Rich Man, Poor Woman, Bogyman, Thief

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Rich Man, Poor Woman, Bogyman, Thief

Publication © 2020 Mbokodo Publishers

Text © 2020 William O’Dowda

ISBN-13: 978-1-990919-00-8 (Paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-990919-01-5 (PDF)

ISBN-13: 978-1-990919-02-2 (eBook)

Publisher: M.R. Mbokodo

Proofreading: William O’Dowda

Cover Design: Melodie Bowyer

Photo Credit: Banele Hlatshwayo

Published by

Typeset in 10/12 Adobe Garamond Pro by Mbokodo Publishers

Printed by Mbokodo Publishers 1 2 3 4 5 1 2

mbokodopublishers@gmail.com

Every effort has been made to obtain copyright permission for the material used in this book. Please contact the Author with any queries in this regard

CONTENTS

Preamble to Book 1

Methodology

1. Spring

2. Summer

3. Autumn Harvest

4. A Toast to the Bride

5. The Reception Braai

6. The Long Winter of my Discontent

7. Cheated by Feminism

8. Abusing Alcohol

9. Police Double-Speak

10. The Last Bantustan

11. Saved by Tribal Conservatives

12. Socialism versu Human Rights

13. The Empire Strikes Back

14. Harmonizing Legislation & Best Practice

Epilogue

Preamble to Book 2

Methodology

15. Missionary Melancholy

16. Involuntary Committal

17. Love is Blind – Get a Private Eye

18. Were we ever Married?

19. Dissolution of a Customary Marriage

20. The Case Law

21. The Cabal

22. What is Lobola, Really?

23. Why Marry at All?

24. A Tribute to Krotoa

25. A Tribute to Tiyo Soga

26. A Tribute to Nombuyisela Noah

27. Peregrini Missionaries

Epilogue

Preamble to Book 3

Methodology

28. Patterns of Pestilence171

29. Disaster Mitigation & Best Practice

30. Homegrown Solutions – Beetroot & Garlic

31. Lovers Phiri

32. The Italian Stallion

33. The Swiss Pariah

34. Kings & Queens

35. Friendly Fire? or Murder in the Cathedral?

36. The Good Ship Rainbow

37. On the Edge of Black Supremacy

38. Gender Mercies

39. Living in a Mafia State

40. Untying the Gordian Knot

Epilogue: Love Sickness

PREAMBLE TO BOOK 1

I owe a huge debt to two other books, the first of which was also made into a feature film:

Fanie Fourie’s Lobola(by Nape a Motana)

Marrying Black Girls for Men Who Aren’t Black(by Hagen Engler)

Both of these are great fun and well worth paying attention to. The feature film deserves the acclaim it got and it won prizes at several film festivals overseas.

Fanie Fourie’s Lobola is fiction, but very credible. Its plausibility is what makes it such a good film. For me it was a kind of envisioning, although the technical detail is there I’m sure. You don’t have to write a book report to learn and appreciate. The story taught me to be patient and wait before concluding that it’s over. It taught me that there will be opposition and that it will come from unexpected places as well as from the expected. It also beguiled me into thinking that it is worth all the trouble.

Marrying Black Girls for Men Who Aren’t Black is another learning delight, but it is not fiction. It is testimony. For this reason it may carry a little more weight? However, it is written in an urban setting where basically people have already moved on. Also the couple are the same age. This makes its focus and value to be on technical detail, which is worth its weight in gold. For example, the chapter called New month, new girlfriend about how black women change their appearance dramatically and frequently by extending their hair. This book is well researched as the groom is a journalist and did his homework.

I will refer to these stories and even quote from the second. They were torches on my path. But my story goes far beyond envisioning Goals or detailed Roll Out. Essentially what I offer the reader is a Risk Assessment. By all means look at your options, but open your eyes to South African realities.

