The custom of paying a bride price — referred to in Swaziland as lobola — is a longstanding tradition in this Southern African country, which is also home to Africa’s last absolute monarchy.
But, changing times and social trends are bringing the custom into question — among men as well as women.
”lobola is a custom completely tied to a lifestyle that no longer exists,” says social worker Sunshine Kunene.
”It is rooted in a multi-generational rural homestead. It’s from a time when Swazis would be born into one homestead, marry into a neighbouring homestead, and live their entire lives within walking distance of their place of birth.”
The life described by Kunene was still experienced by a majority of Swazis as recently as 1968, when the country achieved independence from Britain. Although British rule had lasted for 66 years, colonial authorities interfered little with Swazi customs, even allowing locals to maintain allegiance to their monarch of the time, King Sobhuza.
But, although Swazi women of 2005 — like those of 1905 — are still considered minors under the law, the status of women has evolved.
”There are problems that give some women a hard time, like turning down their husbands and boyfriends who want sex. Their inability to refuse has definitely led to more Aids,” says a female attorney based in the commercial town of Manzini, who is also a member of the Swazi chapter of Women in Law in Southern Africa — a regional network of female lawyers. (Swaziland currently has the world’s highest HIV prevalence rate, of almost 40%.)
”But as for the prohibition against women owning property and signing contracts, we have found ways to get around that, and we are advising our women clients,” she adds.
Gladys Simelane, an office worker at a bank in the capital, Mbabane, agrees.
”Swazi girls are no longer just shuffling around mud huts barefoot and pregnant. Well, too many of them are pregnant — but most have individual aspirations, and more and more these don’t necessarily include marriage,” she notes.
Initially, bride price was a simple matter of transferring cattle from the groom’s family to that of the bride.
The first anthropological study of Swazis, conducted during the 1930s by researcher Hilda Kuper, stressed the economic value of a productive woman to her parents in the pre-industrial farming household which put a premium on labour. As the withdrawal of any worker from such an establishment was costly, cattle were paid to compensate parents for the loss of their daughters’ labour.
But, says the female attorney, while 80% of Swazis still live as peasant farmers on communal land, modern agricultural methods, like the use of tractors to plough fields, have made farmers less dependant on manual labour.
Also, ”Women are not indentured servants, and lobola ‘bride price’ assumes as much,” she observes.
Simelane laughs at the notion of tying lobola to the loss of a woman’s contribution to a household.
”How would you calculate the value of the lost labour anyway?” she asks.
”Today, girls are actually a financial drain on parents. They need to be clothed, fed and schooled as children, and unless they have jobs and contribute to the household as adults, most parents are glad to see them move out after school.”
In more recent years, lobola has come to be seen as a gift of thanks from the groom to his bride’s parents for bringing her into the world, and providing her with a respectable upbringing.
”Coded in the ‘thank you’ was that the girl’s parents saw to it that her virginity was intact when she was wed,” says Kunene.
But amongst today’s generation of Swazis in their teenage years and twenties, it is more common to find children born out of wedlock than within marriage, say health and social workers. In part, this reflects the fact that births resulting from sexual abuse and incest are on the rise.
”Virginity at marriage is no longer valued, even in the age of Aids. Some parents actually encourage their daughters to get pregnant, so the father will offer financial support. They hope to somehow get some of that money for themselves,” says Abigail Dube, a Manzini nurse who works with abused girls.
Men also appear to be querying the validity of lobola, as it presently stands.
A magistrate’s court is, this month, hearing the case of a man who divorced his wife, and wants her family to return the six cattle he paid them as lobola. Another man has petitioned traditional authorities to suspend his obligation to continue paying lobola to his wife’s family, because she is now deceased.
To be sure, traditionalists such as Jabulani Dlamini, a rural pastor, still firmly support the custom. ”I am a true Swazi man, and I take it as a matter of honour to pay lobola,” he says. ”It is an obligation.”
But, it may be the voices of young men such as Thulani who ultimately prevail.
”You pay lobola if a woman has not had a child, if she is pure. So, who can pay lobola?” asks the 24-year-old bus conductor, who has three girlfriends, each of whom has borne him a child. — IPS