Polygamy is not only illegal, but also bad for women
Polygamy is more prevalent in rural areas. (file photo)
Despite polygamy being illegal in Rwanda, there are still cases where a man is found to have two, sometimes even three wives, and he is not legally married to any of them. This can create quite some conflict in the family, especially when it comes to matters of succession, land ownership and financial matters.
According to Jean-Chrisostome Mutsindashyaka, a lawyer with Haguruka, an association that defends women and children’s rights, in case the husband is already legally married to and lives with another woman, it is considered as adultery and is punishable by the Rwandan law, both the husband and the other woman are punished.
“When it comes to matters of ownership of property, the wife that is recognized by the law is the one who gets to share with the husband,” he explains, adding that the husband will nevertheless be responsible to provide for the children he conceived with the other woman, from his share of the property.
This is due to the fact that the law actually protects the children and stipulates that they have rights to both their parents and their properties. It is clear to Mutsindashyaka that in case of the husband’s death and matters of succession and inheritance that come with it, if the other woman has no children from the man, she will go empty-handed unless the man made special provisions for her.
To Thomas Hakizimana, from the land registration office of Gasabo district, disputes of this kind are not so common, at least in his area, mainly because polygamy happens more in rural areas where husbands usually give a house and plot of land to each wife. “But when he is legally married to any of the women, she is the one whose name will also be put on the papers,” remarked Hakizimana.
But things get really complicated when the man did not marry any of the women he was living with and even had children with. In this case, if the man dies, the property is shared equally between the women and their children. But other complications can arise in matters of ownership.
Who gets compensation?
A good illustration of the problem is one family in Gasabo district (which we do not identify for reasons of privacy), where the husband has two wives, one with 5 children and the other with 4 children, and is not legally married to any of them. When the people in their neighborhood had to be relocated, a dispute erupted over who should receive compensation.
This confusion was due to the fact that the husband is alive but incapacitated and unable to take any decision and the older woman, whose older child was supposed to inherit according to a document the father wrote in 1993, says she built the house together with the husband and claims she should be the one to receive the money; but the younger woman, who is living with the man, contests this, asking where she is supposed to go with her children and the man.
“In this case, none of the women have any claim to the property for neither of them is legally married to the man,” Mutsindashyaka explained. “The man is the one to receive the compensation and then allocate to them what he wants for he is responsible for his children before the law.”
As to the fact that the older woman in this case insists her children should be the ones to get the money as it is supposed to be their inheritance, Mutsindashyaka points out that it is not possible to apply succession laws as the man is still alive.
To both Mutsindashyaka and Hakizimana, it is clear that in such matters and disputes, women, especially those who did not get married legally, are the ones who suffer the most and who can lose everything for they are not protected by the law, which is not the case for their children as the law protects their rights to the parents’ properties.
It is clear that such problems are caused by the fact that some women don’t yet seem to grasp the importance of legal marriage. “I don’t think that being married or not is the problem,” expressed one of the women in the above case. “The way I see it, you can be unmarried and still live in peace, which matters a lot more.” For her, the cause of these problems is not being unmarried, but rather people refusing to be reasonable.
Hakizimana and Mutsindashyaka urge women who still have this kind of view on legal marriage not to rush into unions where they are not married, as even if they build everything from scratch with their partners, they can easily lose it all if the man ever decided to cheat them out of it, or throw them out whenever they please.
Posted by Marie-Brigitte Kabalira
on Jun 18 2012. Filed under Daily News, National, Woman.
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I refer to the piece in today’s Rwanda Focus on the illegality of polygamy in Rwanda and its negative consequences on the women and children in such arelationship, especially in matters of inheritance. In my view the most important point against polygamy is the inherent inequality between men and women it enshrines. The law cannot decree equality between the sexes even as it allows a man to concurrently have as many wives as he wishes while refusing the same right to a woman to have as many husbands as she wants. As far as I am concerned traditionalist and religious arguments which many polygamists usually use to support the practice are unsustainable in this day and age.
That said, I find it wrong that Rwandan law criminalises adultery. While it is morally wrong, government should have no business legislating on private relationships between consenting adults whether married or unmarried. There should certainly be legal provisions to address the situation and protect the interests of children born from relationships between unmarried couples, but trying to regulate sexual behaviour between two consenting adults, whether married or unmarried, should not be the business of government. I imagine this provision in the law, breached in thousands of ways on a daily basis, is a legacy of the Catholic Church’s hypocritical moralisation and domination of Rwandan society over the last century. The state should have no role in people’s bedrooms or in trying to enact laws that are unenforceable in practice. If all the philandering Rwandans and their adulterous female counterparts were to be incarcerated for this sin today, we would need to retain Gacaca for another 50 years and even then not be able to complete the case load. That is if we could find enough Inyangamugayo in this particular context to preside over these proceedings!
If my understanding of the law is not flawed and I stand to be corrected, I was reliably informed that any illegal act must be penalised….be it commission or ommission. Now this learned lawyer knows many fellows who are polygamists….particularly in Nyamirambo,Gisenyi,Rwamagana, Kiramuruzi etc…. and yet does nothing about it. If polygamy is illegal then the second best thing which is remedial is to separate the couples and warn them never to meet again. Isn’t it? The law is indeed strange and incomprehensible.
Rwasubutare, I’m not a lawyer either, but I imagine that for a relationship to be considered polygamous under the law, it would first need to fulfil certain conditions that violate the relevant legal statutes banning polygamy. Concubinage or being in an ongoing and concurrent relationship with someone else other one’s legal spouse does not automatically translate into polygamy. You may therefore have so many people you know in those places who have concurrent relationships with different women but who are not in polygamous relationships for the purpose of the law. Do remember that marriage is a form of social and legal contract that must be validated by an authorised state agent, such as a mayor, for it to be legal. As such for a polygamous marriage to take place in Rwanda the polygamous individual would need to have misled the relevant state agent that he or she was unmarried at the time that state agent validated that marriage which is in itself another crime.