35 Poligamy in Eastern Africa
Polygamy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Polygamy has a long tradition in Africa including the mostly Islamic North Africa where the Koran allows a man to have up to four wives. Even in the Old Testament, polygamy occurs in a number of circumstances. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the tradition goes back thousands of years. I will describe the circumstances in Sudan, South Sudan and Mozambique. See map.
Case studies of Polygamy in eastern Africa
Sudanese Polygamy
In Arabic Sudan during the mid-1970’s, polygamy serves the very wealthy and the very poor, but not the middle class or the high school educated. Normally the middle class is represented by more educated people some who have studied a broad and have adopted western ways but also feel they cannot afford such a large family. In the harem of the wealthy, wives are treated like royalty. Usually they are sequestered in their luxury only to interact with their husband and close family.
Often this leads to great boredom for the single wife since she is isolated much of the time. The culture is such that men and women talk very little to each other. Frequently the husband does not relate to his wife in any deep communications but saves those discussions for his male friends. Hence, Sudanese women can become quite lonely. One solution for the first wife is to petition her husband to marry a second wife so she will have someone with whom to talk. The husband is usually not opposed to this and often enlists her to find an additional wife. Eventually, the Arab man will often find himself married to a group of sisters or former classmates of the first wife.
Sub-Saharan Africa
In Sub-Saharan Africa polygamy is a normal occurrence. Actually it serves as a social-security system for women. How can that be?
First place it is hard to find a suitable husband. In addition, many African men are not in a financial position to support a wife and children.
Another reason supporting polygamy in Africa is that women must have children to take care of them in their old age. It is risky to marry a single man since he has no record of siring children and he may not be able to make her pregnant. If a man already has children, then a woman thinks she has a good chance of having children if she joins his harem. Her children will be sure to support her in old age.
Children are Assets
Children are a major part of the labor-intensive farming processes and hence enable a family to enlarge the size of their cultivated land. The older children take care of the younger ones allowing the mother to have the freedom to direct the farming processes as well as have more children. With lots of children a woman obtains a major level of esteem in the community. On a practical level, she has the assurance of having several adult children to care for her in her old age. The five children that she may have are programed from the earliest age to take care of their parents whenever they can. Normally each woman has her own sle