A man chooses to have many wives. Each wife has her own household. They bear his children and, together, they are a large number. This has been the custom among the Nguni people of South Africa for many generations. Jacob Zuma practises it, as does King Zwelithini and other Zulu tribesmen. Many say it was done to grow a nation and integrate people. Others claim men chose many wives to demonstrate wealth and status.
But many women have spoken out, saying it is demeaning to women and gives a great sense of inequality. Last year one of Swazi King Mswati III’s daughters endured his wrath when she spoke out against this practice.
An appointee to Parliament, Moi Moi Masilela responded to her statement illustrating the traditionalists’ views on sexual relations by saying: ‘How does one satisfy a woman in bed? Once a woman conceives it shows that she gets satisfaction.â€
If that is the case, then Xoli Mfaba’s mother and her father’s second wife were indeed satisfied. They bore seven and six children respectively. Mfaba is a 41-year-old woman who grew up in the valleys of her ancestors in Kwazulu-Natal. Her experiences tell a story of strife in the home where two wives ‘shared†a husband.
‘It’s not a nice feeling,†she says. Problems may not have existed with the women of the household, but they definitely permeated the relationships between the children. She is emphatic when she says her father was unhappy because ‘we were not, and are not, a familyâ€.
Independent filmmaker Dumisani Phakathi speaks differently of his experiences growing up with a father married to 11 women, with 51 children.
‘I didn’t choose it. It just happened, but it worked.†He says his father made it work. It was his personality and the attraction of the African way of life that helped him shape the Phakathi family, creating an environment where all the children and wives got along.
Dumisani loved the excitement of having so many people around him at all times. But he concedes that in such an environment there is no space for individualism. Any desire for privacy would be considered ‘snobbishâ€.
Being part of a large family meant his experiences were varied and always new. From an early age everyone had to learn to share and to listen. It also meant that his influences came from a large melting pot of ideas.
Zibuyisile Zulu, a young woman from Kwazulu-Natal, agrees that the interaction between so many people in one household might be beneficial, but only if relationships were nurtured. In her home, however, ‘there was no happinessâ€.
Zulu’s father had two wives and she had eight siblings. It became a problem when the families could not agree on how to share her father’s time.
Phakathi looks back on his childhood with fondness. He feels that, were he to find women who would agree to be one of many, then polyÂgamy might be something he could do. Given enough money and time, there would be little stopping him.
Phakathi believes the idea of women being herded into such a marriage is preposterous. But he feels that the women his father married were not backward and it is they who, contrary to popular belief, wore the pants. In fact his father became a slave to his own family.