Wives are important within the Turu economy because they are the ones who work the farms, and most importantly, produce the grain. Wives are acquired by bride-wealth through cattle. Bride- wealth negotiation is conducted by both the bride and the groom's representatives. Once the bride-wealth has been negotiated, it is paid over the course of several years.
|
|
Zulu people have a system called ilobolo. This term is particularly used by Zulu people when it comes to bride wealth. Every African ethnic group has different requirements when it comes to bride wealth. In pre- capitalist Zulu society, ilobolo was inextricably linked to the ownership of cattle.
|
|
The senior male has moral authority—the right to respect and obedience—over the family as a whole, especially with regard to the negotiation of debts, damages, and bride-wealth.
|
|
Obviously they had some prior knowledge of her whereabouts. On discovery, a fine would be exacted from the boy. Arrangements would be made to settle the bride wealth and the marriage would be formalized.
|
|
The process of marrying usually involves asking the young woman's consent, introducing the woman to the man's family and the same for the man to the woman's family, testing the bride's character, checking the woman's family background, and paying the brides' wealth. Typically speaking, bride wealth is more symbolic. Nonetheless, kola nuts, wine, goats, and chickens, among other things, are listed in the proposal, as well. Negotiating the bride wealth can also take more than one day, giving both parties time for a ceremonial feast.
|
|
In many cultures, particularly in parts of Africa and the Middle East, daughters are valuable on the marriage market because the groom and his family must pay cash and property for the right to marry the daughter. This is termed as bride-wealth and locally by various names such as Lobola and Wine Carrying.Wining back our good luck: bridewealth in nowadays Maputo Paulo Granjo (2004)Bride price: an insult to women, a burden to men?, BBC News (August 30, 2004) The bride-wealth is typically kept by the bride's family, after the marriage, and is a source of income to poor families.
|
|
Men are not able to marry until they have a sufficient number to start paying the bride-wealth to the bride's family. Cows are given to his prospective wife’s family during and after the initial wedding ceremony. To praise their cattle or mourn their deaths, the Suri sing songs for them.
|
|
In Borneo, indigenous groups use pigs for trade and social status. Throughout the Philippines, domesticated pigs are bred for socioeconomic reasons and are used for ceremonies, bride wealth, burials, and ritual feasting. Domesticated pigs show status and wealth and are used to make and strengthen alliances. They are also used as deity offerings.
|
|
Drinks are prepared for this function. On the side of the bridegroom, the family also prepares to receive their son's in-laws and the new bride. This occasion in itself is a big celebration characterized by dances and drinking. In performing this function, the balance of the bride wealth may be settled.
|
|
The Meghwal women in Rajasthan are renowned for their exuberantly detailed costumes and jewellery. Married women are often spotted wearing gold nose ring, earrings and neckpieces. They were given to the bride as a "bride wealth" dowry by her soon-to-be husband's mother. Nose rings and earrings are often decorated with precious stones of ruby, sapphire and emerald.
|
|
Sister exchange is the common form of marriage. Based on reciprocal exchange, men from other bands exchange sisters or other females to whom they have ties. In Bambuti society, bride wealth is not customary. There is no formal marriage ceremony: a couple are considered officially married when the groom presents his bride's parents with an antelope he alone has hunted and killed.
|
|
There was, however, a preference for marrying cross cousins. Most communities contained many households who were related to one another. Two cows and a bull were considered important parts of bride-wealth to be given for a wife. Although judges (headmen) were subject to bribery (and at times quite willing to accept it), there was a recognized system of courts and law enforcement.
|
|
The Tennet people practice swidden agriculture. They grow sorghum mostly on the plains below the villages, but they also cultivate fields on the mountainsides. They raise cattle, which are the main measure of wealth and are used for bride wealth, and they also hunt, fish, and raise goats and sheep. However, they are primarily dependent on sorghum, and drought can cause severe food shortages.
|
|
Cattle have historically been of the highest symbolic, religious and economic value to the Nuer. Sharon Hutchinson writes that "among Nuer people the difference between people and cattle was continually underplayed." Cattle are particularly important in their role as bride wealth, where they are given by a husband's lineage to his wife's lineage. This exchange of cattle ensures that the children will be considered to belong to the husband's lineage.
|
|
Groups of relatives that inhabited the same grazing land organized themselves into clans based on genealogy. While coalitions between clans did occur, they were infrequent and often relied on looser interpretations of kinship and relations. Marriage was arranged by the family, at times occurring as early as one to two years old. A unique aspect of traditional Buryat marriage was the kalym, an exchange that combined both bride wealth and a dowry.
