Is it enough to talk of marriage as a process? Legitimate co-habitation in Umlazi, South Africa

Abstract

Some 65 years ago Radcliffe-Brown wrote that marriage is “not an event or a condition but a developing process.” This position became modified two decades later when John Comaroff and Simon Roberts demonstrated the ambiguity of the process of marriage in order to challenge the dominant “jural” view. This article argues that these insights still hold well, but that in an era of very low marriage rates in Southern Africa the processual approach is in need of revisiting. Based on research in Umlazi township, Durban, it explores the rise of legitimate co-habitation whereby relatively small amounts of bridewealth-related payments can enable a couple to live together. Such relations are located in what appears to be a growing social space between “full” marriage and ukukipita, a term suggesting illegitimate cohabitation. Instead of evaluating legitimate cohabitation in terms of whether or not it represents a road to marriage, the article stresses how it reconfigures gender and family relationships and enables access to land and housing. The article concludes that marriage remains a critical symbolic marker in all relationships, but that South Africans are finding innovative ways to cohabit.