Mzimba district in Northern Malawi has one of the country's highest HIV rates but many people still hold to the belief that wife inheritance, 'chokolo', is the only way of preventing relatives from grabbing property, leaving widows and their children destitute.
"We need to deal with cultural traditions if we are to combat HIV/AIDS," said Matius Phiri, a local village leader. "Already a good number people have died here after marrying women who have lost their husbands to AIDS. It is a question of behaviour change, and whether people will accept changing their cultural traditions."
Culturally, when a Malawian woman gets married she is not related to her husband, and when he dies the wife is expected to return to her family, leaving the property to her husband's relatives.
After Christina Nyirenda lost her husband to an AIDS-related illness in 1996, her husband's relatives urged her to marry her brother-in-law. "I refused because I knew I would be spreading the virus," she said.
Not all women in Mzimba have the power to refuse. Wife inheritance has long been viewed as a way of providing social and financial security by ensuring that the responsibility of caring for a deceased man's wife and children remains in the family.
But with an adult HIV prevalence rate of 14.4 percent, efforts are now underway to persuade communities to break with the traditions of wife inheritance and polygamy, which are contributing to the spread of the disease.
Iris Phiri [no relation to Matius], 54, lost her husband to AIDS three years ago. He had a second wife who died a year after his death, leaving her to care for eight children, four of them her own and four who were orphaned by the death of the second wife.
"When my husband married the second wife, I knew life would not be the same," she said. "Culturally, it is accepted, and women have little or no say ... when I tested HIV positive I was devastated and I cursed my dead husband, but with counselling I gained courage and here I am."
She would like to see chiefs and other local leaders taking a stronger stand against traditional practices, which she blamed for spreading HIV/AIDS.
Luke Edward, executive director of Tovwirane, a community-based HIV/AIDS organization in Mzimba, said many people felt the same but others were still not aware enough of the risk of HIV/AIDS. "When you talk to chiefs and local leaders, most of them agree that they need to change the mindset of the people; they agree that chokolo is contributing to the spread of the epidemic."
Several chiefs told PlusNews that, in light of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, women should not be forced to marry their deceased husband's relatives. "When a husband dies, his brother should marry and take care of the deceased. But if the woman marries a person who is not a member of her husband's family there are a number of problems, such as property grabbing."
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