By Mwizenge S. Tembo Professor of Sociology
Introduction
The term “Bride Price” should immediately be banned from use anywhere in Zambia and Africa to refer to one of our cherished customs. I realize that the Europeans invented this term “Bride Price” in the 1700s and 1800s to refer to a fundamental aspect of Zambian and culture may have done it out of ignorance at the time. The great late eminent African scholar Ali Mazrui would have called what those early Europeans did to distort the meaning of this custom “European cultural arrogance”.
I understand that the Europeans and their scholars, some of whom may even be Zambians and Africans, may still want to use it. If they so choose they can use “Bride Price” within the confines of European borders all the way to Britain, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece along the edges of the Mediterranean Sea. The people on the African continent must boycott and ban this term from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt all the way to Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, all the way to South Africa.
I will first explain to you why the term “Bride Price” must be banned, abandoned and boycotted. Second why there is so much confusion and ignorance about the term “Bride Price” among Zambians and Africans ourselves. Third, why the term “lobola” should be used instead using a dramatic social incident involving lobola going on in my large extended family right now. Lastly I will explain the proper traditional use of “lobola” today if you would like to engage in it as a family whether your ethnic group or some of the 72 “tribes” in Zambia practiced lobola or not. I will end with the conclusion of the advantages of lobola in the 21st century marriages and extended families.
Why “Bride Price” Should be Banned
When Europeans first began to sail along the West coast of Africa in the 1600s, they did not know anything about Africa and African culture. In fact they called the interior of Africa “The Dark Continent” because they did not know about Zambia, Africa and Africans. When the Industrial Revolution occurred in Europe there was tremendous excitement among Europeans.
Adam Smith’s “Wealth Nations” vividly reinforced the dominant advantages of the just discovered capitalism which hinges on commerce as the buying and selling and free market exchanging of everything including physical commodities, services, land, minerals, tobacco, sugar, cotton, silk, spices, indigo.
Later on the famous Karl Marx exposed the key inner workings of capitalism. It was not surprising that Europeans went on to enslave anywhere from ten to 20 million Africans in the brutal Atlantic Slave Trade and European Colonialism in Africa in this atmosphere of practicing and enjoying the fruits of newly found capitalism and advancement of science.
It was in this atmosphere that Missionaries like David Livingstone and mining prospectors such as Cecil Rhodes arrived in Zambia and Africa from 1850s onwards. It was later in the late 1800s to the 1940s and 50s that anthropologists began to create knowledge about us Africans and Zambians for the benefit not of us Africans but European audience however misleading and distorted this knowledge might have been.
It did not matter to the Europeans then perhaps even now. They had no ideas about complex kinships, marriage and family customs that had existed among us Zambian and Africans probably for many centuries perhaps going back to 100,000 to 50,000 years ago since Zambians and Africans are the origins of all the 7 billion people.
The European explorers, missionaries, travelers, and especially anthropologists observed numerous customs many of the so-called tribes in Zambia and Africa were practicing. They may have noted at the time that among these primitive people called Africans, that when a man wanted to marry a woman, he had to transfer a certain amount valuables to the bride’s family; chickens, goats, cattle before the marriage could take place.
The Europeans were so overwhelmed with capitalism, superiority complex and economic exchange of commodities that they wrongly called the custom: “Bride Price” and we as Zambians and Africans are stuck with that wrong term to this day. As a consequence among the 1 billion Africans especially the educated, we freely use “Bride Price” as it truly reflects what goes on in our marriages.
“Bride Price” does not exist
What many Europeans, educated modern Zambians, Africans, and other outsiders do not know is that the term “Bride Price” does not exist in any of the more than 18 Zambian major languages and may be 72 dialects, ethnic groups, and the 72 “tribes”. It may not exist among the 2,000 African languages and dialects. Even in Uganda where a feminists are fighting to eliminate the “Bride Price” which oppresses women in marriage.
For example, if the term “Bride Price” existed among say the Tumbuka people of the Eastern Province of Zambia and Northern Malawi, it would be called “kugula mwanakazi” which translates into English as “to buy a woman”.
It would also be called “mtengo wa mwanakazi” which translates as “price of a woman”. These are expressions that are used for actual buying of commodities such as dresses, chickens, bicycles, and shoes. Instead the term that is used to refer to what goes on during complex marriage customs is “lobola” about which I will go into detail later.
