-
UNDERSTANDING AFRICAN MARRIAGE.
………………………………………………………..
Understanding the ontological phenomenon behind many customs and ideas connected with African marriages, such as the bride price, polygamy, inheriting the wives of the deceased brothers or inheriting the husband of the deceased sisters, parents arranging marriages for their children, and the likes.
In African societies, no one is supposed to be a spectator in marriage drama, everyone becomes an actor or actress.
Marriage, to us, is the focus of existence, where at a point, ‘the departed, the living and those yet to be born meet.
Therefore, marriage is to Africans, is a duty, a requirement from the corporate society.
It is also a rhythm of life in which everyone must participate. Or else, he who does not take part in it is a rebel and a lawbreaker. He is not only abnormal but under-human.
Failure to get married in African societies under normal circumstances means that the person concerned has rejected society, and society rejects him.
Also, it must be noted that marriage and procreation in African society is a unity. Therefore, without it, marriage is incomplete.
You see, to we Africans, unhappy is the one who fails to get children, not minding whatever other qualities one might posses, the failure to get or bear children is worse than committing genocide as far as we Africans are concerned:
The person has become the dead end of human life, not only for the genealogical line but also for himself and herself.
When he or she dies, there will be nobody of his or her own immediate alone to remember him or her, to keep him or her in the state of personal immortality: he or she will simply be forgotten.
Therefore, marriage, to African, is a religious obligation by which individual contributes the seeds of life towards man’s struggle against the loss of original immortality.
It is also our belief that who therefore has no descendants in effect quenches the fire of life and becomes forever dead since his line of physical continuation is blocked if he or she does not get married and bear children.
Modified From The Book By John S. Mbiti (African Religions & Philosophy)
