I’m hoping you guys will help me understand this.
Well, we all know that when a guy impregnate a lady he should pay for damages, right (some of us do and some don’t---shockingly)?! I know this other friend of mine back home, her grandmother made the guy to pay R 7000.00 for damage…(I don’t know how much is min and how much is max. Ekhaya (back home), my sister’s husband combined both lobola and damage’s money together.) My friend’s gran was not a good grandmother and she treated her granddaughter bad AND she chowed all the money, never bought the new born nappies, food, never even took the new born to hospital when he was not well (the guy who was charged that much had to do these things as well…it was probably part of his responsibilities). Well this article is not really bout that…it’s another topic for another day.
Now what I would like to know from you guys is; why is it essential for our parents to charge the guys who impregnate us?
Is this something that is still happening…or it only existed in the olden days?
And is it only Xhosa folks who do this tradition or every culture here in Mzantsi does this? Why I’m asking this is because I had an argument with a friend bout this different culture thing…he was saying that “they” (he is not Xhosa) don’t force money out of other people if they don’t have it. Well, the whole argument started when we were discussing this:
A friend of ours fell pregnant last year (I was very disappointed and how she got pregnant irritated me even more), she gave birth November 2008 or earlier than that, I’m not sure. And the boyfriend did not have a job (since he just graduated)…and he got a job January this year. Now what happened was that when he went to her home to talk bout the damage and all, her mother told him that he can pay it on a monthly basis understanding that the dude just started working (I never had the intestine to ask how much they charged him). So, the worst of it all is that, the guy wants a break from this relationship because the heat is becoming too much for him now. My poor friend is now torn in between the two; her family and this man who wanted something that will bond them. She can’t talk bout this to her mother because she knows that her mother struggled a lot to get her where she is today…she can’t even talk bout this to this guy because he says that “umfaka under pressure” (she is putting to much pressure on him) ---a good friend of mine said that he should have thought ‘bout the circumstances before he unzipped his trousers---so true but I loled at it …so the pressure made him want a break. And another thing is that his parents told him that he must sort himself out of the mess, bona they won’t help him out.