Do not reform but discredit bride wealth
Apr 14, 2008
IN response to the article that run in The New Vision, Friday April 11, “Do not discredit, but reform bride wealth.â€, my stand is that bride price should not be reformed, but descredited.
BY ELIZABETH EQUBAY
IN response to the article that run in The New Vision, Friday April 11, “Do not discredit, but reform bride wealth.â€, my stand is that bride price should not be reformed, but descredited.
I totally agree on the stand propagated by the writer that we cannot afford to absorb all the foreign cultures uncritically. Africa has its own vast and very useful culture and tradition, which needs preservation.
However, not all the cultures and traditions are harmless. As it is very important and good to preserve the best ones, we also have to fight to discredit the harmful traditional and cultural practices throughout Africa.
I strongly disagree on the point that bride wealth was commercialised and named bride price by colonialists.
In my country, Ethiopia, which has never been colonised and the Western world did not get a chance to change a single word from our dictionaries, bride wealth is one of the major problems women are facing.
High bride price levied by families and relatives of the would-be wife is a key factor to the increased rate of rape and abduction in the country, according to recent research findings.Though it is a widely accepted belief that the practice of providing bride price symbolises the bond between the two new families, and source of pride for grandmothers, the price of the bride wealth negatively wraps the term of the marriage.
Bride wealth often negatively colours the terms of the marriage from the onset where women are viewed as property to be bought and sold. Men who are unable to afford the bride price abduct young women and rape them, making them unmarriageable.
Among the Anuak tribe in western Ethiopia, divorce or being barren is inevitably accompanied by the paying back of the bride wealth by the bride’s family.
Once the woman marries a man, she is considered the common property of all family members who contributed to the payment of her bride wealth and upon the death of the husband, the rest of the family has the right to inherit her. If the groom dies before or on the wedding day, any of his relatives can replace him and take the bride as his wife, but the children belong to the deceased.
Love between a couple is not that much considered as relatives involve highly in the marriage negotiation process. Involvement of relatives takes the form of choosing the girl they think is the best and contributes bride wealth that on average adds up to 25 heads of cattle.
The cattle are again redistributed to the extended family of the bride. According to the Nuer culture, the main purpose of bride wealth is to transfer ownership of the bride to the groom’s kinship.
Since the relatives of the man contribute the cattle, the woman is considered to belong to all that contributed to the marriage payment.
It is also common that if a woman fails to bear children, she can choose from her relatives (not husband’s side) a girl whom her husband will marry on her behalf. The husband has no control over her and it is not socially accepted to call him the husband of the other woman. The children borne by the man are her children. All are the property of the husband and even in case of divorce; the woman has to leave averything behind, including her children.
Even in case of death of her husband, the relatives of the husband inherit the properties. Men usually say: “How can a woman own the household property, after all, she is also property.†This is because she was bought. I can justify the relationship between bride wealth and the status of women.
The writer is an Ethiopian journalist working with Uganda Media Women’s Association
IN response to the article that run in The New Vision, Friday April 11, “Do not discredit, but reform bride wealth.â€, my stand is that bride price should not be reformed, but descredited.
I totally agree on the stand propagated by the writer that we cannot afford to absorb all the foreign cultures uncritically. Africa has its own vast and very useful culture and tradition, which needs preservation.
However, not all the cultures and traditions are harmless. As it is very important and good to preserve the best ones, we also have to fight to discredit the harmful traditional and cultural practices throughout Africa.
I strongly disagree on the point that bride wealth was commercialised and named bride price by colonialists.
In my country, Ethiopia, which has never been colonised and the Western world did not get a chance to change a single word from our dictionaries, bride wealth is one of the major problems women are facing.
High bride price levied by families and relatives of the would-be wife is a key factor to the increased rate of rape and abduction in the country, according to recent research findings.Though it is a widely accepted belief that the practice of providing bride price symbolises the bond between the two new families, and source of pride for grandmothers, the price of the bride wealth negatively wraps the term of the marriage.
Bride wealth often negatively colours the terms of the marriage from the onset where women are viewed as property to be bought and sold. Men who are unable to afford the bride price abduct young women and rape them, making them unmarriageable.
Among the Anuak tribe in western Ethiopia, divorce or being barren is inevitably accompanied by the paying back of the bride wealth by the bride’s family.
Once the woman marries a man, she is considered the common property of all family members who contributed to the payment of her bride wealth and upon the death of the husband, the rest of the family has the right to inherit her. If the groom dies before or on the wedding day, any of his relatives can replace him and take the bride as his wife, but the children belong to the deceased.
Love between a couple is not that much considered as relatives involve highly in the marriage negotiation process. Involvement of relatives takes the form of choosing the girl they think is the best and contributes bride wealth that on average adds up to 25 heads of cattle.
The cattle are again redistributed to the extended family of the bride. According to the Nuer culture, the main purpose of bride wealth is to transfer ownership of the bride to the groom’s kinship.
Since the relatives of the man contribute the cattle, the woman is considered to belong to all that contributed to the marriage payment.
It is also common that if a woman fails to bear children, she can choose from her relatives (not husband’s side) a girl whom her husband will marry on her behalf. The husband has no control over her and it is not socially accepted to call him the husband of the other woman. The children borne by the man are her children. All are the property of the husband and even in case of divorce; the woman has to leave averything behind, including her children.
Even in case of death of her husband, the relatives of the husband inherit the properties. Men usually say: “How can a woman own the household property, after all, she is also property.†This is because she was bought. I can justify the relationship between bride wealth and the status of women.
The writer is an Ethiopian journalist working with Uganda Media Women’s Association