What is Lobola?
Ilobola, is payment that a
groom pays so that the brides family can allow the two to marry each other. it's mean't to create relations between the two families and ancestors. It's a South African culture that dates back
centuries ago and it's still alive even today. Basically what happens is that as soon as the groom realise that he wants to marry his bride, he then sent her uncles to talk to the bride family. Once the date of the visit has been arranged and the bride's family explained how they want thier lobola, money or livestock then payments are made.
How much does it cost?
It all depends on who the
bride is , e.g if a bride's father is a king, that will make her a princess right?, right , so you
pay more for her than paying for a bride from a normal family. For a princess you will pay about 16 cows, on monetary terms that will roughly be R60-70 000 . Now an ordinary bride you can pay from 5 to 10 cows-R30-50 000.
Now there's another twist to this, if the bride is a virgin, you pay
cows almost like you were paying for a princess, only slighly lower, becuse it's about 11 cows.
How has this culture changes over the years?
THEN
It has changed a lot over the years, centuries ago , we used to pay only with cows, as communities had a lot of livestock then and less money. So even if you had no cows but you had girls or daughters you knew that one day you will have. Depending on how many girls you have, you ended up with about 100-200 cows through lobola.So daughters were prides of families.
Today
There has been a lot of changes as far as Ilobola is concerned in South Africa today. There's part of our society that says, it should not be paid and there's another part that says this is our culture best we keep it alive for generations to come. What you turn to notice now is that ,
Lobola is turned to be commercailised , where you'll find that parents of the pride will determine the price by how much they've spent in the child, in education, clothing etc, which is totally different than the way it was previously done.
Are our parent selling thier children?
This is the question that has been frequently asked by many especially today, whether when the parent ask for lobolla are they selling thier child. Most practitioners will says absolutely not. They will tell you that it's to create relations with the other family and that's exactly what it's meant for.
Is there a future for ilobola?
As our country put more emphasis on the fact that we should go back to our cultures, we can only hope that this culture will continue flourish.
What happens if the bride and groom gets married without lobola?
There's a belief among elder that a marriage without lobola is a receip for disaster, whether it's true or not we stand to see. They go as far as saying that ancestor will be confused on who the bride is, which will result to problems in a marriage, if that marriage has children they will have problems themselves etc. Basically it will be a disaster. The bride will even lose respect on the family she's marrying to, She won't have pride on herself that the groom payed so much just to be with her.
After paying lobola, can a bride go back home if there are problems in the marriage?
THEN
Centuries ago, there was no way this could happen, for a bride no matter how much hardship she encounters in a marriage, there was no way she could go back home, the reason for this was the fact that her brothers have probably got married as well, so to avoid conflicts, the groom was burnt from coming back.
NOW
Well things change, the situation has changed so much on what i explained above, the existance of democracy and human rights in our country means that the bride can do what siuts her. With devorces multiplying everyday, it's now up to a bride whether to live her home or not, and when she goes' back home the mother will open the doors. Another defference is that today there's alot self relience especially with females, which is quite the opposite of what happened centuries ago, females relied mostly on families, anyway there was't much. Todays a bride can just choose to seperate and buy her own house and it's no problem.
Will I pay Lobola?
Definately, what about you?. email me with any question or comment : thokozaninews@webmail.co.za
It's been nice chatting to you, i'm looking forward to meet you again.
cheers
More summaries about the Ilobola