Let us talk about lobola in South Africa

I came from a village that is rich in africa culture, i have seen articles that are written by people claiming to know the lobola. First let us start here, Before colonization our ancestors were only paying 2 or 3 cows as a part of lobola. Sir T Portshestone was a governor of kwazulu natal he set rules on the lobola, His rules was that the lobola must be 11 cows, and must be paid infull before marriage. Secondly Lobola is not R90k. This is how it is work in my village

• You do not have to pay all cows
• Some cows ziyalengiswa, meaning they are left unpaid, should cheat your wife or you do something wrong you will be ordered to pay those cows.
• The price is of cows is not related to the commercial value of the cows, meaning if farmers charge R20 000 for a bull it does not mean that for every bull you pay in lobola you will be charged R20 000. At this moment in my village a bull is R12 000, but an equivalent lobola price is R4500, meaning you save a lot if you pay cash instead of a cow. I have found this to be common across villages in kwaZulu natal.
• The price of a lobola goes up if a woman is educated? no it does not education is not a part of our culture, there is no cow that represents education as yet. No matter how educated or rich is your daughter the number of cows remains unchanged.
• Number of cows paid for lobola does differ, yes, there are three kinds of woman as per lobola.
  • A normal woman, this is a woman that is raised by normal parents, both parents are not related to the king or a chief. The number of cows here are a standard.
  • Chiefs , chiefs daughter is expensive that the normal woman, you must expect to pay more cows for her, Also if the daughter is related to the chief, you can expect to pay more for lobola.
  • Kings, the daughter of king doesn't normal get married to a normal village man, if that happens the normal village man must be rich (in terms of cows). The daughter of a king is most expensive that the two above daughters, you can expect to pay more than 100 cows.
  • Born again people paying lobola? is it a christian thing to pay lobola? what does the bible say about paying lobola, In my culture, nobody is forced to pay a lobola, My older sister is married to a pastor, no lobola was paid, We have grown as people, we have changed, we have accepted the change,We (in my village) do not force people to pay lobola.

There are no advantages and disadvantages of paying lobola except that it is our culture, and our ancestors will be happy about the event (that is the believe). As people are asking me sometimes, how much is a lobola in south africa, there is no set price it is all depends on your negotiators, the price of cows is not the same, the latest lobola negotiation i attended was in 2018, the prices were are shown below:

• Fathers cow (inkomo kababa), it costed R9000, it started at R12 000 upon negotiations it went down to R9000, which was ok because the daughter was well raised (I wont go any further discussing the good qualities as that might open a can of worms) , This is the most expensive lobola cow, all the cows will then be below this. Father is the leader of the family his cow normal will go first before any other cow, this can vary per village.
• Mothers cow (inkomo kamama), it has to be below fathers cow, all the time, it costed R8000, again the daughter had good qualities to be a wife.
• The rest of the cows were below R4,500

Again, the costs of lobola varies per village, per negotiations, there is no standard set amount. If you have good negotiators you can bring down the cow prices, Again it is a fight the daughters family the price to be low, as that will mean their daughter is not good enough. There are conditions that might bring down the lobola cows, eg. if a woman is too old (50 years maybe), I do not want to go through these points where the price might be low. Let us leave it here.

Update 13 March 2022 21h07

Yesterday i was umkhongi, we went for ukucela in harding, harding is close to Portshestone, so the way they do things in harding is different from US in South Coast which is also different from North coast.
In my village, the first event is ukucela. Ukucela is not a cow, normal ukucela is around R4500. Ukucela ubuhlobo. Once ukucela is done, you then get a list of cows and the prices.
In harding, ukucela is called izicelo, which is inkomo kababa nekamama combined with imvulamlomo (3 in one), what it means is that the lobola negotiations wont happen untill you pay 2 cows plus imvulamlomo which happen to be R23000 (inkomo kababa nekamama plus izicelo), this is a day light robbery. You can not negotiate this as it is a part of imvulamlomo. Another strange thing is that, Machi (the name of the chief), the whole village charges the last 3 cows as izinkomo zoboya, in my village you can pay all cows as cash. Overall we paid 7 cows NOT 11 cows (4 cows in a form of cash, 3 cows that we will send by truck/s next month)
Harding people are not hardcore zulu's, if you want to see a real zulu culture go to umsinga, at umsinga ilobolo is even cheaper. The point i want to make is that , I wish there could be a standard of how ilobola is done.

ukhanda limtshela okwakhe meaning