26 May 1997

  We are gaining an insight into local marriage
  customs.  Prince wants to marry his girlfriend,
  but her parents want the traditional payment of
  lobola (bride price), in this case $15,000 cash
  plus nine head of cattle (worth another $17,000
  making a total of $32,000 - £1,600).  This is
  about a year's salary for Prince.  What annoys
  him most is that his girlfriend's family don't
  normally respect tradition and don't even belong to any of the tribes that follow this particular custom!

Like many young people, Prince and his girlfriend resent what they see as a money grubbing blight on their future.  Traditionally, lobola is meant to be an insurance premium paid by the family of the bridegroom for the children of the new bride.  If misfortune strikes and the parents become unable to look after their children, the bride’s parents and brothers will be called upon to protect them instead.  The lobola livestock must therefore multiply sufficiently to cope with any such demands.

Over time, the tradition has been corrupted so that some modern parents look upon lobola as ‘compensation for the expense of raising a daughter’.  Some men resent having to ‘buy’ a bride and the young women don’t like the idea of being ‘bought’. They fear the idea might be used to justify them being discarded later in favour of a newer model.  For others, a high bride price is seen as a means of enhancing the esteem of both families in the eyes of the community.

Prince was rather downcast after the family negotiations failed to alter the situation.  We asked why his girlfriend's parents wanted so much - was she well educated, did she earn a lot of money?  It turns out she is the youngest of three or four girls, none of them educated beyond ‘O’ Level, none working and none married yet.  A case of parents pricing their daughters out of the market!

Themba has been telling us more about his circumstances.  Having made Norma pregnant, he must appear before her family with a mature relative as his spokesman.  They will ask if he is the father of the child and demand  $50 ‘damages’.  They also want a jug, a goat and a blanket for Norma’s father as lobola.  Themba is in dire straits at the moment, having run up a big debt with Mercia, who is making deductions from his pay.  He says he had to borrow from her to buy things for the baby, due in August.

Yesterday we took Themba, Norma and Patricia's Uncle Reggie (acting as Themba's spokesman since he has no other mature male relative) out to the rural areas so Themba could be introduced to Norma's family and negotiate lobola.  Both men looked really smart in their best dark suits, fresh shirts and polished shoes.  The journey took us forty-three miles past two gold mines and a few white-owned ranches, mostly on an almost straight, single-track tarred road with a strip of sandy gravel on each side for passing and overtaking.  There was very little traffic and only a few people walking, sitting under the shade of a tree, or waiting for a bus.

Eventually we turned onto a gravel road to the large village of Inyathi.  Pausing for a moment, Ken helped Themba put on the tie he was lending him for this important occasion.  It had been too hot to wear it in the car.  We then turned onto a rough track leading to the small settlement where Norma's family live.

Reggie went in to speak to the family first, while we waited outside.  Themba said he felt very nervous, and we were also quite apprehensive as we had no idea what kind of reception to expect.  Perhaps we would be blamed or expected to make reparations of some kind?

Each family has a homestead, an area containing several huts in which they cook and sleep.  Boys in one hut, girls in another, adults another, like separate rooms in a house.  In winter the kitchen hut is the heart of the house, everyone gathering there to eat, gossip and even to sleep when the nights turn really cold.  Most other activities, such as socialising and doing the family laundry, take place outdoors.  One homestead was demarcated only by a rudimentary wire fence around the bare earth.  Another was surrounded by a lush green hedge with flowers in the garden, looking rather like an English country cottage on a sunny August day.  In another, a young woman pounded maize with a huge wooden pestle in a deep wooden mortar carved from a sizeable tree trunk.

After a short while, Themba was summoned to meet the family and we were invited to join them.  Norma's mother looked to be aged about forty and was nursing a large baby - around nine-months old.  There was a five-year old boy, two others about eight and ten, and two young men about twenty.  They live in a small rectangular house with a corrugated iron roof, a round thatched hut for cooking, some small sleeping huts and a toilet.  Clean water is available from a tap in the garden, but the village electricity supply stops short about one hundred metres away.

They are a very dignified family, typical of the bearing of most people here.  We were made welcome with warm smiles and handshakes (done in the African way - a normal hand grasp, then an upward shift to grasp thumbs, then back to a normal grasp and a slightly lingering disengagement) and some pleasantries about the children, but no effusiveness.  We were shown to two old but clean dining chairs on the tiny verandah and left alone except for the five-year old who studied our faces with a solemn expression for quite some time before deciding to snuggle up against Ken's knee.

Through a doorway into one of the tiny rooms (just enough room to sleep in), in the semi-darkness, we could see Themba and Reggie seated on a rush mat, their backs to the wall, legs straight out.  Themba held his head bowed in submission.  Norma's father must have been sitting on a stool, as there would otherwise have been no room for him.  They spoke quietly, in Ndebele, so we understood nothing of their negotiations.  Meanwhile, Norma and her mother busied themselves in the kitchen hut.

Outside, the two young boys were trying to repair a tyre on the large family cart.  As they inflated the tyre it suddenly exploded from the rim.  We could now see that the tyre rim was damaged, and the inner tube had been patched countless times.  It had even been tied in knots in some places!  The ‘workshop’ was shaded by a large tree growing amongst a pile of rocks.  They had some old machinery - a large highly-geared hand-drill and two large vices - all wedged amongst the rocks.  We have yet to discover how they make a living, but there’s a donkey to pull the cart, two goats, three chickens and a dog.

We now understand why Themba saves nearly everything we throw away.  He gave them a sackful of empty plastic milk and fruit juice containers, which we assume will be used for storing water and cooking oil.  It is now clear why people want to become maids and gardeners - they get to live in a nice place, are fed regularly and also get paid.

The negotiations lasted about half an hour, and were inconclusive.  Nobody wanted to tell us why, but they did ask for a family photograph to mark the occasion.  Everyone, including the donkey, quickly assembled themselves under a huge cactus in the small flower garden.  Themba wasn’t allowed to be in it, and has not even been given permission to speak, as he is still in disgrace!  Unfortunately there was just one frame left in the camera, so we do hope it comes out.  
                                                                   This is the photograph.  It did come out.