I also quote a fair amount from diverse print media clips either about Customary Marriage, or related themes such as Tribal authority, Gender rights and Alcoholism. I also owe a debt to motifs from Scripture. In South Africa, most people are still biblically literate as you can often tell from their names. Stories like Ruth and Esther are not just Christian either - they belong to all the monotheistic religions.

METHODOLOGY

"They lived happily ever after"…

Most romances end on that note. This one begins there. To assure that a happy ending does come to pass, I am taking the following precautions:

I never mention her name. Nor any person’s name, for that matter, including mine. The only place names used are complementary - like Lowveld or Moria

I write intentionally in the first person - not in the third person or using pseudonyms – to emphasize that this is a true story. Well, it is one side of a true story

I avoid keeping to a plot and rather ruminate on what has happened. Thus you can expect a series of thought-bursts rather than a play-by-play

The closest I get to a timeline is the seasonal framework – spring, summer, autumn and winter. But these are symbolic not a story-line

I keep it thematic more than narrative. But it is all historical. It happened. To me!

The Right to Privacy vs the Right to Know

On the first day of winter, I got a phone call from the local newspaper.

Is it true that you got married? the reporter asked.

Yes I replied.

Is it true that the bride ran away? she went on.

I chuckled. I don’t see it that way I replied. "She told me ‘I am your makoti but we are not married’. That sounds like oxymoron to me as a Canadian. But she says she won’t move in with me until the marriage is registered at Home Affairs."

I did not ask the reporter not to print the story, but I think the right to privacy prevailed? (By the way, makoti means bride or newlywed whereas mfati means wife.)

Now it’s my turn to be the journalist. I want to alert other foreigners to the near and present danger of paying Lobola in South Africa. It can get very dark and complicated. But I have to do so with due caution. Because although I have a story to tell, the characters in the story have rights just like I do, including the right to privacy - because this is a true story.

SPRING

This is the season when all plants and animals look their best. Flowering trees bloom in the Lowveld and that attracts the birds and the bees…

Spring is the season of love and that was in the air when I winked at a waitress who I ordered a take-away from. I could sense from the sparkle in her eye that she was interested, so while waiting for the Chinese food to be ready, I went to Pick and Pay and bought some roses. When I collected the take-away, I handed her a rose and my business card along with payment including a generous tip. That was as romantic as the setting would allow.

It worked! She called me. Soon after, we met after hours for the first time.

Ukuthwala

This practice is controversial. To some, it is abduction – a violation of human rights. To others, it is customary, a sort of an African variation of Romeo and Juliet. A man and a woman fall in love but the family and community of the bride disapprove. So the boyfriend abducts the lady and deflowers her. Then a few days later some of his relatives rock up at her family’s kraal to negotiate a marriage, after it is fait accompli.

But it does not always start with love. Sometimes it can be more of an arranged marriage, for at times the bride’s parents have set her up, ahead of time. This comes right to the edge of exploitation, even though young girls have been brought up to look forward to the day that they will be able to fulfil their role in a man’s home - the traditional worldview.

It has also been a way for older men, sometimes widowers, to marry younger women. Even to remove orphans from institutions. Whatever the variation, the practice is seen by some as anachronistic and out of sync with gender rights.

To the extent that it has been known to force girls who are under-aged to marry. Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, the Rural Women’s Movement and the Commission on Gender Equality met with Mandla Mandela, an ANC MP better known as the grandson of Nelson, to clarify his position on ukuthwala. He is chief of the Mvezo traditional council. He told Parliament’s portfolio committee on rural development and land reform in July 2010 that, "for a girl to be taken as a wife through ukuthwala — the process has nothing to do with age. When you are going to discuss culture do not even try to bring in white notions, as such an approach will turn things upside down. Firstly, culture has no age. Age is something we learn today because of our Westernisation."

I found myself attracted to a younger woman. Was it spring fever? Age disparate relationships are not uncommon in Africa. Yes they can be transactional but they don’t have to be. They can be genuine and soul-nourishing.

