judicial Doctrine and Women's Property Rights in Uganda

Abstract

Since the promulgation of Uganda's new constitution in 1995, the Law Reform Comission (LRC) has had the task of revising statutory laws to conform to the new constitution. One focal point has been the drafting of a Domestic Relations Bill. The bill proposes significant changes in women's legal status within the institutions of marriage and succession. Under the new statute, for example, women would gain joint marital property rights over any assets acquired during the course of marriage. Women could use the law to challenge husbands who seek to sell property or shift assets among their wives. The bill also proposes that when a married person dies intestate, the suviving spouse(s) should be appointed administrator to the estate, unless the courts have good reason not to do so. This should facilitate widows who seek to protect their assets from relatives who perceive in death opportunities to grab property. Not suprisingly, publication of the bill generated considerable outrage among men who perceive the extension of property rights to women as a direct threat to a natural social order privileging male authority.

Land as fictitious commodity: the continuing evolution of women's land rights in Uganda

“…The actions and reactions to control land have served to evolve a traditional ethereal and spiritual relationship with the earth as provider into the concept of land as an article of trade or investment. Khadiagala (2002) noted that in the Kabale District, however, there existed matriarchal control of land and inheritance. The history of land rights in Uganda is relegated in colonial influence.…”

“…By 1919, there were 101,000 acres in cotton plantations in Buganda province alone (Taylor 1986). Khadiagala (2002) divided the timeline for changes in women's property rights in Uganda into three segments: (1) the late colonial era from 1940s to 1964, (2) the postindependence era from 1964 to 1979, and (3) the changing doctrine era from 1980 to 1997. As the number of European estates grew, the planters' antagonism to the cotton industry increased.…”

Who knows, who cares? The determinants of enactment, awareness, and compliance with community Natural Resource Management regulations in Uganda

“…Tripp, 2004;Khadiagala, 2002aKhadiagala, , 2002bLawry, 1990). Under customary laws in most Ugandan ethnic groups, parents are expected to bequeath their land to their children.…”

Food Crops as Cash Crops: The Case of Colonial Kigezi, Uganda

“…64 On marriage, a woman is allocated land by her husband, over which she has strong usufruct rights to provide for the household. If a man (or an unmarried woman) wants to grow crops for individual 59 Letter For a detailed account of the decline in women's legal property rights over the past fifty years, see Khadiagala (2002a). gain, then they can do so under a system called okwehereka (lit: 'cultivating for self '). 65 Men can either do this on omwehereko land 66 (that which has not been allocated to their wives), or by negotiating use rights through their wives.…”

“…Additionally, men did not have full control over women's labour on land cultivated under okwehereka: even if a man asks his wife to help him on his okwehereka plot, he must give her something in return for working for him. 68 Thus the rights of women to use land allocated to them on marriage for the cultivation of food crops are well regarded, while their rights over their own labour for cultivation of food crops are also fairly well protected (Khadiagala 2002a(Khadiagala , 2002b. Both sets of rights acted to constrain the production of cash crops in Kigezi.…”