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African Marriage Regulation and the Remaking of Gendered Authority in Colonial Natal, 1843–1875

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2014

Nafisa Essop Sheik
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Abstract:

This article examines the gendered relationships of authority that are at the heart of the processes of customary marriage in South Africa, as well as the ways in which colonial political intervention worked to effect social change in nineteenth-century colonial Natal. This analysis reinforces the established historiographical understanding that instigating generational shifts in authority was important to Natal Native Policy, unlike customary regulation elsewhere in colonial Africa in which colonial law worked to shore up the authority of senior men. However, it seeks to underline that while negotiations of colonial power began to shift authority from older to younger men by manipulating Native marriage, and in particular the practice of lobola, the effects of such policies produced profound shifts in the experience and articulation of gendered relationships of marriage and colonial authority. The imbrication of changes in gender and generational norms ultimately reveals the contradictions in both colonial claims of liberal gender reform and African claims that colonial policy provoked the usurpation of male traditional authority.

Résumé:

Cet article examine les relations d’autorité entre les hommes et les femmes qui sont au cœur des processus du mariage coutumier en Afrique du Sud, ainsi que la façon dont l’intervention politique coloniale a travaillé pour le changement social dans le Natal colonial du XIXe siècle. Cette analyse renforce la compréhension historiographique établie que l’incitation au changement générationnel de la prise d’autorité a été importante pour la politique indigène du Natal, contrairement à la réglementation d’usage ailleurs en Afrique coloniale, où le droit colonial consolidait l’autorité des hommes âgés. Cependant, nous voulons souligner que, bien que les négociations du pouvoir colonial ont commencé à donner plus d’autorité aux hommes jeunes en manipulant le mariage indigène, et en particulier la pratique de la lobola, les effets de ces politiques ont produit de profonds changements dans l’expérience et l’articulation des relations entre les sexes au sein du mariage et de l’autorité coloniale. L’imbrication des changements dans les normes sur les relations entre les sexes et les générations révèle en fin de compte les contradictions à la fois dans les revendications coloniales de la réforme libérale sur l’égalité des sexes, et dans les revendications africaines indiquant que la politique coloniale aurait provoqué l’usurpation de l’autorité traditionnelle des hommes.

Keywords

Marriagelobolanative policyShepstoneZuluIndirect Rulecolonial Natal
Type
ASR FORUM: THE POLITICS OF MARRIAGE IN SOUTH AFRICA
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , September 2014 , pp. 73 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2014 

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