• Dr Nokuzola Mndende says lobola payment alone should not be treated as the full completion of a customary marriage under African tradition.

• Her comments follow a Constitutional Court ruling on antenuptial contracts, and a separate Home Affairs deadline for registering existing customary marriages.

Cultural expert Dr Nokuzola Mndende of the Icamagu Institute says treating lobola payment alone as the full completion of a customary marriage overlooks the further stages African custom requires, and that traditional leaders should be speaking out more on the issue.

Her comments follow two separate developments.

The Department of Home Affairs has set 31 August as the deadline for couples in existing, already-recognised customary marriages to formally register their unions, part of a grace period that opened in 2024.

Separately, the Constitutional Court ruled in January, in VVC v JRM and Others, that antenuptial contracts signed after a customary marriage, but before a later civil ceremony, cannot change a couple’s property regime without a court’s approval.

The judgment did not rule on what constitutes a valid customary marriage, customary marriages have been legally recognised in South Africa since the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act came into effect in 2000.

Mndende said her concern is with how lobola is sometimes treated as the end of the marriage process, rather than one stage within it.

“There are processes in our African culture, irrespective of tribe and nation, that need to be followed before a couple can be declared as wife and husband. We are talking about the union of families and ancestors, and the rituals required across several stages. How could one be declared a wife while a man has only paid lobola, without the other stages that need to be followed, such as ukuthelwa ngenyongo, the sprinkling of the goat bile, on the bride? I am wondering why traditional leaders are quiet about this matter. I guess they are also accomplices to this destruction of our heritage,” Mndende said.

Under the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, a lobola agreement, part-payment and the customary celebrations associated with it can constitute a legally binding marriage, though what specifically is required varies by community and custom.

Pictured above: Dr Nokuzola Mndende of the Icamagu Institute, who says lobola alone should not be treated as the completion of a customary marriage.

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