The Mail & Guardian quotes Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani, who…

"describes in his acclaimed book Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism how what came to be understood as custom was in fact a concentration of the authoritarian elements of pre-colonial societies.

Lest one thinks that the tag ‘customary’ was a shorthand of letting things be as they always had been — we need to bear in mind that there was nothing voluntary about custom in the colonial period — colonial custom was enforced with a whip in a system that Mamdani dubs decentralised despotism.

The revival of practices such as ukuthwala, virginity testing and male circumcision should be read against the attempts to circumscribe rural women’s rights."

In general, customary practices have not always been democratic. Or if they once were, could there have been some authoritarian-creep during the colonial period?

Inhlawulo

In our first meeting, at my cottage, we sat and talked. It was open and frank. To sum it up, she was looking for a more secure future and I was looking for companionship. Her problem was poverty, mine was loneliness. There were prospects of a good fit.

I mentioned that my previous relationships always seemed to falter when I brought up the subject of Lobola. I joked that Barack Obama said that whenever African women mention the term pregnant, African men tend to make themselves scarce. Whereas I had found that whenever I raised the subject of Lobola, African women made a hasty exit!

She asked if I knew about Inhlawulo? Yes, I had heard that if a man gets a woman pregnant out of wedlock, he has to pay this as a kind of fine to her family. She said that was when it is used as a penalty – but it can also be used as a prophylaxis. It doesn’t have to be a pound of cure, it can be an ounce of prevention. She explained how to do this… and I complied.

I invited her family to my cottage for a braai. It was on a Sunday in spring. I met her mother, who was really her aunt as both her parents, she told me, had perished in a road accident. I met her brother and sister, who have toughed it out as orphans with their older sister my new girlfriend under the care of their aunt. A child came too, who turned out to be her brother’s son who visited him on Sundays. We followed the prescribed customs – eating meat, offering the gift of a bottle of whiskey and some cash. I presented a letter addressed to her family with the cash, stating that my intentions were honorable.

In the days before the automobile, even in my Western culture, a man had to approach a woman by speaking to her father. In that custom, the father would ask the suitor, What are your intentions? The prescribed answer was, Strictly honourable, sir. This was in the back of my mind as I assured her family that when she was not at home, she would be with me. She would be safe and secure, and I wanted the time and space to get to know her. But not on their front porch!

Late Spring

In the early spring, birds are still flocking together after their long trip south from North Africa or even Europe. Then they pair up. Only in the late spring do they get to nest building.

We got to know one another slowly, because we both had full time jobs and ostensibly her family was strict about her hours. She was not allowed to stay overnight. But there were gaps after work, before dark, when she could come over to play. Or we could go shopping. Or out for an early supper at Spur.

After some months we became lovers too, as spring would have it.

Lover’s Chess is not unheard-of in South Africa. According to Wikipedia:

"On 10 December 1856 Tiyo Soga became the first black South African to be ordained - in the United Presbyterian Church. Two months after his ordination Soga married Janet Burnside a Scotswomen who was a most honourable, thrifty, frugal, and devoted woman who marched heroically and faithfully by her husband’s side through all the chequered scenes of his short life. Throughout his life Soga faced racism as a K*** and was treated as a second-class citizen by many whites in Africa. Soga also faced opposition from black Africans some of whom thought of him as trying to become a black Englishmen.

It would be almost a century before mixed-race marriages would be banned under Grand Apartheid, until the past two decades. But it is still quite rare. I am only beginning to understand why.

For me the inter-racial element of the relationship was not as difficult as the cross-cultural element. For although I was born and raised in Africa, this was because my parents were medical missionaries here – from Canada. So we really come from different cultural origins, and I find it hard to relate deeply to some township realities. Like rampant alcohol abuse, for example. Not because I don’t drink, I do. But I don’t drink and drive, which in Canada has become anathema socially-speaking. Whereas in South Africa it still seems to be tolerated permissively. Perhaps because of the un-democratic dislike of informers? But in a democracy, whistle-blowing is a virtue. Our cultures have clashed more than our colours.

