Prime
Understand the origin of bride price
What you need to know:
These are just a few examples of the meanings (in breadth and depth) that bride price or so-called ‘marriage-gifts’ hold among many language groups
I have been following developments in the discourse of the use of bride price in Uganda. In the first place, the re-naming of bride price as marriage-gifts, regardless of the reason behind it, is reductionist and misleading.
Among many sub-Saharan African societies, bride price is a jural tool that is invoked in the making and unmaking of lineages (identities, if you like). This is certainly true of the Langi in northern Uganda, where the receipt of cattle by a woman’s birth family (lineage) converts her lineage to that of her husband’s.
But she can also free herself (and her fertility rights) from her husband and his lineage by invoking the same jural seal (cattle). The invocation is symbolised by the return of the cattle (seal) back to the origin (ex-husband). Only then will she reclaim her birth lineage.
The same jural principle governs a switch of lineages by men or boys. A young man who for one reason or another, accepts cattle (or bride wealth) from another clan (for example his mother’s people) to marry a wife, automatically converts the lineage of his future offspring to the clan (lineage) of the originator of the seal (cattle). These are just a few examples of the meanings (in breadth and depth) that bride price or so-called ‘marriage-gifts’ hold among many language groups.
Agitation of non-refund not only threatens to freeze a woman’s ‘lineage’ for ever to that of her husband but denies her a divorce. This is for the simple fact that at marriage, the legal seal which converts her lineage to that of her husband and thus joins them as husband and wife must again be invoked to dissolve the status quo.
Agitators for change should, therefore, work with the diverse communities to first understand their social systems, especially of matters to do with ‘self’ and ‘the other’ in order to find workable ways within the pluralistic legal world to address matters of women’s rights.
Otherwise, there is a danger of compounding women’s problems further as well as disrespecting the integrity of groups. All of these are matters of international law.
University of Birmingham, UK
