Berger notes how debates regarding FGM, birth control use and the treatment of HIV/AIDS moved to the foreground and polygyny,
bridewealth, rites of passage, and inheritance laws also remained contentious post-independence.
A man who marries needs a sister because he will use the
bridewealth given for her, and her participation is necessary when he is to become a father.
He showed how traditional methods of fertility control, including contraception and abortion, kept birth rates low, and how traditional social institutions such as
bridewealth and slavery created incentives for women to restrict their fertility using those techniques.
Marriage with hedna is mentioned most often in the society pictured in the poems: (45) the groom-to-be gives the bride's father (or whoever be the bride's kurios) several gifts ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or
bridewealth), (46) and the woman becomes a part of the groom's oikos.
In South Africa, marriage has often been described as a process that unfolds over time and is typically formalized through the payment of lobola (
bridewealth) by the husband to the wife's family.
(10) Neither
bridewealth, the money used to arrange marriage, nor wergeld (or "bloodwealth"), the money presented to the family of a murder victim so as to prevent or resolve a blood-feud, is a form of payment or compensation.
Marriage and
Bridewealth (Ilobolo) in Contemporary Zulu Society.
Family relationships have been sustained over time through
bridewealth (1) exchange and patrilineal inheritance of land (Makila, 1978; Wagner, 1975).
(16) For instance, Barker and Ricardo (2006) emphasize social stratification based on age in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, with young men having little power or access to women: women were more available to older men with control of family wealth--particularly in groups requiring the payment of
bridewealth. Wooten (2003) describes the more general pattern that the elders dominate younger folks and men have more power than women among the Bamana of rural Mali.
severed heads of people defeated in battle were described as important items of
bridewealth. This early information is included in part 2 of a traditional Brunei Malay epic poem (Sya'ir Awang Simawn) which depicts the origin and development of the Brunei sultanate (Maxwell 1996:91f).