Is Lobola/Roora still relevant?

The question of whether lobola/roora is still relevant has been asked too many times and on too many occasions people have said ‘it is part of our culture’. That’s is altogether the wrong approach because playing  the culture card does not interrogate why the lobola/roora custom was there to begin with and whether those reasons are still applicable to modern day society. I have my own understanding of why lobola was introduced to begin with:

                One – it was a way of thanking the in-laws for giving birth to a daughter who is now becoming your wife. This was relevant back then because the concept of marriage was different from what it was now. Before now, marriage meant the woman’s family had basically lost a child since the woman would now entirely belong to the man’s family. In a lot of instances the woman never went back to her family even for brief visits. What this meant was that the woman’s family would not benefit from whatever help their child could have given them, financial or otherwise. This point is what led to the development of the idea that an educated woman attracts a bigger bride price. This however is no longer relevant as a married woman never actually abandons her parents as she can always pay them a visit at any time and help them in any way she can. There are a number of cases these days whereby the woman’s family benefits more than the man’s family, therefore rubbishing the lobola that was paid.

                Two – Lobola was a way of proving that the man could take care of his wife and family. This made sense in the era where it was strictly the man’s duty to take care of the family: The woman stayed at home and brought up the children and the man worked and took care of the family. Women are now contributing to the taking care of the family and in a number of cases the women are contributing much more than the men. And besides, the calibre of man that is there nowadays is so useless, they don’t know what taking care of a woman is and use the fact that they paid lobola to abuse the woman. With a bigger pool of good man, the concept of ‘taking care’ of woman could work in the sense that ‘taking care’ of a woman goes beyond money: Women need pampering...

                Three – there is a school of thought that says lobola was meant to pay for the children that the woman would give her husband’s family. The modern family is now a nucleus family: The wife, the husband and their children. The modern family has moved away from the extended family structure and the concept of children belonging to the husband’s family is no longer valid. It is now up to the husband and wife to decide how many children they want and when. In a number of cases it is now up to the woman alone to decide how many children she wants in relation to her career. The payment of lobola takes away her power to place child birth in relation to her personal advancement.

                We have to question the custom of paying lobola because as it stands now, it is just buying women and destroys what a marriage is supposed to be in modern day society: An equal partnership where there is friendship, laughter, love...Whatever gender roles the husband and wife develop, it is in the context of friendship and love and not in the context of the wife being the property of the husband since he bought her.