Then there is the age-disparate element. This is more acceptable in Africa than to Canadians who wonder why I would want to become a white African and marry a young wife. I can empathize with Tiyo Soga being hated for trying to become a black Englishman, and with Romeo for daring to love Juliet. I can write a romance about Lover’s Chess; a tragedy about cultures clashing; and a comedy about a gold-digger and a silver fox.

Esther and Artaxerses

There are only two books in the Bible named after women, out of sixty-six. The story of Esther is one of them. It is the only book in the Bible that never mentions God by name.

Her future husband was rich and powerful. He was lonely, after an acrimonious divorce. So he organized a beauty pageant, which Esther won. They married. It was inter-racial, although they came from the same nation. It was age-disparate. The story tells how she was able to save her community through this liaison, which bloomed into a genuine friendship.

I pursued my new girlfriend in this same spirit. I admired her spunk and courage. I contributed to improvements at her family’s house where she stayed with her siblings. I did not want her to have to leave them behind in conditions so different from mine. She could not live in the comforts of my home knowing that they were still living in unacceptable conditions. I do not have a Messiah complex, but I knew that she, her family and her community would expect to see tangible improvements to make any lasting sense out of our relationship.

SUMMER

In my culture, a girlfriend changes to a fiancée when you give her a diamond ring. For me, that marked the beginning of summer. We got engaged to be married. This sent a message to my family in Canada more than to hers.

To say that I enjoyed her visits and her company is an understatement. I lived for them. Her presence helped to lift my eyes to the horizon, to see Why I was doing all that I was doing.

I loved to take her shopping at the mall. Within my means, I tried to add value to her life – without spoiling her or impoverishing myself.

She loves to eat prawns so we would sometimes eat, drink and be merry.

Occasionally she would come to my home and treat me to some intimacy. A fiancée is much sweeter than a girlfriend because of the implied permanence. You are not just playing, you are truly making love.

As time passed, it made less and less sense to me that she would not stay overnight. Why would family be so strict? Was her role in the household so indispensable? Especially when I was alone on week-ends, I wondered about this. Or were they hiding something? It seemed like a curtain of silence came down on week-ends.

The Grand Seduction

There is a feature film made in Canada in 2014, by this name. It is the story of a village or harbor in Newfoundland, caught in soul-numbing high unemployment. The elders are trying to land a deal with an oil company to build a factory there, to create jobs. But one of the requirements is that the village must have a doctor. It’s like a full-length sit-com about all the seduction (read: deception) that goes on to convince a young doctor to set up a practice there.

At times it has felt like this to me. Customary marriage is a family-to-family scenario, not person-to-person as in white weddings. This African family found a lonely foreigner who was relatively well off. His family was far away, in Canada. So at times I felt hopelessly outnumbered and that their expectations (ambitions?) were beyond my means. Was the hunter being hunted?

One example is a request to pay ransom for an education certificate. She said she had done the training but had been unable to pay the vocational college, so she had never received her certificate. It would be useful to her in finding a better-paying job. So I paid for it, and also for some clothes for the graduation ceremony. But I was not invited, and have never been showed the certificate, or the outfit.

Another example is a request I got to contribute to a tombstone for her late parents. Requests like this do not come in the form of a direct requisition, but through African indirection. She had a dream, she told me one morning. Her parents spoke to her, saying that they were wet. Indeed there had been some hard summer rains that week, but I soon caught the drift. I offered to contribute, as long as other family members were also chipping in. As I put it, her late parents left brothers and sisters too, and even parents who were still alive. Not just children. But I made a generous contribution, to show my respect for her late parents, and to bless them for bringing such a lovely lady into the world, and into my life.