The Sunday News
Thandekile Moyo
IN most Zimbabwean cultures, a cow for the mother of the bride is one of the compulsory items on the lobola list. Rarely do people allow this cow to be converted into cash, it has to be a cow, meaning it has to be female. Once the cow enters the family herd, it can only be slaughtered after it has given birth at least once. This means that in her lifetime, a Zimbabwean mother with three daughters, rightfully, must have at least three cows in her name, if all of them get married. Because of this, in most Zimbabwean cultures, women have personal wealth.
When a man approaches a girl’s family to ask for her hand in marriage; before her father takes the “young” man’s wealth, she is asked if she knows the people asking for her hand. The procedures only continue after the girl has declared to her family that the man is indeed her suitor and she wants to get married to him. This shows me clearly that in my beautiful Zimbabwe, culturally, girls are not forced into marriage.
In my culture, the lobola negotiations are done by both men and women. Both the man and woman’s families are allowed to have women in their delegations. The young man can be represented by anyone from his family, regardless of gender. He can send or be accompanied by his brothers, uncles, aunts and sisters.
The girl’s family, namely her mother’s brothers and sisters; her father’s brothers and sisters and even her grandparents, come together to make decisions like how much to charge and when she will go and join her husband’s family. Women are part and parcel of decision making, our opinions are heard, considered and respected. This seems to me like an acknowledgement that our men do not believe we are intellectually challenged.
My father’s siblings, male and female, went to school pre and post-Independence. I take this to mean my paternal grandfather was “gender sensitive” all the way back in the 1960s. My mother was the first in her family to get a degree, meaning my grandfather had no problem with sending girls to school. Most of my friends’ mothers are employed. They may not all be college graduates but they are all in some form of employment or another. This shows me that in Zimbabwe, the majority of women has achieved at least some level of economic independence.
I am yet to encounter, in 2017, a poor Zimbabwean family, which has decided to send only boys to school because they could not afford to send all their children to school. I have heard that it does occur but I am inclined to believe that it is the exception and not the rule. Girls and boys in Zimbabwe are normally given equal opportunities in education.
On the list of Zimbabwe’s unforgivable crimes, is that of beating up or hitting your mother. We are brought up knowing that if you ever lay a hand on your mother you shall be forever cursed. How one is cursed depends on the different cultures, with some saying you will definitely go mad if you beat your mother and others declaring a life of pain and misery, one way or the other. The bottom line is that Zimbabwean mothers are considered sacred and are to be treated as such, especially by their own offspring.
Whenever we go ekhaya, my grandparents’ home, it is the men who perform the heavy tasks, such as “ukubanda inkuni,” splitting huge logs for firewood. Women go and fetch water, but only with 25 litre buckets which we carry on our heads. It is the men who go in the scotch carts and/or cars if we need water in drums. The men in my family seem to be conscious of the fact that physically, women are weaker than men.
Growing up, my father and my brother used to protect me both physically and emotionally. I would go running to my brother if ever anyone raised their hand at me and I have always gone crying to him whenever anything broke my heart. Financially, even now that I am an adult, I know I can always count on them to step in whenever I need help. I grew up knowing that I had the love and protection of the men in my family.
In my culture, it is embarrassing to the family for a woman to have a child out of wedlock. We break our parents’ hearts everyday by bringing our fatherless children to the family. Embarrassing and heartbreaking as it is for them, most Zimbabwean parents eventually accept their fatherless grandchildren and they are incorporated into the maternal side of the family where they are loved and cared for.
I know many people who were “adopted” by their malumes (mothers’ brothers). This shows me that our culture is forgiving and tolerant. Because of this I have always felt that the “single mothers” phenomenon is foreign to our culture as rarely are women allowed to raise children on their own. There is usually someone ready to step in to help whoever finds herself in a situation where they cannot afford to raise their child.
Most of us still have family in the rural areas. The majority of these people still living there are our aging mothers, grandmothers and aunts. For some reason men seem to die first but that’s a story for another day. The fact that on weekends, public holidays and any other times, most of us head to our rural homes to visit these women who we love so much, shows me that neglecting old women, is not cultural.
In my country, we revere our mothers and this is non-negotiable, fathers seem to naturally adore their daughters; women have wealth; women have access to education; women are not considered intellectually inferior; we are protected from massive physical work; we are not forced into marriage.
That said, my country is made up of people with different characters, personalities and dispensations. Like everywhere else, we have criminals among us who force children into marriage, criminals who abuse their wives financially, physically and emotionally. We have lazy men who let the women in their lives slave away for them. Unfortunately, we also have those who unashamedly abandon their relatives in the rural areas. All these are criminal acts against a society with a culture of holding women in high esteem while accepting their biological fragility. These are criminal acts that should never be used to describe or judge our culture.
My country is also going through a major economic slump. This has seen children failing to go to school. People failing to get jobs. Parents failing to provide for their children. We have even seen the rise of child headed families and even single mothers. These are economic problems affecting everyone in the country, both men and women.
Our women have been empowered for a long time. Our people have been gender sensitive for decades. Those peddling Zimbabwean men as barbaric and insensitive are judging our fathers, brothers, husbands and boyfriends by the acts of criminals. Zimbabwean men are not trash!
