by G.J.Wanjohi |
INTRODUCTION |
MARRIAGE IN AFRICAN TRADITION
An African proverb says that children are the adornment of the home. This, therefore, is one of the reasons why Africans marry. It is an aesthetic reason. Another reason is that children are an investment, especially in old age; so there is an economic reason for marriage. Then there is a metaphysical reason according to which man (male and female) is called upon by the ancestors to be a chain in the transmission of life.
It is especially the latter which makes African marriage an unavoidable duty, as we learn from the following proverbs of the Ankole and Kigezi:
The need for marriage made the dove fly and fly until it lay exhausted.
Sweating and marrying go hand in hand.
No one is too little for a cow, i.e., to obtain dowry and to marry.
When ripe, a banana is eaten and a girl is married 1
The view of African marriage expressed in these proverbs could lead one to make a hasty conclusion that African marriage is dictated only by necessity, depriving it of any freedom of choice. This is not at all the case, as we once again learn from the following Ankole-Kigezi proverbs
Before marrying, be informed; before arranging a marriage, consult a diviner. 2
Do not boast to your parents about your hasty marriage.
In African marriage, therefore, there is both necessity and freedom; necessity as to the fact, and freedom as to how to go about it.
THE INSTITUTION OF BRIDEPRICE IN AFRICA
A very well known characteristic of African marriage is the payment of brideprice or dowry. Unlike in other cultures where dowry is paid by the parents of the girl, in non-Muslim Black Africa it is always the parents of the boy or man who pay dowry to the parents of the girl. This practice has been misunderstood by outsiders, especially Westerners. They equate the payment of brideprice to buying a human being. They are led to this view by taking African languages too literally. Among the Gîkûyû of Kenya, for example, to marry a wife is rendered by kûgûra mûtimia (to buy a wife), and to give your daughter in marriage is kwendia mwarîguo (to sell your daughter).
These Gîkûyû terms must not be taken too literally, for they do not represent the true reality. The allegation in Africa that marrying a wife is tantamount to buying a wife is disproved by the following considerations:
-Africans are well aware that a girl is not a commodity to be disposed of, for she remains the daughter of her parents and sister to her brothers and sisters as much after marriage as before. Among the Gîkûyû, a married woman is referred to either as the wife of so-and- so, or the daughter of so-and-so. These people value their daughters so much they consider their being taken away by young men as an act of plunder, and brideprice as being just a small consolation for this plunder. Hence the proverb: Igîtuunywo mwana nîikagîrio mûngû. (One throws a small green gourd to the monkey when taking away its baby.). Also, these days when, on account of rapid social change, quite a number of women remain single, some parents are apportioning their land and other property to both sons and daughters, showing that they love both equally.
-There is no end to paying dowry. Though at first it may be fixed at so many goats or cows, the parents of the girl always had (and still have) a right to demand a gift from the family of the boy at any time during their lifetime. From this, two reasons for brideprice emerge:
1) It is a way of assuring that the girl is properly treated; in case of mistreatment, she can always return home and be accepted by her parents and other relatives.
2) It is a means of keeping the relations between the two families alive and strong. (On the hypothesis that in Africa one buys a wife, there would be no need to perpetuate this relationship. But since it is the latter which prevails, the claim of wife buying among Africans is disproved.)
AFRICAN MARRIAGE TODAY
Here we shall try to follow very closely the outline established for the traditional marriage in order to see to what extent the current African marriage remains the same as traditional marriage, and to what extent it deviates from it.
The Necessity to Marry/Get Married
Like in the past, the need to marry, to get married, and to have children among Africans, remains as widespread and strong as ever. It is this imperative which is partly to blame for the ever rising single-parent phenomenon, especially as regards women. This is how this comes about. A lot of men--even educated ones--loathe marrying educated women, thus forcing them to get children outside of marriage. At the same time some educated women feel secure and independent enough not to want to live under the domination of a husband. And yet they want children whom they get out of wedlock, thus deliberately creating a single-parent situation.
African marriage today is still characterised by freedom except in certain cases where selfish parents force their daughters to get married against their will, even at the expense of leaving school.
Brideprice
With few exceptions, African peoples still believe in and demand the paying of brideprice. Due to modernity, however, the mode of discharging this duty has changed. Today almost invariably, brideprice is paid in cash, not in the form of livestock. The main reason for this is the scarcity or lack of grazing land due to the rise in population and the use of land for cash crops. The other reason is that young boys whose traditional responsibility was to look after animals are now in school. As for the town dweller, the question of paying the brideprice in the form of livestock is totally inconceivable!
Due to the individualism and selfishness which have accompanied modern life, some parents ask too much money as brideprice. One very serious result of this is to make nonsense of the original aim of the institution of brideprice; instead it is being subverted and has degenerated into a commodity-exchange, a wife-buying activity. In quite a number of cases, this overpricing of the bride ends in elopement. The latter can also be brought about by the high cost of weddings these days. Although elopement and common-law marriages are beginning to gain ground among Africans nowadays, in the past they were hardly tolerated.
CHRISTIANITY AND AFRICAN MARRIAGE
When Christianity was brought to Africa, it was well received by many ethnic groups. This was due, surely, to the rich cultural soil it found there. But when it comes to marriage, African culture and Christianity clashed almost at the outset. The reasons for this are quite obvious.
The African believes that each individual, male or female is a channel for the transmission of life, and that its is wrong to interrupt that transmission. The punishment could be a curse. It is for this reason that the retired archbishop of Nairobi, His Eminence Michael Maurice Cardinal Otunga, had first to seek approval and obtain the blessing of his mother before he could proceed to study for the priesthood.3 Additionally, among Africans, not only must one get married, but one must have children, and as many of them as possible. From this, two important implications follow: For an African, a childless marriage is ruled out as no marriage.
In order to get as many children as possible, Africans are forced to become polygamous. (In this context, it can be observed that childlessness is only one cause for being polygamous among Africans; that is, it is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for polygamy in Africa.) These two implications or problems give the church in Africa (especially the Catholic Church) a real pastoral headache. Theologians have offered a number of solutions to these problems, one of which is trial marriage. Professor Bénézet Bujo of Zaire rejects this solution for three reasons:
Trial marriages were not universally practised in Africa: Christian marriage thrives well among the groups which did not practise trial marriage. The question is to investigate such cultures in order to discover what made them disapprove of it. The ultimate aim is to come up with a universal policy for African Christian marriage. This can be derived from an African ancestor theology.
It is against human dignity to see the worth of a woman (or of a man--for the matter of that) as merely consisting in procreation. The latter is only a small part of what it means to be human.
It is against Christian love--and even against the wish of the ancestors--to reject a childless woman.4
I fully endorse this analysis.
CONCLUSION
As is apparent by now, we need both the past: our traditions, values, practices, etc., and the present: the impact of other cultures on our own, in order to arrive at a more satisfactory type of African marriage. It is not a question of either the past or the present.
NOTES
1. Fr. Marius Cisternino. The proverbs of Kigezi and Ankole (Uganda). Kampala: Comboni Missionaries, 1987, p. 348.
2. Cisternino, pp. 348, 351.
3. Margaret Ogola and Margaret Roche. Cardinal Otunga: a gift of grace. Nairobi: Pauline Publications Africa, 1999, p. 67.
4. See Bénézet Bujo. African theology in its social context. Nairobi: St Paul Publications-Africa, 1992, pp. 120-121.
N.B.: APPEAL TO THE READER
The author would appreciate hearing from people in whose culture there was no practice of trial marriage and how successful Christian marriage has been in these cultures.
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