ABSTRACT
A Swazi man once summed up the prevalent male perception of the relations between women and customarily tenured land in Swaziland when he explained, “A woman is like a field.” The Swazi, a Bantu-speaking people who are predominantly Nguni in language and culture, settled in present-day Swaziland under the leadership of King Ngwane III during the mid-eighteenth century. Although Swazis have long resisted foreign legal impositions, Swazi customary legal procedure has been increasingly drawn into the more formal legal structure of the West. The dualism of Swaziland’s legal structure is well exemplified by land law. Swazi customary land law is currently administered on Swazi Nation Land, whereas Roman-Dutch land law is administered in towns and on privately owned farms. Women use three general types of strategies, alluded to earlier: control, avoidance and deception. The objects of control, avoidance or deception are individuals or legal institutions.
