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Walter Nyamukondiwa
Mashonaland West Bureau Chief
Imagine spending eight years with the clothes of a deceased spouse in the house as relatives refuse to distribute them in line with African tradition.
Imagine too, having your late husband’s family members dispersing from the cemetery to their homes and never setting foot on their relative’s house for eight years.
At the centre of the dispute is the family house, which the relatives wanted the surviving spouse to relinquish in favour of a divorced spouse and her children.
Failure to bear children with the deceased husband disqualifies the spouse from inheriting the property, they reckon.
Bearing frantic refusal to bury a relative until demands are met, hostile takeover of property, businesses, money and excommunication of relatives makes the list of overt and covert struggles for inheritance following the death of a breadwinner.
The struggle is real!
It brooks no class nor social standing of the family, with the difference only being the size of the remaining estate and the appetite of parties involved to benefit from the death.
Plots and sub-plots, subtle acts of hostility to open and bare knuckle brawls after the death of a spouse or breadwinner inevitably lead to a seismic shift in relations.
Things will never be the same again without the glue that stuck the family together.
It can be worse if there were fights during the lifetime of the deceased.
At the centre of the fights are people with real or perceived entitlement to what a husband or wife, father, mother and relative has worked for during their time.
Battles over inheritance have often spilled into the courts of law, often preceded by attempted hostile takeover of property, money and other things relatives deem valuable.
The public tiff over the exclusion of Selmor Mtukudzi from the list of performers at the inaugural Oliver Mtukudzi Arts Festival (OMIFA) last week brought to the fore the destabilising effects of death in a family.
While the dispute has since been resolved, with Selmor now slated to perform at the festival, the undertones were too loud to miss.
Selmor was not part of the gig, the initial poster and line-up showed.
This also confirms severed communication channels from the stepmother, stepsisters and Selmor.
The public could not miss the glaring omission and went into overdrive, demanding redress on the plinth of Ubuntu and humanism.
The ideals carried the day!
In the earlier highlighted case, a Chinhoyi woman has been stuck with her late husband’s clothes since his death in 2018 after relatives dispersed without undertaking the rite of distributing them.
The relatives, including children from the deceased’s former marriage, demanded the house in Chinhoyi’s Cold Stream area, arguing that she did not bear their father children in the 28 years they were together.
“We got after he divorced the mother of his five children,” the widow, who declined to be named, said.
“We went to court and they ruled in my favour as I was the surviving spouse he had been living with for 28 years and besides we acquired the house while living together.”
The husband’s family members initially refused to bury him demanding that she needed to handover documents for the house.
“On the day of the burial, they just left the cemetery without even informing me that they were leaving and to this day they never set foot on the house again. I still have my husband’s clothes because I am not the right person to disperse them according to our tradition,” she said.
“Imagine the pain of seeing the clothes or the bags they are packed in every day. It has been a traumatising experience.”
Relatives demanded that a post-mortem done, suspecting that she could have killed her husband.
She is now considering throwing the clothes in a flowing river, as one of the countermeasures culture has laid at her disposal or giving them out to Chengetanayi and Nazareth old people’s homes in Chinhoyi.
The move awaits the determination of Chief Magonde’s Court.
In another case, a Chinhoyi man could not stay with his children after declining an offer to pick another life partner from his late wife’s relatives.
“Just as I was mourning my wife in 2017 before she was even buried, relatives said I was free to choose another wife from my late wife’s relatives,” said the man, who cannot be named to maintain familial relations.
“I declined and they said I could choose after three months when we held a memorial service for her. I still declined as I was not yet ready for any commitment.”
A relative took the children, but later refused to hand them over to him. It took a court order for the man to get custody of the children.
While death brings pain of loss, spite, malice and greed drives hawkish relatives and in some cases the remaining spouse to cause pain, loss and drama in families.
American author Isaac Asimmov once said of death: “Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that is troublesome.”
Families have tried in different ways to cope with the transition from the death of a loved one, some with civility and humility while for others the lust simmered during the life of a relative is finally unleashed in their absence.
For them it’s a waiting game. The death of the late Warriors supporter Eddie “Mboma” Nyatanga brought drama in the midst of grief as two competing wives strove to ascribe a bold print on his final journey.
Each secured a grave and a suit!
In the final analysis, some of the parties, including children and other wives, only emerge during the funeral.
In life they balance the scales without them tipping over, in death disequilibrium sets in, throwing things into disarray.
Lawyer, Mr Tungamirai Chamutsa, said people should insulate families from inheritance disputes and confusion through depositing a will with the Master of the High Court.
Traditionalist Mukanya Svosve said there was need to strike a delicate balance between legal matters and following traditional customs and norms in dealing with estates of the eceased.
According to customs, Mukanya Svosve said, the woman should engage a neutral relative to resolve the matter.
Not resolving the matter, spelt some challenges in future, he warned.
Clergyman, Pastor Clemence Jeche said Proverbs 13vs 22 confirmed the importance of inheritance, adding that it should be handled diligently.
Online Reporter