Note: The arguments raised henceforth are not just about the HHP case, but is a broad reflection of the writer on the Customary Marriage Act as a whole.
The law is trivializing our understanding of customary marriage. The law cannot be allowed to wipe out our traditional practices.
Suddenly our traditions are being interpreted as being ‘symbolical’, clearly being downplayed. So when does the process start or end?
If my elders have not given umakoti (the bride) a name and akatyanga utsiki (a traditional welcome to the family where the wife would be taught the way of life in that family), is she a wife simply because of the three pre-conditions in the Supreme Court of Appeals judgment interpreting the recognition of customary marriage?
Some of us also want to dabble in both civil and customary marriage, which compounds problems. I think some of us also need to choose what we are but I guess we are a hybrid, a product of our complexity of being Christianised and still wanting to remain traditional.
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The law is not going to really resolve these complex matters, we need to be in conversation. I think during lobola (dowry) negotiations we need to agree as families on what is the end point of this process to recognise, legitimately, the makoti as a wife in our families. I am not convinced at all that we must downplay other processes beyond lobola.
I know a few people where lobola was paid and they broke up with their boyfriends and they went on to marry other people. The lobola wasn't always fetched by the other guys nor did the new lobola negotiation take place at the home of the guy who had paid lobola initially.
Life is so complex, that I know. Some people have been denied marital status rights upon the death of their spouses in order to prejudice them at the level of inheritance, where some rogue family members want to loot the estate. So there must be some protection against this.
Popular DJ and television presenter Ngizwe Mchunu, centre, with his first wife, Siphelele Nxumalo, left, and second wife, Lindiwe Khuzwayo, at the Bafana Bafana match at Moses Mabhida Stadium on Tuesday night. However, to trivialise other processes that are triggered by lobola as some kind of formalities that are not a pertinent part of leading towards a formal customary union is worrying. I mean here in KZN lobola without umembeso (a pre-marital celebration) is not even enough for that arrangement to be declared a marriage or close to being a marriage, traditionally speaking.
Who are we? Who do we want to be?
Also, we must stop this cohabitation thing.
Ukuhlalisana (cohabitation) is also layered with its own problems when death hits and you are suddenly alienated by the family during the funeral preparations. We must just try sort out who are we and where do we want to be?
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* Lukhona Mnguni is a political analyst and PhD intern at the Maurice Webb Race Relations Unit in the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
** The views expressed are not necessarily those of Independent Media.