|
|
In the 1990s, Sharon Hutchinson returned to Nuerland to update E.E. Evans-Pritchard's account. She found that the Nuer had placed strict limits on the convertibility of money and cattle in order to preserve the special status of cattle as objects of bride wealth exchange and as mediators to the divine. She also found that as a result of endemic warfare with the Sudanese state, guns had acquired much of the symbolic and ritual importance previously held by cattle.
|
|
Lobola or Lobolo in Zulu, Swazi, Xhosa, Silozi and northern and southern Ndebele (Mahadi in Sesotho, Roora in Shona, Magadi in Setswana, Lovola in Xitsonga), and Mamalo in Tshivenda language, sometimes referred to as "bride wealth"Signe Arnfred, Sexuality & Gender Politics in Mozambique: Rethinking Gender in Africa is property in livestock or kind, which a prospective husband or head of his family undertakes to give to the head of a prospective wife’s family in gratitude of letting the husband marry their daughter.
|
|
Although women may carry a bigger burden, fertility is so highly valued that males are expected to provide economic resources (known as bride wealth). Corn is a symbol of fertility in Navajo culture as they eat white corn in the wedding ceremonies. It is considered to be immoral and/or stealing if one does not provide for the other in that premarital or marital relationship.Lauren Del Carlo, Between the Sacred Mountains: A Cultural History of the Dineh, Essai, Volume 5: Article 15, 2007.
|
|
State intervention in bride wealth culture (moving it away from virtual slave trade to an exchange of intentions and nominal tokens) and strong state action against illegal taxation by local leaders in Nuer, Dinka and Murle society is also needed. Also, South Sudan, with its enormous agricultural potential during the rainy season, needs to be connected to regional and world markets, so that through agriculture and cattle breeding, the economy can be based on something else than tit for tat theft.
|
|
Neither did the earned wages seem to engender an affection for the formal economy nor was any effort made towards participation in the political process. Socially, the Nyongik had been initiated just prior to the wars, hence they left and returned unmarried. This did not disrupt ordinary patterns since it was more usual than unusual for young men to wait a few years before marriage. This time was spent searching for bride wealth, and serving in the war may be said to have served this purpose.
|
|
The word arras is Spanish, meaning "earnest money" (arrhae, plural of '), "bride price", or "bride wealth". The custom of using coins in weddings can be traced to a number of places, including Spain and Rome. The book An Introductory Dictionary of Theology and Religious Studies claims that origin of arras was from gold rings or coins in Visigothic law, whereas the Sex and Society claims the practice emerged from Frankish marriage ceremonies. The ancient Roman custom includes the act of breaking gold or silver equally into two pieces.
|
|
In contrast with the prevailing custom of patrilocal residence for married couples during the Choson Period and modern era, Koreans of the Koryo Period it was not uncommon for a husband to matrilocally reside with his wife and her parents after marriage. Wedding ceremonies were held at the home of the bride's family and the average age of marriage was late teens with aristocrats marrying earlier than commoners. Weddings included gift exchange and a banquet, which were meant to display the bride's family's wealth. There was no exchange of bride wealth or dowry.
|
|
As a result, in times of shortages they have frequently come into conflict with numerically larger groups, including the Dinka and Nuer. The Murle (like the Dinka and Nuer) have a tradition in which men can only marry when they pay a bride wealth of several dozens of cows. Education and jobs are almost absent and there are very few possibilities to earn money by producing for domestic or foreign markets. As a result, the only way to acquire cows for marriage, quicker than through breeding them, is by stealing.
|
|
He had always seen men asking his sister for her hand in marriage and some even offered a hundred cows for her bride-wealth, but she would still refuse. Their mother thought it was because Diirawic was in love with someone, and now Teeng wondered if that someone was himself. Teeng always admired his sister, but the idea of marrying was not something he could consider because he did not think she felt the same way. Teeng then asked his mother, “Can Diirawic, my older sister, and I marry?” His mother said, “I have never heard of such a thing.
|
|
The Turu also rely heavily on grain production for the purposes of acquiring cattle, which is a very important commodity to the Turu. They primarily produce crops like uwele, maize and matama and The Turu rely on wives in the community to harvest crops and they are huge component of the Turu economy, as such bride wealth via cattle is often arranged in order to obtain a bride. Nyamwezi people are a tribe who's ancestral home are in certain parts of Singida. This tribe survives off of cereal agriculture producing primarily crops like sorghum, millet, and rice.
