It is a cool Friday morning and retired civil servant Amos Jere of Kalonga Village in Salima is peeling potatoes for breakfast. However, meals no longer taste the same following his wife’s death in December 2024. “The same day we laid her to rest, about 15 relatives of hers asked me to surrender house keys and all belongings, including utensils, goats and chickens,” narrates Jere, 66.
The belongings included a plot comprising six houses and six shops. They also grabbed seven goats kept in his friend’s kraal. “I kept calm and gave them what they wanted because we had just buried my dear wife,” he says.
“I’m a Chewa and they are Yao, so our tradition might be different. These discussions could have waited for a year.” Interestingly, Jere had built a house for his wife and her elderly mother in Traditional Authority Maganga, Salima. “I didn’t know some of these people until they came to grab the property,” he says.
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Jere married the late Steria Mlokote in 2007 after divorcing his first wife, but they had no children. However, the wife had filed for divorce shortly before her death. “I didn’t know that death would strike before the matter was resolved in court, but her relatives pursued the case until the court terminated the matter following her death,” he says.
Jere, who worked in the civil service from 1991 to 2015, invested his pension in two plots and his retirement home. “I was investing in our future, but people I didn’t know grabbed all I had worked for all those 24 years,” he states. Jere approached paralegals when his wife’s relatives came to evict him from his marital home. “I wanted to understand what the law says about deceased estates,” he says.
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