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Wiving and Thriving in Northern Rhodesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

J. H. Chaplin
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Extract

With the publication of Jahoda's (1959) study of letters addressed to the advice column of a Ghanaian newspaper, my plans for a similar study in Northern Rhodesia crystallized into action. Fortunately at about the same time the country's sole independent newspaper aimed at the indigenous population began publication. The paper, which is weekly and is written in English throughout, has a circulation of some 20,000 copies, and with shared readers may be expected to reach a public of about 70,000 all told. (The total African population is somewhat over 2½ million.) Through the kindness of the editor, I have been allowed access to the complete incoming correspondence dealt with in a feature offering advice to inquirers; letters addressed to the editor have been excluded from this survey.

Résumé

‘JE VEUX SAVOIR DE VOUS SI JE FERAI BIEN DE ME MARIER’—LETTRES À UN JOURNAL DE LA RHODÉSIE DU NORD

Une étude est présentée des lettres écrites en anglais au journal hebdomadaire de la Rhodésie du Nord qui s'adresse plus particulièrement aux lecteurs africains. Elle porte sur plus de trois cents lettres, ce qui représente le recueil d'une année environ. Les lettres proviennent, en grande partie, de jeunes célibataires, dont un grand nombre sont encore à l'école ou suivent des cours d'instruction, et qui habitent les centres urbains les plus importants. Une comparaison est établie avec des travaux analogues effectués par Jahoda au Ghana. Il existe une similarité remarquable entre les problèmes dans les deux régions: la différence la plus apparente concerne les modalités du mariage; au Ghana l'ingérence de la famille dans le mariage est encore considérable et l'abord romanesque est de moindre importance que dans la Rhodésie du Nord où la migration de la main-d'œuvre suscite un plus grand abandon des systèmes sociaux traditionnels.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , April 1962 , pp. 111 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1962

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References

page 111 note 1 G. Jahoda, 1959, ‘Love, Marriage and Social Change …’, Africa, xxix, pp. 177–90.

page 111 note 2 I am most grateful to Mrs. B. Hall for allowing me access to the original letters on which this paper is based, and for her interest in the whole matter. To Dr. R. J. Apthorpe I must also acknowledge my debt for reading the manuscript while in draft and making several helpful suggestions.

page 111 note 3 In round figures, during 1959, only 60 per cent. of children between 8–15 years of age had any opportunity of going to school. There were 34,000 boys and 29,500 girls in their first year; 13,000 boys, 4,600 girls in the fifth; 5,400 boys and 1,300 girls in the eighth year; 136 boys and 19 girls in the twelfth year (quoted in African Digest, London, vol. viii, no. 2, p. 49).

page 111 note 4 African education begins with two years of preprimary schooling (Standards Sub-A and Sub-B), then follow six years of Primary education (Standards I to VI). In Secondary school a further six years lead to University Entrance level (Forms 1 to 6).

page 114 note 1 This is Engraulicypris, a species of fish also known as nshembe caught in Lake Tanganyika, which, when dried, is exported in large quantities. The same word is also the common ‘town-Bantu ’ for a prostitute. It is not clear whether the fish is named after the woman or the woman after the fish. Whether it got this name because it is quickly cooked, and so is a useful stand-by for a woman with little sense of house-keeping, or because it is a ‘quick-time’ food-stuff as she is a ‘quick-time’ woman, it is difficult to say.

page 115 note 1 See the account of the betrothal present, nsalamu, in A. I. Richards, ‘Bemba Marriage and Present Economic Conditions ’, Rhodes-Livingstone Paper No. 4, 1940, pp. 52 et seq.

page 116 note 1 A. I. Richards, 1940, loc. cit.

page 116 note 2 J. A. Barnes, 1951, ‘Marriage in a changing society ’. Rhodes-Livingstone Paper No. 20, p. 33.

page 119 note 1 Of Lusaka it has been written, ‘The average wage of just over £7 per month is in itself inadequate to supply the minimum needs at Poverty Datum Level standards of a couple and one child…. Some 80% of households with children do not currently receive a wage sufficient to supply their minimum needs excluding any rent payments.’ D. G. Bettison, 1959, ‘Numerical Data on African Dwellers in Lusaka’, Rhodes-Livingstone Communication No. 16, at p. xxiii. However, Bettison's criteria have been challenged by Kay (Rhodes-Livingstone Communication No. 21, 1961) and Thomson and Kay (Human Problems No. 30, 1961).

page 119 note 2 In a study on suicide in Northern Rhodesia, economic causes lay behind only about 3 per cent, of the sample. See J. H. Chaplin, 1961, Africa Studies, vol. xx, No. 3.

page 121 note 1 Of particular relevance here is the statement by a leading Nyasa politician: ‘… Lastly it should be made clear to social leaders that their job is not to throw overboard everything African nor merely to process foreign ways but to uphold African ways of life where necessary, to adopt foreign ways where possible and to strike practicable compromises where need be.’ D. K. Chisiza, 1961, Realities of African Independence, Africa Bureau, London.