 The president
and precolonial polygamy myths
Jacob Dlamini,
Business Day, Johannesburg, 11 February 2010
IN 2004, Peter Delius
and Clive Glaser, historians at the University of the Witwatersrand,
wrote an essay titled The Myths of Polygamy: A History of Extramarital
and Multipartnership Sex in South Africa. Delius and Glaser used the
article, published in the South African Historical Journal, to
challenge claims that there was a connection between polygamy and
contemporary male promiscuity in SA.
The historians said
these claims were favoured by many people, from researchers, social
workers to Christian activists.
They said these claims
rested on two assumptions. The first was that polygamy created “an
expectation of multiple sexual partnerships for men”. Second, there was
a tendency to romanticise African tradition by insisting that “in the
old days polygamy successfully contained male sexual urges”.
Delius and Glaser
wrote their essay in the age of AIDS and their goal was to undermine
facile conclusions that sought to explain SA’s AIDS pandemic on the
basis of African “traditions” and “cultures”. They wanted to challenge
ideas about an unchanging Africa in which people were forever stuck in
the past, always doing what their ancestors and their ancestors before
them had done.
Delius and Glaser used
the writings of colonial administrators, missionaries and
anthropologists systematically to dismantle claims of a timeless
connection between contemporary and precolonial sexual practices and
ideas among Africans. Naturally, Delius and Glaser were aware of the
limitations of their sources. They wrote: “In spite of their cultural
biases and political agendas, the value of their written observations
should not be underestimated.” The sources had to be “read against the
grain”, they said. “As historians we often have little else to work
with and the surviving testimonies of intelligent observers need to be
mined rather than dismissed.”
So what did their
mining of these sources yield? What did their reading against the grain
find? Delius and Glaser argued that while polygamy was “very common” in
precolonial African societies, it was “a minority activity”.
They also argued that
there was “a great deal” of sex outside of marriage in precolonial
Africa. “A numerically significant class of women lived in their
fathers’ homesteads — widows, divorcees, unmarried mothers — who
essentially controlled their own sexuality and experienced only mild
opprobrium. Their sexual partners included unmarried men and both
monogamously and polygamously married men.”
According to Delius
and Glaser, marriage in precolonial African societies “was more about
rights to offspring, transaction of cattle and the organisation of
homestead labour than about the control of sexuality”. When David
Livingstone, the explorer, visited a Tswana chieftainship named Bakaa,
he recorded the following: of 278 married men he found, 157 were
monogamous; 94 had two wives each; 25 had three wives each, and two had
four wives each. This yielded a polygamy rate of 43%.
Livingstone was of
course not the only European to notice this. A number of
administrators, missionaries and anthropologists found that while every
African man was allowed in theory to take more than one wife, in fact,
only those with the means to do so could afford to turn this
theoretical entitlement into reality. Many commoners simply did not
have the economic means to take more than one wife.
According to Delius
and Glaser, in some African societies some men did not even take wives
at all. It was also common for men to marry late, while women could
marry as soon as they reached puberty. This obviously presented all
kinds of problems. People do not stop being sexual beings simply
because they are poor. Sexual urges do no disappear when people are
destitute.
It is in this context
that we must understand the prevalence of sex outside of marriage in
precolonial Africa. So in some societies, such as the Sotho, young
unmarried men would be given the “privilege” of being with their
uncles’ wives. The practice was derived from a custom whereby the Sotho
king gave some men in his kingdom the “privilege” to water his gardens,
that is, have sexual relations with his junior wives.
According to some of
the sources that are quoted by Delius and Glaser, while many societies
in precolonial Africa tolerated infidelity without necessarily
encouraging it, the Zulus seemed to be the exception. They tended to be
less tolerant of infidelity than the Xhosas, for example.
Delius and Glaser say:
“The idea that polygamous marriage provided a comprehensive context for
male sexuality in precolonial African societies is … less than
plausible.” Their essay was written six years ago and in response to
vacuous claims about the origins of SA’s HIV/AIDS crisis. It was also
written long before the escapades of SA’s most notorious polygamist
dominated the news. Still, it is fascinating to read the essay in light
of President Jacob Zuma ’s latest shenanigans. Rereading the essay
helped me to understand Zuma’s apology for fathering a child with a
friend’s daughter.
Zuma’s argument has
always been that polygamy is more honest and that it is an ancient
African custom. Well, the practice might be honest but he is not, as we
know all too well. Yes, it is true that there was polygamy in
precolonial Africa but it was, as Delius and Glaser argue, “a minority
activity”. Zuma, a commoner son of commoner parents, has appropriated
for himself a “privilege” that used to be the preserve of men of wealth
and power.
We could of course say
that this is a classic case of a local boy done good. Except we know
that Zuma was helping himself to this “privilege” even when he did not
have the means — back when one Schabir Shaik was paying for everything
for Zuma, from children’s school fees to groceries.
-- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . |
