The Unreasonable Rise of Bride’s Price and Its Consequences on our Society
By Samuel Reech Mayen, Juba, South Sudan
May 1, 2015 (SSB) —- Bride’s price refers to anything of value which is paid by the groom’s family to the bride’s family in exchange of the bride. It is popularly known as dowry in the South Sudanese societies. In most South Sudanese communities, the commonest form of bride wealth is cattle. With modernization, currency has become the second if not the first commonest medium of settling bride’s wealth.
The rationale for paying bride’s wealth has been signal to the bride’s family that their daughter is leaving their house to the groom’s family. It is paid as a sort of acceptance and happiness of being in new relations with a bride’s family through their daughter. Hence pays as a symbol for appreciating the bride’s family for their good daughter. On the basis of this payment, the bride is expected by the entire society to be committed to the obligations of a good wife.
In most South Sudanese societies, raising dowries is neither one man nor one family affair particularly in the instance of a first wife but rather a duty of the extended family and partly the entire clan of a groom. But in principle, the groom and his immediate family contributed more. The maternal and paternal uncles of the groom are the second largest contributors.
As South Sudanese have rapidly developed the materialistic mind set in all dimensions of life, payment of bride price is not exceptional. The social practice that was meant to seal a bond between a man and a woman has turned out to be a commercial deal. The previous manner of respectful negotiation of bride price has become a pure economic hot bargain. With the modern civilization or whatever, the bride price that was relatively payable by almost every groom’s family is becoming too high to be paid by most grooms despite the size of their extended families who are potentially obliged to contribute.
Just about a week ago, I attended the marriage of a friend on a day fixed for the bride’s wealth settlement (both the groom and the bride come from Greater Bor, a community whose chiefs fixed bride price at 30 cows in early 40’s). Like in the rest of the communities, negotiation of bride’s wealth amongst the sections of Greater Bor is the task for the elders, therefore, no chance for the Youths to express their views and unacceptable analysis in such occasion.
Back to the day and the negotiation that went on for a full day subject to resumption the following morning, I was stunned by the high demand of the bride’s family or rather bride’s clan as almost everyone who attended wanted to go with something in the pocket. Most of these people would earlier in the 90’s be entitled only to feast in such a marriage.
As I sat and listened to the claims of the bride’s clan, I heard Beny de thiek (Chief negotiator at the bride’s side) asking or rather decreeing the following; The brother of the bride deserves 50, 000 SSP, the grand fathers and grand mothers at both paternal and maternal side of the bride deserve 15,000 SSP each. When agam-long (the human amplifier) echoed what had been said by Beny de thiek, my mind had already switched off and started wondering of where the world of our community was going to.
As negotiation went on, I realized that the entire community had already been intoxicated with this unreasonable demand as people start giving examples of the amount of dowries they had paid at different marriages as precedent to their argument.
I wanted to leave by pretending that I was going to attend another crucial meeting with someone but decided against it. I felt that people will suspect that it was a white lie but just running away to avoid contributing anything in assistance to the friend. To me, the two days was wasted in watching the negotiation in which the concession was reached at 300,000 SSP plus un-summed amounts of other demands of alok-thok (literally meaning rinsing the mouth) of almost the entire bride’s clan elders. Through all this, fortunately to me and unfortunately to my friend and his in-laws, I had nothing to give as I was a mere student who had just returned to the city to look for tuition fee.
The following nights and days, I recalled how the negotiation went on and reminded me of what I overheard a guy about three-years ago asking his friends to allow him to leave the bar to rush back to his house before mid-night for his bride whom he paid over 200,000 SSP may be disappointed and leave the house for good. The man who was by then in his early 30th added that his in-laws are too poor and will not be able to repay him hence cannot risk losing his expensively married wife who was coerced to marriage him to relieve the family from poverty.
Despite how the bride’s family looks at the high bride price as a source of wealth and great honour, the high dowry put a bride in the new perspective to her in-laws. First being the reduction of human status to the state of property. A woman who is married with huge dowry experience more restriction and difficulties in her life. She is constantly reminded on what has been spent on her thus must live in the expectations of her new family. In simple words, their rights are restricted. Most women are exposed to violence which is under pinned by the amount paid on them.
At the side of the bride’s family, she is continually reminded to respect her new family and behaves well as anticipated by her in-laws. This is because girls’ parents are always unwilling to pay back the dowries in case of divorce. The bride is therefore expected by her parents to suffer silently. Many parents whose daughters have been married with a lot of cattle or money openly express to their daughters that their son-in-law owes them nothing hence could not react if such a daughter’s head is cut off by her husband in cases of misbehaving. This is to inform the girl that her parents who have taken huge dowries cannot intervene in her defence. She is therefore advised to tolerate all kind of challenges.
Besides the inevitable violent she is exposed to, a woman is also swapped with the wealth. The wealth goes to her family as she moves into her-in laws’ house. The bride is thrown in a new state of poverty as the entire wealth is transferred to her parents.
Paying high bride price to the in-laws also has negative consequences to the grooms. Much of the dowry paid particularly in the modern currency-dowry system is borrowed, thus the groom shoulder the burden of debts. The groom starts life from scratch. In case of divorce, it is also hard to recover the bride price from the divorcee’s family. This results into litigation which is costly and very slow process for the groom to be paid back. Worst still, dispute may arise between the two families and escalate into violence.
The overall effect that the high bride price has on the entire communities in South Sudan is vividly seen in the rise in cattle rustlings which claim hundreds of lives every year. The practice of high bride price is also a wrong legacy for the future generations. Force marriage which is a serious abuse of rights is encouraged by high bride price. Girls have no choice of who to marry when the richer person offers to pay what the girl’s family demands.
Since South Sudan is a toddler-nation, it is clear that many laws have not yet been enacted. There is urgent need for a law that set a limit to the bride price to ensure that all problems caused by this practice are reduced. Marriage Act should also be put in place to ensure that the essentials of marriage provided by the Act are adhered to. This is important to eliminate the traditional practice of force marriages.
Lastly, Family law that protects the interests and rights of both parties in marriage should also be enacted. Girl child education should be encouraged and supported by the government to empower women to advocate for their welfare. All these measures should be supplemented by full awareness to the communities about the dangers associated with high bride price.
The author lives in Juba and can be reached at mayenreech@gmail.com or 0955 079 266
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