The distorted term “Bride Price” was inserted in all the press, books, college and university text books which are read around the world including our Zambian and African scholars. This had led to everyone wrongly believing we practice “Bride Price” which is the selling and buying of women and girls. There may have been some protests about the demeaning and dehumanizing nature of the use of the term “Bride Price”. The anthropologists and the editors of these text books that are circulated worldwide replaced the term “Bride Wealth” apparently to soften the use of the harsh term “Bride Price”. The distorted meaning of buying and selling women is still the same.
The Etic and Emic Perspectives
There are those who will argue that the use of “Bride Price” to describe a very important marital custom among Zambians, Africans, women rights campaigners, and radical feminist anthropologists is legitimate or accurately describes what is really happening because the natives themselves, including myself, are incapable of realizing what they are doing: buying and selling a woman. The argument is that it takes a clever outsider who is objective and educated may be with a Ph. D to actually explain the reality of the very rich social experiences if practiced the way it was in the African traditional society. The belief is that the “emic” is the perspective that the natives, local people, or insiders who say they are practicing the “lobola” custom will have. The “etic” is that perspective of the critical expert, objective, superior, more educated, better informed individual that calls this marital custom “Bride Price”. This “etic” perspective is what everyone should believe. The author strongly disagrees with this outdated point of view.
Lobola the Best Term
Zambians and Africans should never ever use “Bride Price” as it does not exist in any Zambian or African culture. Instead, lobola or any equivalent term in your indigenous Zambian or African culture should be used. Lobola may have been practiced among some ethnic and tribal groups going back to the 1820s. There is evidence of the practice among the Zulu in the Chaka Empire in the 1820s. (Ritter, 1955, 1978) The Ngonis and other tribes may have spread the marital custom among the peoples in present day Zambia, Southern Tanzania, Northern Malawi and elsewhere in Southern Africa.
What Happened During Lobola?
Let’s say John NKhata of Mtema Village knows a young woman Mary Mvula of Basiti that he would like to propose marriage to. John would go to Mary Mvula’s village and propose to her. If she finds him attractive and accepts the proposal, very complex social relationships and actions begin to develop. John’s family will select a Thenga or go between to go to Mary Mvula’s family to begin talks about malowolo. Immediately there were social ripples of excitement between the 2 large extended families of the couple because the two families were going to unite. Marriage in Zambian traditional society was never only about just the 2 people getting married.
The malowolo negotiations would take numerous visits back and forth between the 2 families and villages. After may be 6 months to a year, the lobola may have been two cows and may be 3 or some other valuables. These were never meant for the father of the Mary Mvula to enrich himself or just to spend on his own. Almost always traditionally as livestock, it was seen as a modest investment to be kept for the whole family. The lobola was often never given in total before the marriage. What you are reading here about how lobola is conducted is very simplified and abbreviated. But the entire lobola social transactions and involving large kinship networks were very complex but very enjoyable and useful for the couple and the 2 large extended families in the two villages. Read Tembo, 2012; Chondoka, 1988, and Ngulube, 1989 for more details about this custom.
Lobola Custom in 2016
In May 2015, I received an email and later a phone call from Zambia. My large extended family in Zambia regularly hold family meetings which are modeled after the traditional mphala of the Tumbuka people or insaka among the Bemba people. They discuss family marriages and wedding arrangements. Often they get together to attend to funerals. One of our young men who is an engineer, who I will call David, had met and proposed marriage to a young woman from Central African Republic, Rita, who he had met while both were attending school at CrytalRose Polytechnic State University in Los Angeles in California. They wanted a traditional marriage including lobola. I was appointed the Thenga (go between) because I was an elder and knew the traditional marriage customs. I was surprised, honored and humbled to participate in this role. The first question I asked myself: “What young people today who are less than 30 years old, who grew up in the city like Lusaka, live abroad would want to practice the traditional custom of lobola in marriage?”
To cut a long story short, I consulted by phone and email with the Thenga from the bride;s family for 6 months. Both couple’s families are scattered in the Central Africa Republic Mali, Zambia, the United States and Britain. At one time we suspended the negotiations for more than a week because there was a death in the bride’s family in Bangui. Her uncle had died. Eventually, we came up with a lobola amount of several cattle equivalent in money. Members of the families will travel to Lusaka for the wedding soon. The couple will return to the United States as man and wife to start their lives together after the wedding. But families on both sides already know each other so much better because pf the lobola negotiations besides many other rich customs.
