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G21 AFRICA - THE WINDS OF CHANGE: MPHUTHUMI NTABENI looks at beliefs about marriage and culture and says they speak to the African consciousness.East London, SOUTH AFRICA - ?There's unnecessary sensitiveness in discussing marriage as an institution, which comes from the Christo-Hesperian trappings of regarding it as divinely inspired. I'm of the persuasion that all good human institutions are divinely inspired yet we discuss them everyday. Perhaps my holy carelessness comes from the fact that in my African culture marriage is determined by psychological, social and cultural behaviour patterns. It has none of the sacred trappings and deep spiritual aspirations of the Western culture.
Mphuthumi Ntabeni The dogmatic boundaries set by Western culture on marriage, which have been translated to marital laws and regulations, have their advantages. But checking the rate of marital break ups is not one of them; otherwise the Occidentals would not be riddled with such high divorce rates. On the other hand the honoured realities that inspired tolerance of things like polygamy in African culture are no longer meaningful to most modern Africans - most women are no longer dependent on men to provide for them; and the gender ratio is almost at equilibrium with hardly any surplus women to justify the need for polygamy.
What has not changed in both cultures is how most women seem to be attracted to men of power, which explains the proliferation of mistresses in our times. It is beyond argument that keeping mistresses is a fertile ground for tragedy, as demonstrated by the trail of pain and destructive violence that ends most of these arrangements. Because of this, some people of the African cultural persuasion argue that polygamy is far better. I'm not convinced.
A quick perusal of Xhosa history, especially when colonial England was encroaching on Xhosaland, demonstrates that it was the practise of polygamy by Xhosa chiefs that broke Xhosa might more than English fire power. Chiefdoms were at loggerheads with each other; brethren against brethren, fighting for the paramount chieftainships of their respective lands. The power struggle in Xhosa royal houses was, almost always, between sons of the chief born of different mothers. It is that which planted the seed of weakness the British irrigated to fruition. Nothing delineates the fact that family is the nucleus of a society as demonstrably as the fall of the Xhosa nation in the ninetieth century.
What is clear in our times is that, in both Western and African culture, there has been a pragmatic shift of consciousness against marriage as an institution. Arguing divine sanctions or cultural bias to promote it will not do to a modern mind. Besides, those arguments have for long hidden a frightening morass of loneliness, alienation, oppression and violence that people of our age are no longer prepared to tolerate in the name of sacredness.
You might argue that marriage as an institution gives a sense of security to all involved, including children. I once thought as much too until it became clear to me that it was not the institution per se, but the stability of love in any relationship that gives a sense of security. Couples and children in loveless marriages are worse off than they might be otherwise.
I assume marriage as an institution was instigated because of our natural fear of open-ended relationships. Nay, open-ended relations have a tendency of leading to the anarchy and chaos of expedient selfish feelings.. What I don't understand though is why, when we decided to close relationships by marriage, do we still open loopholes for divorce. Hence, in my mind, the only meaningful forms of relationships are the open-ended ones, or the completely closed ones, like Roman Catholic marriages.
Needless to say the liberal culture of our times prefers open-ended relations, like cohabitation and all. I'm a child of our times in the sense that I require transparency and an end to patriarchal consciousness in faith, politics, and inter-human relationships. Yet I also demand commitment. I do not care much for commitment that's regulated from outside. The commitment I ask for is that of integrity, transcendent and spiritual values.
I like to think that my position is the one promulgated by Jesus Christ almost 2000 years ago: "Again you heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes', and your 'No', 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the devil." (Matthew 5:29)
Aren't marriage certificates oath statements? Hence I'm inclined to think that the disintegration of this institution too is God's Spirit blowing fresh breezes upon the deserts of our traditions in order to liberate our possibilities. I know oaths and certificates are necessary to our fallible human nature. Because our reasoning is sometimes subject to our passions, human government must be subject to law. I just cannot wait for the time when we would outgrow our limitations by actions that are fully concomitant to spiritual integrity.
My last spiritual leader, the late Pope John Paul II, wrote in his encyclical, Mulieris Dignitate (On the Dignity & Vocation of Women) that the Creation story in the book of Genesis of the Bible speaks of God's 'instituting marriage as an indispensable condition for the transmission of life.' I don't see it that way.
Rather, if anything, it seems to me, from observing our nature; God sees love as desirable for the transmission of life, but does not make even that indispensable since He does not want to impose His values on us, even if He'd like us to freely choose those so as to share divine life.
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
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