Dear editor,
Allow me to take a quick dive into the matter involving Mr. Muyunda more deeply and scholarly than just what meets the eye. I will tie this happening to colonialism and its negative impact on the peoples of Africa.
Before the imposition of a foreign white culture by colonists on Africa, African men enjoyed marrying many women through a well-established and recognized cultural system known as polygamy. Through this system, husbands consulted their first wife (aka Mai guru) before getting the second wife (aka Mai nini).
This made sure husbands and wives lived in mutual relationship and in peace. There was consented undertaking. However, Europeans brought distorted education on marriages and relationships. They taught our African parents that polygamous marriages were evil and against godliness, this was a moral front they advanced to cripple a legitimate cultural foundation.
On the health, they advanced that polygamous marriages were a danger to social life as it was a driver of the deadly HIV virus (this maybe contemporary knowledge).
The moral front in my opinion weighed heavily as Africans left their long held believes and style of life in fear of deadly consequences if they went against the white god. Little did they know this was an incubator of social and marital disorder in many ways.
A law was crafted that suits only a colonialists of bigamy. What nonsense is this? Bigamy under which culture? African or European? Africans must rethink, majority of the law she is using are a tyrannical legacy of colonialism and only those with imperialist mentality which demonize what Mr. Muyunda was doing.
He commit no wrong apart from using the same colonial legacy – the church. That marriage should have been held at some traditional place officiated by an African elder or priest. This nonsense of colonialism must come to an end.
Mr. Muyunda is just unfortunate that his marriage was not properly planned. His first wife was misled by neighbours and it was done out of jealous. He’s was a cultural undertaking using colonial system. That’s why it could not work. He wanted to legitimatize what many men including many of us here do secretly.
Let’s go back to our roots, all this uncalled for drama will end. Mr. Muyunda needs every logical African man not colonists aligned men who believe every right thing is one that is Eurocentric.
By CMC
Lusaka
