The rise of ‘the other woman’: Is she wrecking or redefining marriage?
Man, his wife and mpango wa kando (alternative plan). Are men victims of the tension between monogamous fidelity and extramarital reality?
What you need to know:
- From side chicks to co-wives, the debate exposes tensions between culture and modern fidelity.
- Literature and lived realities collide in examining the enduring phenomenon of 'the other woman'.
A director of a blue chip company commits suicide allegedly because of blackmail by his manipulative extramarital lover who threatened to expose their affair to his wife unless he met her extravagant financial demands. A senior medical doctor collapses and dies in the residence of his extramarital companion, with the wife reportedly acknowledging that, given his professional and financial stature, it should not have been a surprise that other women had an eye for him. A politician publicly announces that he is a proud polygamist after which social media is abuzz with claims by an apparently neglected lover that he is a deadbeat father.
The denominator in these stories is “the other woman”, also called “side chick” or mpango wa kando (alternative plan) in Kenyan parlance. This topic is tackled by Wafula Yenjela in “The other woman in East African poetics”, published in Critical African Studies last year. At the core is whether the desire for multiple sexual partners is legitimate or is inimical to marital stability.
Wafula argues that “it is in European cultures where, apparently, polygamy is proscribed, that the term ‘the other woman’ stands out”. He asserts that this practice has otherwise “always existed in Africa … both in a conventional marriage and outside”. In African cosmology, he avers, “‘the other woman’ and ‘co-wife’ can be used interchangeably as there exists a thin line between them.” Thus, the phenomenon evidences the tension arising from “Africans’ severance from the traditional polygamist model”. The article argues that it is the Eurocentric model that relegates women in intimate relationships with married men to treatment as displaced creatures in the “fringes of social contracts”.
In the Eurocentric scheme, “the other woman” exists at a crossroads, morally vilified for trespassing into wives’ marital territories, yet self-asserting as a social reality wielding immense power over men, and claiming her space by disrupting the norm of fidelity. In this matrix, “the other woman” has turned her victimhood (singlehood) into agency by claiming what belongs to the wife.
Read: A mistress, cousin and company: Court unmasks man’s asset transfer scheme to short-change wife
A pertinent question is whether the prevalence of the other woman is actually caused by married women, as portrayed in Grace Ogot’s short story “The Other Woman”—referenced by Wafula—that faults wives for failing to sexually satisfy their husbands, hence driving them into extramarital affairs. This resonates with Song of Malaya where Okot p’Bitek glorifies the other woman as a stress reliever and backhanded stabiliser of marriage.
In Wafula’s analysis, “male poets portray the other woman as the African man’s symbolic renewal: the spiritual regeneration of lost African traditions”. In which case, “resort to the other woman is … a rebellion against (imposed) colonial marriage models”. The other woman thus becomes a paradoxical embodiment of this renaissance and symbol of freedom from patriarchy as she can concurrently enjoy intimacy in a marriage-like relationship (norm) yet is not shackled by male-controlled marriage (rebellion).
This ambiguity is captured in Lawino’s reference to Clementine in Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol as “the woman with whom I share my husband”, which deliberately avoids calling her a wife. Yet Clementine is like her Siamese twin as far as who and what is shared is common. What then is the substantive difference between a wife and “the other woman”? In other words, what constitutes wifehood? Turned around, should the concubine also treat the wife as “the other woman” preventing her from full ownership of her lover?
Caught in between is the man, represented by Ocol, ensconced between the traditional Lawino and the westernised Clementine. Are men then victims of the tension between monogamous fidelity and extramarital reality?
The note that several married women in polygamies have “lasting, secret sexual affairs with other men”, as shown in Okot p’Bitek’s character Lawino, who reveals that she has a boyfriend, implies that extramarital promiscuity is not gender-specific. Is it then not necessary to also investigate “the other man” in the lives of married women?
Romantic permissiveness
On the validity of marriage resting on legality and sexual fidelity, Taban lo Liyong, referenced by Wafula, is of a contrary opinion, considering it unrealistic and instead celebrating romantic permissiveness. The restorative potential of multiple sexual liaisons inheres in his surrender to the Japanese lover, Nihokosan, to whom he says: “If you are the one to give me another life, I am ready to be born.” This restorative theory legitimises what is known today as “swinging couples” where pairs of partners deliberately congregate to swap themselves in an agreed space for sexual extravaganza.
Prevalence of “the other woman” suggests that she and her lover have something to offer and gain. By stretching the moral boundaries of marriage, are these liaisons calling for a “larger freedom”, to quote Koffi Annan?
The writer is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya University ([email protected]).
