Widowhood like birth is not a choice, where one decides when to be born or when to be a widow.
It usually comes when one least expects it and when one is least prepared for it. There are also no schools or colleges where people are trained for widowhood.
In today’s article I want to pursue the issue of remarrying for eligible widows and widowers looking at some of the barriers which make remarrying in some instances rather difficult and also ways to overcome the barriers.
In the past many HIV infections affected the working class, the middle income to upper income earners hence those usually empowered financially were the victims .The lower rungs such as the peasantry were affected much later because they did not have the capacity to pay the prostitutes who were the main conduit then of HIV infections. HIV was referred to as a disease for the economically and financially empowered.
What this meant then was when one of the spouses died chances of leaving an HIV+ and rich spouse were very high. According to traditional African beliefs the remaining spouse could choose to either be inherited if a woman or inherit if a man.
If a married man inherited an HIV+ wife it meant that he would be infected himself and he would infect his original wife and girlfriends and his wife if she had boyfriends and girlfriends would also infect their other boyfriends.
In the event that the wife died the widower would inherit a new wife usually an innocent young girl from his in laws and make her his new wife and if he was HIV+ he would infect his new wife and if she had boyfriends outside of marriage she would also infect them and the boyfriends would also infect their girlfriends and the vicious circle would spread causing mayhem wherever it touched leading to the “Ngozi or Avenging Spirit” effect of HIV where whole adult families were wiped out within short spaces of time.
Meanwhile all eligible widows and widowers should remarry irrespective of their HIV status. There are however barriers which make remarrying very difficult for Zimbabwean widows and widowers which need to be overcome if we are going to curb the unnecessary spreading of HIV caused by widowhood.
In many Zimbabwean families children of parents who die leaving the other one a widow or widower make things very difficult for their surviving parent .The children want to fight their late parent’s wars by feeling jealousy on behalf of their dead parent. What these children forget is that their widowed parent has got a life to leave .Some children have gone on to bit their widowed parent’s lovers.
When one’s spouse dies he or she dies with all him/herself leaving his/her spouse alone .The normal trend has always been that the widow or widower spends a year or so grieving or mourning the loss of his or her spouse then thereafter they are free to remarry. My advice to children whose remaining parents want to remarry let them be because it’s good for them and not for you the children. Children should also remember that they may also find themselves in the same situation as their widowed parent’s in the future. Widows and widowers have got their rights to enjoy and nobody should not deny them those rights.
The best way maybe for those wishing to remarry would be to make sure that they don’t destroy the estate for which they worked with their deceased partner. Proper paperwork work should be done to ring fence assets left by the deceased from abuse by the new partner coming into the home.
A lot of people who remarried without paying proper attention to legal issues have regretted their choices when they lost everything they had worked for to the children of the new mother or father. Men, especially, should not marry women much younger than themselves and ladies should also avoid marrying men much younger than themselves to avoid disaster.
The whole aim of encouraging widows and widowers to remarry is to stop the potential spread of HIV to many people. So it is very good that all those widows and widowers remarry but do so from an informed point of view.
Piason Maringwa
+263774322043
