My name is Minky Sithole, and I speak on behalf of single mothers……Here in our community, if you are a woman who stays at your parental home and has a child out of wedlock, you are treated differently. Many of us are not married — not by choice, but because life doesn’t always go the way we plan. Sometimes, we meet men who give us children and disappear forever. We don’t even know their home villages.
When one of these children dies, the community says you must buy land to bury them. But that land is not just land — they say you must pay the value of a cow. That’s 10,000 or more. In rural areas, we don’t have that kind of money. We’re already struggling to take care of the children we have.
I remember a woman who had to stay five weeks with her dead child in the mortuary, because she couldn’t afford to pay. She was still trying to negotiate the cost. They told her: ‘Either pay the cow or go to umpangati to get your own land.’ But even that land — it’s not yours; it’s for the child’s burial. And you still have to pay.
Two weeks ago, we were in a community debate, and leaders told us that if a mother doesn’t know the child’s father, the grandparents must go and report it before burial — then maybe, just maybe, help will come. But I’ve never seen it happen. All I see are poor parents being forced to buy land to bury their children.
Even when a child has lived in the community, served the elders, and done everything right, after they die, they are treated like outsiders. You need a man — a male figure — to access land. Without one, you are left to beg. Or to run.
