MBABANE: In drought-stricken Swaziland, dozens of women, some carrying crying babies on their hips, walk long distances to line up for food for their starving families.

“The increasing burden of poverty falls squarely on the women’s shoulders,” said Doo Aphane, the national coordinator of a women’s rights organization in Swaziland.

“The status of women’s rights is apalling — both legally and socially.”

Symptoms of the situation are visible at a food distribution point in eastern Swaziland, where few men are in sight to receive food aid, and where many families are headed by grandmothers or young teenage girls.

Celmusa Dube, 14, accompanies his aunt to the distribution point to help her carry the food. She is caring for him and his siblings while his mother is searching for a job.

“My father left our family,” said the boy, dressed in a torn shirt and broken sandals.

Aphane said: “Men are mostly absent. They migrate to cities and are very irresponsible. Very few remember to send money to their families.”

Women’s rights are not an issue for concern only in rural areas.

“Swaziland has a very strong patriarchal society where women are believed to be inferior,” Aphane said.

According to research done by the Swaziland office of Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Trust, women fulfill two purposes in a marriage — running the household and bearing children.

“A Swazi woman is often reminded that she was taken for the purpose of producing children,” a research paper published by Aphane’s organization stated.

Aphane said Swazi customs put women at a clear disadvantage.

“Look at polygamy, for instance, it’s very disempowering, no matter how much it is romanticized. And some women are married off by their families, they do not have much of a say.”

The birth of a boy is a joyous event, other than that of a girl, the research institution found.

“For a baby girl there is not much jubilation, and, in some cases, parents have expressed this in the naming; it is common to find names such as “Jabhisile” (disappointment).

Swaziland’s King Mswati III this year made international headlines for choosing an 18-year-old schoolgirl, who was about to write her A-level exams, as his 10th wife.—AFP