Polygamy: Women should be freed from chains of abuse disguised as Culture

Last week we watched in horror as Musa Mseleku accompanied another man in rural KwaZulu Natal to ask his wife if he could marry another woman and continue with a polygamous relationship.

We grieved with a wife who was mistreated, not only by the man she married, but by his family and mistress as well.

We witnessed the ugliness of the patriarchy that exists within African culture and it left us disgusted.

We came together in defence of maShelembe, hoping that, with enough voices behind her, she would find the courage to walk away from a toxic situation.

The rise of polygamy within South Africa has gained traction through the current generation. Not to say that it did not exist, but it was taboo – hidden within the rolling hills of rural South Africa yet never really in the public
eye.

We need to reach a point where the men of our cultures are taught that a home is more than an accumulation of wives and many children who are strangers to their father.

We need to sit around a fire where this culture is not one that only keeps one sector of our society warm, but embraces us all.

I fail to understand why the cultural fires keep men warm, but the women seem to burn, sometimes beyond recognition.

Culture is so subjective that, even in death, a woman is not able to find her voice. This is the African culture we
reject as the women of our time.

And as we celebrate Heritage Day tomorrow, we do so with voices muffled by naysayers who reject the heritage or the culture of our mothers and grandmothers.

I am an African, a Sotho woman who takes pride in her heritage.

I am a descendent of the King of the Basotho Morena Moshoeshoe, birthed proudly in South Africa to the people of the Basotho clan – but before all of that, I am a woman, a human being.

I have an expectation that all people be treated in such a way that it doesn’t turn their love for their heritage to that of scorn.

May our heritage move closer to the embracing of gender equality that finds no comfort in the abuse of others!

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