Recently the Swaziland Rural Women’s Assembly (SRWA) stood alongside one of our sister, a widow, at the High Court as she faced a land dispute with her brother-in-law. After the death of her husband, her brother-in-law claimed the land on which she and her children had built their lives, her home, her children’s security and her livelihood were suddenly at risk.
She won the case.
But her victory raises a much bigger question: how many women face similar struggles but never make it to court? For SRWA, this is not about celebrating one woman’s victory and moving on. It is about confronting the conditions that make women vulnerable to losing land in the first place.
Across Eswatini, women can spend years, even generations, living on land, raising children, farming and building homes, yet their access can remain insecure. A woman may have lived on land for decades and still struggle to prove her right to remain there. Families can cultivate the same land for generations and suddenly face claims that it belongs to someone else. Widows can find themselves challenged by relatives after the death of their husbands. Women can also face displacement from land they have occupied for years when it is later claimed as government or private land.
These situations expose a fundamental weakness in our land governance that there is no comprehensive Land Policy providing clear and consistent systems for land allocation, demarcation, administration and proof of access.
The consequences are not abstract. They are experienced by real women and children.
The experiences of women in Malkerns demonstrate what displacement can mean. Women watched their homes being destroyed by bulldozers. They had little time to remove their belongings because their immediate priority was gathering their children and getting them out of harm’s way.
Imagine watching the home where you raised your children being demolished while your only thought is making sure your children are not run over by bulldozers.
Today, these families continue to live with the consequences. Women who once had homes have been left without secure housing, and families have been forced to live in small structures made from sticks and mud without any compensation.
The impact reaches far beyond the destruction of a building. When a home is destroyed, a livelihood can disappear with it. When families are displaced, children lose stability, security and the environment in which they were growing up.
This is why land cannot be treated simply as a piece of property. For rural women, land is where food is produced, homes are built, children are raised and livelihoods are sustained.
There has been ongoing demolitions of homes in different areas, including KaNcesi in the Hhohho Region, where demolitions have already begun. Once again, families face displacement, watching their homes and years of hard-earned investments disappear.
These demolitions raise serious concerns about women’s land and housing rights. Women and children are often the most affected when families are displaced, yet many have little power or security over the land on which they live. The fact that some families claim the land was allocated to them by traditional authorities further exposes the uncertainty surrounding land rights in Eswatini. How many more women must lose their homes, investments and security before action is taken? This situation highlights the urgent need for a clear and inclusive Land Policy that protects communities, strengthens women’s land rights and prevents families from being displaced without adequate protection, accountability or alternatives.
Land is life
Eswatini’s Constitution provides an important legal foundation. Section 211(2) provides for equal access to land for normal domestic purposes without regard to gender, while the Constitution more broadly guarantees equality before and under the law. Yet the lived reality of many women remains different.
Women continue to face practical difficulties in accessing land and proving their legitimate rights to it. In some communities, women’s access to land has historically been tied to husbands, male relatives or male children. This is particularly difficult for women who are unmarried, widowed and those who don’t have male children or can’t bear children at all.
This creates a contradiction that cannot be ignored: women have rights recognized in law, but many still struggle to exercise those rights in practice. A woman should not need to be married or have a male child before she can have secure access to land. Her right to live, farm, build a home and provide for her children should not depend on her relationship to a man. The challenge, therefore, is not only recognizing women’s rights. It is creating a system that allows women to exercise and protect those rights.
A family can live somewhere for decades, but what happens when another person claims the land? What happens when boundaries are unclear? What happens when land is reclassified? What happens when a woman is told that the land she has depended on for years belongs to someone else? Without clear allocation, demarcation and recognized proof of access, ordinary people can remain vulnerable to disputes and displacement.
This is why Eswatini urgently needs a Land Policy that establishes clear systems for who receives land, how land is demarcated, how access is recorded, how disputes are resolved and how people are protected from unjust displacement.
A Land Policy must provide certainty before disputes arise not only mechanisms to fight disputes after families have already lost their home. The absence of a comprehensive Land Policy is not merely an administrative problem. It is political. Land determines who can build a home, produce food, farm, generate income and create a future for their children. Decisions about land therefore determine who has security and who remains vulnerable. Women must be central to these decisions.
Rural women are not simply beneficiaries of land. They are farmers, food producers, caregivers, homeowners and economic actors. They understand the consequences of insecure land access because they experience them directly.
A Land Policy developed without women’s meaningful participation risks reproducing the very inequalities it should address.
Our sister’s High Court case ended in victory, but not every woman has the resources to reach the courts. What about the widow who has nowhere to go? What about the woman whose home is destroyed before she can challenge the decision? What about the family that has farmed the same land for generations but has no recognised proof of access? What about the women in Malkerns who had to choose between saving their belongings and getting their children out of the way of bulldozers?
These are the realities that must shape Eswatini’s land debate.
SRWA is therefore calling for the urgent development and adoption of a comprehensive, inclusive and gender-responsive Land Policy that provides clear systems for land allocation, demarcation, administration and proof of access. It must protect women, widows, children, women-headed households and rural communities from unjust displacement and ensure that women can access and retain land in their own capacity.
Rural women cannot continue addressing land injustices one dispute at a time. We need a Land Policy that provides clarity before conflict, protection before displacement and justice before families are left homeless.
Land is life. Land is power. Land is dignity. Land is a women’s rights issue. The time for a comprehensive Land Policy in Eswatini is now.
