The provincial gender minister of Haut-Katanga, Gisèle Ngungwa, called on the national and international community to work for the legal and social protection of widows.
It was Sunday June 23, during the commemoration of International Widows’ Day in the city of Lubumbashi.
Gisèle Ngungwa invited the world to seize the opportunity offered by this day to defend widows against all forms of mistreatment of which they are victims at the hands of men and women.
Sarah’s situation, having lost her husband in a traffic accident, is an illustration of mistreatment against widowed women.
A widow of around forty years old and mother of four children, one of whom lives on the street, Sarah was kicked out of her marital home by her in-laws for refusing to become the wife of her late husband’s brother.
To raise her three children, Sarah works during the day as a babysitter for a divorced woman and does not return home until late in the evening.
Another case of mistreatment is that experienced by Chantal. A widow like Sarah, she claims to have been abandoned by her in-laws after the death of her husband.
Chantal feeds her two children thanks to the sale of curdled milk in front of the entrance to a school in the commune of Kampemba.
According to a woman who supervises widows, cases of mistreatment of women who have lost their husbands are numerous in the Haut-Katanga province.
Faced with this recurrence, the provincial gender minister of Haut-Katanga invites everyone to get involved in the legal and social protection of this category of women to enable them to take care of their children but also to campaign so that the widow obtains a respected place in society.
