SPRING

This is the season when all plants and animals look their best. Flowering trees bloom in the Lowveld and that attracts the birds and the bees ...

Spring is the season of love and that was in the air when I winked at a waitress who I ordered a take-away from. I could sense from the sparkle in her eye that she was interested, so while waiting for the Chinese food to be ready, I went to Pick and Pay and bought some roses. When I collected the take-away, I handed her a rose and my business card along with payment including a generous tip. That was as romantic as the setting would allow.

It worked! She called me. Soon after, we met after hours for the first time.

Ukuthwala

This practice is controversial. To some, it is abduction - a violation of human rights. To others, it is customary, a sort of an African variation of Romeo and Juliet. A man and a woman fall in love but the family and community of the bride disapprove. So the boyfriend abducts the lady and deflowers her. Then a few days later some of his relatives rock up at her family's kraal to negotiate a marriage, after it is fait accompli.

But it does not always start with love. Sometimes it can be more of an arranged marriage, for at times the bride's parents have set her up, ahead of time. This comes right to the edge of exploitation, even though young girls have been brought up to look forward to the day that they will be able to fulfil their role in a man's home - the traditional worldview.

It has also been a way for older men, sometimes widowers, to marry younger women. Even to remove orphans from institutions. Whatever the variation, the practice is seen by some as anachronistic and out of sync with gender rights.

To the extent that it has been known to force girls who are under-aged to marry. Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, the Rural Women's Movement and the Commission on Gender Equality met with Mandla Mandela, an ANC MP better known as the grandson of Nelson, to clarify his position on ukuthwala. He is chief of the Mvezo traditional council. He told Parliament's portfolio committee on rural development and land reform in July 2010 that, "for a girl to be taken as a wife through ukuthwala — the process has nothing to do with age. When you are going to discuss culture do not even try to bring in white notions, as such an approach will turn things upside down. Firstly, culture has no age. Age is something we learn today because of our Westernisation."

I found myself attracted to a younger woman. Was it spring fever? Age disparate relationships are not uncommon in Africa. Yes they can be transactional but they don't have to be. They can be genuine and soul-nourishing.

The Mail & Guardian quotes Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani, who ...

"describes in his acclaimed book Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism how what came to be understood as "custom" was in fact a concentration of the authoritarian elements of pre-colonial societies.

Lest one thinks that the tag 'customary' was a shorthand of letting things be as they always had been — we need to bear in mind that there was nothing voluntary about custom in the colonial period — colonial custom was enforced with a whip" in a system that Mamdani dubs "decentralised despotism.

The revival of practices such as ukuthwala, virginity testing and male circumcision should be read against the attempts to circumscribe rural women's rights."

In general, customary practices have not always been democratic. Or if they once were, could there have been some authoritarian-creep during the colonial period?

Inhlawulo

In our first meeting, at my cottage, we sat and talked. It was open and frank. To sum it up, she was looking for a more secure future and I was looking for companionship. Her problem was poverty, mine was loneliness. There were prospects of a good fit.

I mentioned that my previous relationships always seemed to falter when I brought up the subject of Lobola. I joked that Obama says that whenever African women mention the term "pregnant", African men tend to make themselves scarce. Whereas I had found that whenever I raised the subject of "Lobola", African women made a hasty exit!

She asked if I knew about Inhlawulo? Yes, I had heard that if a man gets a woman pregnant out of wedlock, he has to pay this as a kind of fine to her family She said that was when it is used as a penalty – but it can also be used as a prophylaxis. It doesn't have to be a pound of cure, it can be an ounce of prevention. She explained how to do this ... and I complied.

I invited her family to my cottage for a braai. It was on a Sunday in spring. I met her mother, who is really her aunt as both her parents, she told me, had perished in a road accident. I met her brother and sister, who have toughed it out as orphans with their older sister my new girlfriend under the care of their aunt. A child came too, who turned out to be her brother's son who visited him on Sundays. We followed the prescribed customs eating meat, offering the gift of a bottle of whiskey and some cash. I presented a letter addressed to her family with the cash, stating that my intentions were honorable.

In the days before the automobile, even in my Western culture, a man had to approach a woman by speaking to her father. In that custom, the father would ask the suitor, "What are your intentions?" The prescribed answer was, "Strictly honourable, sir". This was in the back of my mind as I assured her family that when she was not at home, she would be with me. She would be safe and secure, and I wanted the time and space to get to know her. But not on their front porch!

FAMILY PORTRAIT

Late Spring

In the early spring, birds are still flocking together after their long trip south from North Africa or even Europe. Then they pair up. Only in the late spring do they get to nest building.

We got to know one another slowly, because we both had full time jobs and ostensibly her family was strict about her hours. She was not allowed to stay overnight. But there were gaps after work, before dark, when she could come over to play. Or we could go shopping. Or out for an early supper at Spur.

After some months we became lovers too, as spring would have it.

Lover's Chess is not unheard-of in South Africa. According to Wikipedia:

"On 10 December 1856 Tiyo Soga became the first black South African to be ordained - in the United Presbyterian Church. Two months after his ordination Soga married Janet Burnside a Scotswomen who was "a most honourable, thrifty, frugal, and devoted woman who marched heroically and faithfully by her...