Such is our Zimbabwean condition that our cultural and traditional practices are sometimes at odds with realistic, practical and functional life in a globalised world. Take, for example, dowry, bride price, roora or lobola.
The institution of lobola is rapidly evolving into a very ambivalent creature. It is culturally regarded as a rite of passage for the betrothed, good cement for family ties, and as adding value to the familial and communal worth of a son-in-law or daughter-in-law.
On the other hand, lobola can be argued to be a totally unnecessary evil, an opportunistic agent for gender oppression, and totally irrelevant in our time.
In Zimbabwe, the introductory ceremony commences with the payment of vhuramuromo. This payment is followed by the bride-to-be picking from a plate some of the vhuramuromo – money offered in a plate to signify her acceptance of the man seeking marriage.
Today, groceries are also thrown in as payment at this introductory stage. The small items payment serves roughly as an engagement in Western cultures. These payments are full and final, and cannot be returned in the event of divorce. This is then followed by the main ceremony performed in a similar manner throughout the region: payments for the bride’s mother, her father and for the transfer of the woman’s reproductive capacity from her biological family to the man’s family.
Deemed incompetent
The main marriage deal’ is conducted in two parts. First is the payment of rusambo. Rusambo is a payment specifically to the father of the bride and was never originally meant to buy the person of the bride’ but rather, all services to be rendered by his daughter to the groom’s family and relatives – child-bearing, physical labour and so on.
In the event that she is deemed incompetent by her new in-laws, she can be returned to her parents for further training and counselling. Rusambo was originally paid in beads.
The second part of the main marriage deal is danga (cattle). This was traditionally paid in cattle, though nowadays the amount of cattle requested is calculated in monetary terms.
The danga payment secures a husband’s legal rights over the children of the marriage. According to Zimbabwean customary law, once lobola has been paid to the wife’s family, guardianship and custody of the children rests in the husband’s family and the children are members of his lineage alone. Even in the event of the dissolution of marriage by death or divorce, the husband or his kin are the children’s guardians and custodians.
In pre-colonial Zimbabwe, an important function of lobola was the prevention of inter-marriage within families. Lobola was not accepted if there were any close blood ties between partners. But a disowning’ ritual (chekaukama), to officially cut off the blood link between families, could be performed to facilitate marriage between fourth generation descendants. This ritual was performed as a safeguard to avoid the harsh reprisal of ancestral spirits who were believed to regard incest as one of the worst social violations.
During this period, lobola was also regarded as a social tool to harmonise kinship bonds.
Brother as protector
Redistribution of wealth in the community is another element which was closely tied to lobola. Under a system known as chipanda, the lobola payments received for a daughter’s marriage were put aside for her brother’s marriage. The system of chipanda ensured that this particular brother becomes his sister’s protector.
The family that held rights over a woman’s womb also had automatic rights and obligations to her children. In this regard, lobola also ensured that children from previous liaisons were not considered illegitimate and were provided with care and security by the mother’s new husband. Even children born out of adulterous relationships came to the husband’s family as part of the package.
In colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe, several factors contributed to corrupt and immoral changes in the institution of lobola.
The British colonisers imposed criminal and constitutional laws on Africans that promoted distorted and incompatible ideals of Victorian family life. At the same time, they regarded African customary laws as second-class, primitive and barbaric. Despite this apparent contempt, however, the colonial order of things ingrained the institution of lobola as the sole legal regime under which Africans could marry.
The new colonial order did not comprehend the relationships established in African communities, nor the traditional social structures and their implications for Anglo-Saxon legal ideals of liberty and equality. Women were simply placed under the continued guardianship of men, preventing them from attaining full legal status.
Indeed, the colonial judges openly referred to lobola as wife purchase’ and their distorted interpretation of the practice left African women even more oppressed than they had been in pre-colonial times.
Caught in time-warp
This was accomplished by according women a legal status closer to that of children than to men. In this way, the repressive effects of customary law on women were intensified, rather than simply maintained.
Through these acts, the institution of lobola was caught in a time-warp as all its ancillary rules were preserved and protected from the courts or legislature.
The practice of lobola was further affected by the economic changes fashioned during the colonial era. The introduction of a money economy and wage labour altered societal power relations. Industrialisation and the development of mining, for example, gave young men access to salaries and other resources that made them less dependent on their families for marriage payments.
In an effort to retain influence over the young men, fathers kept tighter control over their daughters and demanded increased lobola payments. Thus began the commercialisation of lobola and the commodification of women.
Women became tools through which changing power relations were mediated. Gradually, perceptions of a woman’s worth in society became attached to the bride price she could fetch.
Nowadays, there is no formalised criteria used when charging lobola, but the academic education, professional attributes and social background of both the bride and groom are central factors mercilessly exploited in the institution of lobola.
Left to its own devices, and manipulated by greedy in-laws, lobola is not only harming women but disenfranchising men too.
Through indiscriminate astronomical charges, the development of young is being thwarted and set back financially by the one event which should be a cause of hope and new beginnings.
Women as commodity
Gradually, the validity of the anthropological arguments to justify the transfer of rights of children and women from one family to another, are losing bearing.
Women in Law in Southern Africa Research Trust (WLSA) see lobola as a women’s rights issue, as the practice excludes women from the process of negotiating their own future. It is this lack of consultation and bargaining that they see as reducing women to commodities on the market.
WLSA is advocating for the abolishment of lobola.
Another issue of contention in this whole lobola business is Zimbabwe’s confusing duality of laws. Lobola is no longer an essential ingredient for the validation of marriage following the Legal Age of Majority Act (1982).
It should be possible for a young couple of the age of majority to forego lobola and settle to have their marriage solemnised in church or the magistrate’s court, but few African women would dare to marry or register their marriages before lobola was paid to their families.
Organisations such as WLSA view the role of the state as still weak in creating social, political, economic and legal conditions that permit everyone access to empowering resources. By this they mean that if the government creates such an enabling environment, women could then advocate for transformative approaches that seek to change gender roles and create more gender-equitable relationships.
But the issue really is not whether one is for or against lobola. What I think is important is to break the silence on lobola and to widen the debate, injecting fresh thinking and realistic considerations into solving the anarchy in the institution of lobola. This is also a challenge for the church, for women and men’s rights issues have much to do with what it means to be human.
Special thanks to the Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) for much of the information used to compile this article.
Post published in: Arts