“Bride Price” distortions
There is plenty of confusion about the misuse of this very useful marital custom. There was headline in the international news a few months ago: “Uganda’s Bride Price Ruling Marks Women’s Rights Milestone, But Clashes With Customary Laws.” http://www.ibtimes.com/ugandas-bride-price-ruling-marks-womens-rights-milestone-clashes-customary-laws-2059128
Some will see my advocating this lobola which many will misinterprete as the same as “Bride Price” as setting back women’s rights in Uganda, Zambia and the rest of Africa. This would be throwing out the baby with bath water. This attitude or opposition would be understandable in that the use of “Bride Price” in the headline and in Uganda and elsewhere bears confirmation of the original sin or distortion when Europeans mischaracterized or distorted the custom. What compounded the problem is that virtually all educated Africans who use European languages have wrongly accepted the use of the term “Bride Price” instead of lobola.
The men and families who charge high “Bride Prices” because their daughter is educated or very valuable are playing right into the hands of the original Europeans who coined the distorted or wrong term “Bride Price”. The Ugandans and other modern Zambian and African men and families who abuse this “Bride Price” as license to abuse their wives and keep them captive when she wants a divorce are also ignorant because that was never the intended purpose of lobola in the traditional customs.
Conclusions
Practicing the original lobola in a positive traditional way with all its cultural and customary richness would be very valuable for strengthening marriages and strengthening families that unite in marriage today. Tribes and ethnic groups that traditionally never practiced the lobola custom can adopt it too to strengthen their marital experience. No Zambian and African should be prisoner of archaic terms that Europeans invented centuries ago to portray negatively what Zambians and Africans had enjoyed for ages. You will notice that I have avoided the use of the term “pay” to describe how the groom’s family delivers lobola to the bride’s family. This is another negative power of using English because it is a very powerful hegemonic tool for distorting our culture and creating the epistemology that both oppresses and distorts how we see our own lives as Zambians and Africans.
I am glad you keep putting term bride price in inverted commas. My question is “What is the difference between lobola (whether paid in full or not) and bride price?” In my opinion I think you are looking at the literal definition of the words bride and price. I have never looked at the term “bride price” and immediately thought buying and selling of a woman. What we need to ban is the abuse of the practice by some families. Otherwise thank-you for an informative piece about the origins of bride price.
Ba Mwizenge stop ifyamba…..that’s all I can say about that and that’s all am going to say
We cannot ban the term bride price. It just needs to be understood in its context. It has nothing to do with commodity pricing. Now Mwizenge Tembo, you need to go back to your studies and concentrate on this topic and come back with a better article. Thanks
“Bride Price” is what the Europeans invented to portray “lobola” as buying and selling women. It is insulting. Lobola was something very positive during marriage. There was never any selling or buying of women. You might see no difference between the two. But if you read the many books and journal articles that have been written now and since the 1800s by Europeans and other Eurocentric scholars, you will know the distortions.
Too long and useless.
Because you can not read, your picture tells all.
You can never learn any deeply meaningful knowledge if you believe it should be one page long and you should be able to read it in 2 minutes. When you say useless what do you mean? May be you could explain.
This article is more like a history lecture but trying to Justify a misdeed. If you pay for a commodity no matter the justification, you have bought that commodity. Who sets the amount for Lobola? It is the one who has a product to sell? Please no matter how long an article one writes the fact is women are sold especially for tribes like Tongas who ask 10 to 20 cows( 15,000 x 20= 300,000). How does this not amount to bride price? If you want the word not to be used, you should campaign for the all practice being banned especially that tribes that asked for too much are even the most demanding after the couples have been married. They even keep a time table of who will visit the couple next to make more demands.
You do not understand what I am saying. The woman is not and has never been a commodity in the traditional custom of lobola going back hundreds of years. No one sets the amount for lobola because it is not buying something or a woman the way you would go to a market to buy fish for example. You have complex cultural practices that go on for months between the 2 families. The Europeans were successful in the 1800s because you believe today wrongly that the custom is buying a woman. Those who are misusing the custom now need to be reeducated. This lecture is not justifying something was wrong but it is explaining what happened during the lives and rich culture of our ancestors.
Please lets offer better suggestions if we think Professor Tembo is wrong rather than belittle him. The article is very educative and should attract better comments. I am tempted to think the same especially the use of the term “price”. Families abuse it and the men also abuse it. Families with more girls think of getting riches and men think they have bought their women. These and many more issues should be addressed. No amount of insults will resolve these issues than sober minds.