|
|
The property of a slave was owned by his or her master unless a contract of freedom of the slave had been entered into, which allowed the slave to earn money to purchase his or her freedom and similarly to pay bride wealth. The marriage of slaves required the consent of the owner. Under the Hanafi and Shafi'i schools of jurisprudence male slaves could marry two wives, but the Maliki permitted them to marry four wives like the free men. According to the Islamic law, a male slave could marry a free woman but this was discouraged in practice.
|
|
Over the past year, more and more people from Ethiopia are crossing into Kenya, and violence is a common occurrence in the region. On July 3, 2005 Kenya government agreed in a meeting to step up efforts to disarm pastoral communities in its northern counties Women have also been cited as a major catalyst in the persistence of cattle raising among pastoral communities in north western Kenya. Young girls incite young men into undertaking cattle raids in order to secure bride-wealth to marry them. Kimaiyo, Dvaid, In the Spirit of Service, Nairobi: Kipchumba Foundation, 2017.
|
|
As mentioned earlier, 'Hummingbird' is the hero of a widespread narrative about the wooing and abduction of the daughter of the principal mountain deity. Since the daughter represents the 'bride-wealth' of the earth, this tale was also recited as part of the procedures to ask for the hand of a girl. Accordingly, a famous Classic vaseK504 shows a suitor with a hummingbird mask presenting a vase to the upper god and what appears to be his daughter, the moon. In the same context also belongs the well-known figurine of a hummingbird perched on a loom and observing a young woman weaving.
|
|
1969:29 Although the appropriate clothes for Sumbanese men and women are different, Sumbanese textiles are seen collectively as a female component of their cosmos. The textiles are both clothing and the currency of traditional ceremonial exchange. Many fine-folded textiles must be presented at each marriage as part of a counter-payment for a bride wealth paid in horses, buffalo, and gold, and at each funeral as a sign of mourning and later also a counter-payment for animals that were contributed for slaughtering. In marriages, the textiles are symbolic and represent dowry from the woman's family, the wife-givers, who are ritually superior on ceremonial occasions.
|
|
It is noted that almost all of the returning veterans used their back pay to purchase cattle, some of which along with cash was used as bride wealth. There were instances of land purchase on the fringes of the reserve but these were minimal. Much as the Government had alienated part of the Nandi Reserve the population pressure was not yet great enough to leave most men dissatisfied with the amount of land they would acquire by traditional means. It has been observed that where purchases were made it was done less with entrepreneurial motive than as a desire to increase one's pasture land.
|
|
In most South-Sudanese cattle cultures, the bride-wealth system, and illegal taxing by some unscrupulous local leaders stimulates young men to find excuses to steal cows from their own cousins. Local leaders then sometimes try to quell or prevent intra-tribal fighting, by directing that aggression outward, to other tribes. Also, Murle are feared and seen by surrounding larger tribes as having strong magical powers, and therefore they are often blamed for outbreak of diseases, theft and arson. With the country still awash with machine guns from the north-south war, 'cattle rustling' quickly runs out of control, killing dozens or hundreds of people in tit for tat escalations.
|
|
Mampuru II has been described as one of South Africa's first liberation icons. Potgieter Street in Pretoria and the prison where he was killed was renamed in his honour, in February 2018 a statue of Mampuru was proposed to be erected in Church Square, Pretoria where it will stand opposite one of Paul Kruger who was President of the British's South African Republic (ZAR) at the time of Mampuru's execution. The Pedi paramountcy's power was also cemented by the fact that chiefs of subordinate villages, or kgoro, take their principal wives from the ruling house. This system of cousin marriage resulted in the perpetuation of marriage links between the ruling house and the subordinate groups, and involved the payment of inflated bohadi or bride wealth, mostly in the form of cattle, to the Maroteng house.
|
|
All cases were presented orally and open to all. (Only trials of high treason against the sultan were held in secret.) Two male witnesses were thought sufficient for most 'normal' cases while it was thought that three to five were necessary with female witnesses. There could be verdicts for betraying or offending the state or its leader, giving false witness, adultery, (one female witness was sufficient, with a fine of one to three head of cattle) incest (very seldom if ever used, since females were quite often married between 10 and 13 years of age and needed three to five witnesses), rape (only the victim was needed as a witness), murder, manslaughter, vendetta, theft, agricultural theft, receiving stolen goods, and swindling were all parts of the judicial concept and had penalties associated with them. If a divorce took place, the husband was entitled to take all weaned children away from their mother and the mother's family was expected to return the bride-wealth.
|
|