The price of love: How bride wealth recovery exposes gender inequities
The cattle taken to the bride's family by a groom as a form of bride wealth under Luo customs.
What you need to know:
- Bride wealth was once a token of appreciation and kinship between families, but today, it is often viewed as a transactional purchase of women, reinforcing control, abuse, and social inequality.
- The Marriage Act upholds customary unions but warns against exploitation of bride wealth.
- As traditions clash with evolving gender norms, legal and cultural interpretations—like Justice DKN Magare’s ruling—underscore that the practice has shifted from symbol of respect to a contested economic exchange.
The October 16 step taken by a Nairobi-based lawyer to publicly reclaim bride wealth paid for his now ex-wife pushes into the limelight the vexed question of traditional nuptial practices and gender relations. When a marriage is irredeemably broken in the traditional Luo community, a ceremony called waro dhok (recovering cattle) or simply wero (reclamation, recovery) is initiated by the husband or his in-laws to formally dissolve the union and set the two parties free.
One cow referred to as dher pien (literally “bed cow”, idiomatically “conjugal compensation”) is left to symbolise the services the woman has rendered the husband, especially sexual ones. The recovery is not confined to the Luo community but also exists among other ethnicities such as the Agikuyu, Gusii, Kamba and Luhyia.
Among the Luo, the recovery is usually a private and quiet affair involving just the two families of the wife and husband. This protects the privacy and dignity of the protagonists. It is a cold and hostile exercise in which there are no pleasantries or meals. This explains why observers took exception to the fact that the material case was made a public spectacle, a theatrical performance with social media factotums deployed to provide updates as the process was executed. They saw it as a deliberate attempt to embarrass the ex-wife and her family while portraying the ex-husband as a hero.
Kenya’s Marriage Act No. 4 of 2014 defines a customary marriage as one conducted in accordance with the customs of the communities of one or both parties. For it to be valid, the marriage must be registered within three months of the traditional ceremony. The application for a marriage certificate must include copies of identification documents of the couple and their witnesses, description of the customary rites performed and a form duly filled by the Chief of the location where the ceremony was conducted.
The standpoint in Kenyan statutory law that payment of bride wealth should be voluntary recognises that some people have distorted the practice into a gold-digging exercise where grooms are asked for ridiculously large amounts of money and livestock, pegged on the maiden’s level of formal education. In essence, this makes highly educated women unmarriageable.
Commercialisation of bride wealth commodifies women into items of trade between men. The practice thus loses its other values of: expressing appreciation to parents for birthing and nurturing the girl; recognition that the family will miss the presence and services of the girl; and solidification of the relationship between two individuals, families and communities.
When bide wealth is commercialised, the man is elevated and the woman subjugated to the level of property. Thus, in dysfunctional marriages, women are often equated to the cows paid for them as a way of dehumanisation. In some communities, the payment of bride wealth is actually called a purchase with traditionally minded husbands considering it a licence to control the wife, including by battery. To the extent that bride wealth is used to justify violence, therefore, it is a contestable practice.
Bride wealth subtly coerces women into tolerating violent relationships because of the fear of subjecting their parents to the pressure of returning the payment, especially if it was hefty. Moreover, the livestock may have been sold or even died. Thus the recovery requires the maiden family to purchase new stock, which constitutes a sudden and high expenditure. Parents unwilling to go through this pressure and stigma push their daughters to find a way of surviving within the relationships, usually to their personal detriment.
On a related note, High Court Judge DKN Magare ruled on December 8, 2023, that it is primarily the responsibility of the wife to facilitate the recovery of the bride wealth paid for her. This means that a woman cannot escape by arguing that her parents are dead or indigent or even claim that the livestock are no longer in existence. There can be no better clarification than this judgment that bride wealth is a commercial transaction.
In reaction to the material issue, Ms Millie Odhiambo, Member of Parliament for Suba North, remarked that it is because of dramas as the one witnessed that she declined the bride wealth that would have been paid for her. “I rarely comment on people’s personal lives,” she said. “But I hope you see why I refused dowry payment for myself. When I love a man, a simple word of ‘I love you and I commit to you’ suffices. An exchange of vows publicly shows commitment to stay together.”
Millie’s standpoint underlines the need to re-examine what marriage means and whether the drama surrounding its formalisation or dissolution is really necessary, whether in customary, Christian or other allowable unions.
The author is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya University ([email protected]).