Why not just ban the whole practice?
Thank for your positive comments. People should think more than just simply throwing insults around. The abuse of lobola should be corrected. Zambians need to be educated about the proper way the custom was carried out and how it should be practiced to day to improve and strengthen marriages.
Which ever way you look at it a transaction is taking place when you are asked to pay, give some valuable item in exchange for your would-be wife. Try not to rationalize too much. One family trades their daughter in exchange for either money, cattle, goats or if you are in Bembaland, chickens. A woman and especially a virgin is a valuable commodity that fetches lots of money if cards are played correctly. I know situations where uncles and other close relatives sit to speculate, even exchange blows fighting about the amount that must be paid in order to meet their various personal financial goals. And if the suitor is a well to do guy the higher the price and the happier the interested parties. Lets call it exactly what it is without insulting our intelligence, it’s a business…
What you are explaining and describing is exactly how and why the lobola practice has been ruined. It was never meant to be used to buy or exchange goods for a woman. Of course today it has been totally distorted because the proper customs were never transmitted. Fetching money for a woman or virgin is disgraceful and was never part of the practice. If a woman was a virgin she was given more honor and respect when she was being married. Her virginity was never used to fetch a high price. The uncles and other relatives who sit around to plot how much money they will make money today do not know or understand the proper lobola custom.
Continued…
transaction involving a woman being sold at an agreed price. You may choose not to call it human trafficking because the woman is willingly going into the relationship without coercion or abduction. Examples abound where mere love for the woman alone isn’t enough to marry her, that love has to be backed up by a solid financial position or else she is sold elsewhere. This is the reality and don’t feel guilt about it. Africans have been trading like this for millennia. Don’t let the words ‘buy, purchase’ cloud our thinking; it’s what takes place when you exchange your assets for a wife.
These days its not even worth paying lobola for these women. Most of them are second hands.Ka virgin maybe yes, manje but no sure if we have any.
If you decide not to pay lobola for the reasons you state, that’s fine.
Thanks Prof.Tembo for taking the time, i appreciate the Pan African perspective and how i wish many African Scholars would take this route. We have come to point where we need African solutions by Africans.
The Pan Africanists is essential for African solidarity. I appreciate your positive comments.
The question that must be answered is why there is exclusive transfer of wealth or gifts from the groom’s to the bride’s family?
Is it possible that this tradition began more as compensation for the loss of the female family member? A subtle but important differentiation….
TOO LOOONG TRY TO BE BREIF WE ARE BUSY IN THE OFFICES KA!!!!!!!!!!!!
What I would suggest about any long article, is to just read it later instead of for example watching TV. Don’t read it in the office. I never read any long articles in my office because I am too busy. Knowledge that is educational and complicated can never be explained in only one page that can be read in 3 minutes.
In german it WAS called Mitgift…a girl’s “bring-along” into marriage. Note, the whole thing was patrilineal or better the bride “gave-up” her identity as in “kulobela”…Theo zu Gutenberg, married into the Gutenbergs’ family. On the whole a very thin thesis with inummerable generalisations about Afrika as a whole Prof…sorry 🙁
Why is it a thin thesis? German girl “bring along” into marriage is probably dowry. Do not confuse it with lobola. Zambian women traditionally never gave up their identity when they got married. The women had very complex identities which was normal. When you say “generalizations” about Africa, what do you mean?
I can’t find words to express my gratitude to Professor Mwizenge S. Tembo for this article to highlight one of the many distortions of African culture by our white brothers and sisters in order to make Africa and Africans look very primitive and backward. And it is not surprising to note that already most of the bloggers out of the very few who have responded live in self denial. Many things have been distorted by the west and with the support of even the highly educated Africans themselves. If even Dr Guy Scott who’s white, every so often calls for the re-writing of our history because he has more facts now than when he just read from the history written out of bias, why can’t we Africans be the first to correct the distortions?
Thanks for your brilliant comment in support. Very well said. This is what we lack among Zambians and Africans; the courage to rewrite the distorted history about us that was written by Europeans.
When colonisers came to Zambia they told us not to be using our indigenous names as, “they are evil”. They started calling our ethnic groupings as ‘tribes’, they found us eating using our fingers and thought that was primitive. But, knives and forks were introduced to them by Indians from India I have learned. Africans are not respected by the entire world because they have easily lost their culture to the western life-style. Indians, Arabs, Persians, etc are very respected because wherever they are, they don’t forget about their culture. Just in case you don’t know the meaning of culture, please, google. Because CULTURE is a very wide subject to cover even a hundredth of it on this platform. Prof. please continue educating us more on our identity as Africans.
