Bonded: Elite Marriage and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Lesotho

Abstract

ABSTRACT Missionary societies working in Southern Africa established a connection between ‘native marriage' and slavery as part of their initial contacts with so-called ‘Bantu' societies. During the nineteenth century, bridewealth and polygamy were strongly criticized and marriages were commonly defined in terms of the ‘purchase' of women by African men. Modern scholarship has questioned these simplistic arguments and made a strong case against reducing bridewealth to an exclusively economic transaction. It has become increasingly clear, however, that not all marriages were the same. Archival sources also speak of marriages which did not involve bridewealth or which featured other atypical transactions. This article focuses on the meanings and practices of bohlanka as found in the Sesotho- and Setswana-speaking societies of the Highveld. On some occasions, bohlanka was seen as ‘clientship', on others it resembled enslavement via captivity in war. The article analyses marriages of captive women and of women whose bridewealth was provided by Lesotho's king. The king then claimed the children from these marriages as his own. The women involved became low-ranking wives within a polygamous marriage, referred to as the ‘brooms' and ‘heels’. Their experiences shed new light upon areas of intersection between marriage and slavery, and bridewealth and captivity.