ABSTRACT
This paper examines the persistent authority of the customary practice for forming recognised marriages in many South African communities, called ‘lobola’. Marriage rates have sharply fallen in South Africa, and many South Africans blame this on the difficulty of completing lobola amid intense economic strife. Using in-depth qualitative research from a village in KwaZulu-Natal, where lobola demands are the country’s highest and marriage rates its lowest, I argue that lobola’s authority survives because lay actors, and especially women, have innovated new repertoires of lobola behaviour that allow them to pursue emerging needs and desires for marriage within lobola’s framework. In particular, I argue that dyadic narratives of marriage increasingly circulate in lobola processes alongside the lineage narratives ‘traditionally’ associated with African marriage. As key agents in this circulation, young women remain among lobola’s strongest supporters even as many yearn for what they call ‘50/50’, gender-egalitarian marriages.
