Lobolo, a custom that withstands the test of time
Lobolo is a centuries-old tradition still practised today in southern Mozambique. According to this tradition, the bride's family receives money and/or other goods offered by the groom's family, determined through a process of negotiation. The handover takes place in a ceremony with food and drink, which aims, besides uniting the two families by establishing rights and obligations, to ask the ancestors to bless the new home and, above all, to grant fertility to the couple.
Traditionally, the rite represented compensation to the bride's family, legalising the union and the transfer of the woman's reproductive capacity to her husband's family group, of which she became a part; it gave stability to the marriage, making the husband and his family responsible for the maintenance and well-being of the woman for whom lobolo had been paid; it legitimised the couple's children, who were considered to belong to the family that had paid the lobolo; and it constituted a means of acquisition for the woman's group, which found itself weakened.
Although this custom was the subject of much controversy in the first decades of independent Mozambique, which tried to devalue some of the old traditions, lobolo has endured, and nowadays countless young and not-so-young people appreciate and practise it, now linking some aspects of the tradition with modernity. For many, lobolo represents the respect that the groom and his family have for the bride's family for having raised and educated that woman. However, in rural areas, in many communities, lobolo still has the same characteristics and functions that it had in the past, ending up being considered more important than civil or religious marriage.
As a matter of interest, Nelson Mandela, when president of South Africa, offered as lobolo 55 head of cattle to the family of his wife Graça Machel (then widow of Samora Moisés Machel, the first president of Mozambique), whom he married in 1996.
Rites similar to Mozambique's lobolo exist in other African cultures, and elsewhere. One example is the so-called alambamento, practised by the Ambundu in Angola.
