As death rates escalate due to the HIV and AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan
Africa, so do the numbers of widows and widowers (Barnett and Whiteside,
2002; De Cock et al., 2002; Hunter, 2003; Kalipeni et al., 2004). According to
the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the World Health
Organization (UNAIDS/WHO, 2006), an estimated 24.5 million adults and
children were living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2005. In
the same year, an estimated 2 million people died from AIDS-related illnesses.
While there are statistics of those orphaned due to HIV and AIDS (an estimate
of 12 million African children), no recent data exist about widowhood.
However, earlier studies (Ntozi, 1997; Potash, 1986) reported widowhood rates
in some contexts to be as high as 1 in 4 adult women.
There is also a lack of knowledge about the experience of widowhood in
sub-Saharan Africa since the advent of HIV and AIDS. According to Potash
(1986, p. 1), even ‘the limited treatment given to widowhood has focussed on
the wrong questions’. In scholarly discourse, advocacy and public policy, widows
are variously referred to as invisible, excluded, marginalized, secluded, neglected,
dependent, vulnerable, peripheral, outcasts, disempowered and reclusive.1
Even where scholarly attention has been paid to this subject, Obbo (1986,
p. 91, 86) contends that ‘the women’s point of view is muted’ and that ‘much of
the literature focuses on norms, and little mention is made of actual practice’.
This chapter focuses on contemporary practices and values attached to
widowhood and widow inheritance in Uganda. It explores the gendered nature
of the widowhood experience in the context of the HIV and AIDS pandemic
and examines the gender dimensions of contemporary widow inheritance
among Baganda. The chapter draws its findings from forty-four qualitative
individual interviews and seven focus group discussions carried out among the
Baganda who were predominantly urban slum-dwellers across ten zones near
the Kasubi market in Rubaga-North Division of Kampala.