Domesticating a Religious Import: The Jesuits and the Inculturation of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, 1879-1980

5 Until Death Do Us Part? African Marriage Practices and the Catholic Church, 1890–1979

5 Until Death Do Us Part? African Marriage Practices and the Catholic Church, 1890–1979 Francesca Misodzi rejects the claim of Vale Mupunga though she is the mother of his child. She declares that in marrying again, she will observe the rites of the Faith; the Catholic church. She desired her children to remain at Chishawasha when requested to express her opinion on their being removed to Hartley. It is the known wish of her late husband, Henry Muronda, that she and her five children should remain [in] a position where they can be instructed in their faith. He gave the eldest daughter over to the care of the [Dominican] Sisters for her protection. The children are: Clara Chitima, born 28th November, 1903; One, a boy died; Francis Chirenda, school boy; Rosa Nyorergwa; Joseph Musiwa; one illegitimate child by Vale Mupunga. Fr. Richartz Letter Book, April 10, 1919 For most of the colonial period, the Catholic Church’s hierarchy in Southern Rhodesia presumed the superiority of Western Christian marriage and made no efforts to integrate African and Western Christian marriage practices, showing more concern with regularizing canonically invalid unions of African Catholics by various means available within canon law. African Catholics generally disregarded the church’s canonical requirements, marrying according to ‘‘customary law.’’ By 1967, approximately 80 percent of African Catholics were not marrying in the church according to canonical form. Consequently, the bishops formed two commissions to study the problem. The commissions recommended, against the opinion of Jesuit canonists, that the bishops recognize African customary unions as the basis for canonical marriage within the church, which they accepted. The recommendation was largely ineffective, thus, in 1975, the bishops petitioned Rome african marriage practices and the catholic church | 171 for permission to allow elder lay Catholics to preside at Catholic weddings as a means to integrate African and church practices. Although they apparently did not receive authorization, the request itself, as well as the marriage commissions’ recommendation to recognize African customary unions, indicates a significant change in the church leadership ’s understanding of African marriage practices, and an unprecedented openness to experimentation to incorporate African marriage processes formally into church structures. VaShona Marriage Practices and the Making of ‘‘Customary Law’’ Early in the colonial period, sexual and marital relations between African men and women derived meaning and function within a broader social context. Marriage entailed the joining of two families as well as the union of two individuals. During this period no single wedding ritual signaled the beginning of marriage. Marriage involved a process of negotiation between the families, and a man and woman were considered married either when the first part of the bride price (lobola) was paid to the woman’s family in cattle or crops, when the woman was accompanied to her husband’s homestead (kuperekedzwa), or when the woman bore her first child. The munyai, an intermediary engaged by the prospective husband’s family, usually arranged preliminary negotiations between the families, including the vhuramuromo, or payment to the woman’s father or tezvara (father-in-law), to encourage him to specify the lobola price. Elopement (kutiza), however, was a common means to begin the negotiation process, usually having the tacit knowledge and approval of the woman’s paternal aunt, or tete.1 Following the 1896–97 chimurenga, and prior to the colonial African economy’s monetization, matrilocal service marriages in which the prospective husband, or mukuwasha (son-in-law), agreed to work for the tezvara for a number of years rather than pay lobola became more common. By the 1920s, as more young African men entered the colonial economy as laborers in towns or mines, vadzitezvara (fathers-inlaw ) began to require lobola payments in cash, and increasingly ‘‘in a single transaction, or at least a significantly large first payment. This 172 | african marriage practices and the catholic church was a wholly different kind of transaction from the long-term transfer of goods which had characterized the marriage alliances of the 1890s, involving a lifetime of exchange and obligation linking families across generations.’’2 It was also during this period that vadzitezvara began to exact rutsambo, or a large initial cash payment payable by the suitor himself rather than his family, first as protection against the bad faith of African migrant workers but subsequently as a means of income. Payment of cattle continued to be associated with the birth of children. In order...