MANY, many times, I have heard cases in which surviving wives and husbands are put to task by relatives of their deceased spouses when one of them dies and dowry was not paid by the man.
These cases are usually common in big towns, especially in peri-urban areas, where men and women marry themselves without the consent of their relatives.
Many times, it is the women who have been the victims of harassment when the men they got married to or co-habited with die and the relatives of the men refuse to have anything to do with them because they did not pay dowry and therefore, their marriages were illegal and not recognised.
The ‘couples’ may even have had children together but just because of the fact that no dowry was paid, there was no marriage.
While it is true that it is usually women who are the victims of this kind of problem, men too have many times been denied of having been the husbands to the women they lived with once they died because no money was paid to concretise their marriages.
Men are usually victims if they married women who may have been working and accrued a lot of property. When such ‘wives’ die and the ‘husbands’ did not pay dowry, they are denied and are told that as far as the families are concerned, there was no marriage since dowry was not paid in as far as marriage procedures are concerned.
In the courts of law, these cases are peculiar. Magistrates have many times dismissed such cases when ‘couples’ who did not formalise their marriages go to court stating that no dowry was paid hence it was not a legal marriage.
Recently, I attended a funeral in Ndola’s Masala Township where the older brother of my sister-in-marriage died.
After we buried the man, we as a family were told that the following day there would be a meeting between the relatives of the deceased man and the widow.
“Bandume, mailo kukaba isambo lyamfwa. Mukese lucelocelo mukese sangwako (Brother, tomorrow there will be a meeting to discuss how the deceased lived with his wife and you should come very early in the morning so that you attend this meeting),” my sister-in-marriage invited me.
Since I was very close to this family through my wife, I thought it was important for me to attend. And so the following morning, I left for Masala to go and attend the meeting.
Despite assuring me that the meeting would take place very early in the morning, it did not until about mid-day when relatives of the deceased man and the bereaved wife converged.
The talks started and the man who chaired the meeting started by asking the relatives of the widow how they were treated during the three days of the funeral.
They replied that they were treated very well and that the widow was not molested in any way unlike has been the case at other funerals they had attended.
The widow also pointed out that she had been treated well by the family of her late husband and she had nothing to complain about.
I thought this is how it should be. Why should there be molestation of the wife or husband when either one of the two died?
It was while I was thinking like this when the chairman asked whether there was anything anyone wanted to contribute or ask before the meeting could be declared closed.
It was then that I found out that the meeting was far from being over. One of the young men I later came to learn was the brother-in-law of the deceased – or simply the widow’s younger brother – raised his hand and the chairman gave him a chance to speak.
The young man started by thanking the chairman for handling the ‘isambo lyamfwa’ expeditiously and then thanked the family of his late brother-in-law for being so amicable during the deliberations.
Then the young man cleared his throat before he pointed out that although his family accepted what had happened, they were not happy with his late brother-in-law because he did not pay dowry and he did not know how the man’s relatives were going to be allowed to keep the nine-year-old girl survived by the man.
The young man told the gathering that if it were other families, they would not have attended the funeral because “there was no marriage.”
He said his late brother-in-law was complaining that he could he pay dowry because his wife was a second hand womanwho even had a child from another man.
One of the late man’s relatives agreed with the young man and said the man openly refused to pay dowry because he insisted that the first man with whom the woman had a child did not pay anything, and why was it that the family was picking on him to pay dowry.
“He was refusing to pay saying his wife was a second hand. I used to tell him that this would bring a problem in future especially if his wife died earlier than him.
“We are lucky he has died first, otherwise we would have been in big trouble. These people would have refused to bury the woman if she was the one who died first until the dowry was paid,” explained the man.
As the dowry discussion heated up, the late man’s mother-in-law complained that the man was saying he could not pay K900 when he was the second man to marry her daughter and yet they had not told him the amount of the dowry they wanted to charge him.
She wondered how he had come to say he was charged K900 because he was dodging each time he was called for discussions.
“But my daughter was not married to anyone before. She was just impregnated by someone who refused to marry her. If my son-in-law knew that my daughter was a second hand, why did he marry her?” she asked.
The chairman then asked how much the man was supposed to pay if they had not told him the figure.
“Iseta Nsenga situpingula ndalama zinyinji. Tupingugula kuti banthu agwilizane  nakuti niokwatilana naulemu kuti unkhalepo. Tenzoenela kumulipilisha K400 nangu K300 lomba tiliye muuzye ndaba enzozwengazwenga (We the Nsengas don’t charge much. We only charge to show that people are married and for them to respect one another),” explained the woman.
After this debate, one of the relatives of the deceased man intervened and said the amount of dowry the woman’s relatives were asking for was not much and it was only fair that family members got together to contribute the money to pay as dowry for their late relative and they all agreed with the suggestion.
When the meeting ended, food was prepared. Later on, beers including some lagers and opaque chibuku shake shake were bought and we were drinking together as families from both the deceased man’s side and the widow’s side.
It was while we were having our drinks that one of the men among the mourners, after getting tipsy, told of a story of how his older brother whose wife died was treated by the relatives of his late wife when they refused to cleanse him because he did not pay dowry.
The man explained that his brother who was always clean shaven became like a bush man after the woman’s relatives demanded that he pays K7,000 dowry he had failed to pay when his wife was alive.
In many Zambian traditions, perhaps I should say African traditions, a bereaved husband or wife has to undergo certain rituals for him or her to be cleansed and ‘set free from the spirits’ of his/her late better half.
In the case of men, one of the cleansing procedures includes shaving of the hair and beards among other things.
Without these rituals being performed, the surviving husband or wife is not able to do certain things as they would be haunted by the ‘spirits’ of their departed wives or husbands.
“My brother was very smart. After his wife died, her relatives refused to perform cleansing rituals to him because he had not paid the K3, 500 dowry he was charged.
“At the funeral, they demanded that he pays double that price – thus it became K7, 000,” explained the man.
He said as there was no money to pay there and then, our family pleaded that the woman’s relatives cleanse our relative and promised that we would look for the money and pay the dowry later, but they refused and so the man stayed without shaving his hair and beard for a long time until the money was found.
“At one time, my brother wanted to break the rules and wanted to go to the barbershop to shave without being cleansed but elders warned him that if he did that without the consent of his late wife’s relatives, he would become mad.
“The man only had a shave after the family paid K7,000 in cash as the woman’s relatives refused to be paid in installments,” explained the man.
If tradition demands such, why not follow?
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