Thanks a million for your brilliant comment in support. Please help as much as possible in spreading your positive point of view about our Zambian and African culture.
Comment
Prof write more. I am keenly following. Put more details please.
The problem is you don’t understand that they too have the same, especially in Aristocratic marriages. They may not lay by goat but a man or woman must come from an equally wealthy and titled family for approval. Maybe less so now but still underneath as in recent Count Weymouth’s sons marriage to a Nigerian girl, the mother of the son derided the lack of English noble birth.
Is lobola, then, when properly understood compatible with feminism?
Generally a good piece of writing. I think it is a very good cultural practice which is greatly misunderstood even by the ones practising it in modern society. Unfirtunately, even our women folk misunderstand it.
Fwaka ya chingoni.
I now understand why 2rump says there is no shortcut to civilisation.
If there nothing to talk about better keep quiete.
In your article you of Europeans not knowing zambia or Africa when they came.
I expect you so called professor to atleast know that there was no zambia or africa when these people came.
2morrow you might say we change the names of places, countries and the continent.
Bride price or Lobola fyonse fyabupuba fye in fact. Its good that you know that we are forced to buy these women. If you want to know who sets the prices for these women, it is the same elders of the bride’s family and they set prices as if they will never see their daughters again. This is kinda stupid!!! Because in the first place they over charge this poor man to an extent of even making him to fall into the debt trap “Inkongole” and they do not even care what that daughter of theirs they are selling is going to be eating. Secondly the same stupid elders charge this poor man as though they will never benefit anything from him after he gets their daughter which makes me feel that fyabupuba fye because this is unfair on the part of a man. Thirdly what hurts most is that immediately…
Tefyabupuba. The concept of lobola was not about selling off a girl member of the family. It was about the groom showing appreciation. It is only nowadays that lobola has assumed commercial valuation.
If you check among the Tumbuka, the lala, the Kunda, the Soli their lobola in the old days was as little as one chicken. It was not how “big” your lobola was that showed how much you appreciated the woman. It was your intentions because you can pay 90 cows for a woman and tommorow you divorce. A person who paid one chicken could stay with a wife forever.
Thirdly what hurts most is that immediately after a man has successfully married their daughter (Off course with a lot of struggle and pressure), they are number one to want visit and the poor man’s food and want him to provide them with transport and other benefits and to make matters worse they might even ask for their daughters to go back and do some tasks for them, forgetting so fast that at the time of marrying them they were sold. If critically look into such matters it is only fair to say whether you call it bride price or lobola fyonso fyabpuba….I am one man that was hurt a lot and am only trying to recover from the stupid custom…
12 yrs old orphaned girl Bellita was married off to a very very old man with many wives for K50. Within a few months time the old man knocked out almost all of Belita’s teeth in her mouth. Belita almost died during child birth, her old husband. old enough to be her grandfather abuses her and reminds her that she was sold to him by her biological grandpa for 50 PINI
Belita lives in a remote village with the oldman and his otherwives, she has no blood relatives in the area
Awe ba Tembo mwalanda ifyamano. Let me tell you however that on Lusaka Times and other Zambian media platforms you are unlikely to find the kind of audience that appreciates this kind of depth in an article. The readers on this platform want to read stories on who has stolen who’s wife, Who has insulted Lungu? Most readers read the headline and then dash to posting an opinion, however, stupid it may be. Even the publisher of LT acknowledges that what drives the site are the posts not the stories on offer. The discussion of ideas and intellectualisations are never welcome. Thats why plenty people here think the article is too long. You probably need to start some kind of newsletter that those with the kind of inclination you are targetting can visit and respond positively so that we can…
So that we can all benefit. An article like yours needs to be brainstormed upon and then be taken to our lawmakers to take foward. It should not just end up on the Lusaka Times platform and die there
African women really look stoopid in that white wedding dress. Why do we persist in wearing such imprisoning garb for a happy ceremony. No wonder all african brides always look sad in the strain of this attempt to imitate European culture. Even african men look stoopid in those suits
African traditional dress would be much more appropriate.
I get where this article is coming from.. but people really need to stop taking things to personal. I feel that there are better things happening in Zambia.