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African single mothers in South Africa are unlikely to ever get married because of a shortage of eligible men.
A study by two academics from the University of Amsterdam has revealed that the options of African single mothers were reduced by the low sex ratio of 92 men to 100 women between the ages of 20 and 40 in the African community.
The study, which used the latest available statistics of the Census SA 2001, also found that 48% of African single mothers stood very little chance of ever getting hitched, partly because of their improving social status.
“This is huge compared to their white women counterparts where only 5% of them never marry,” said a co-author of the study, Professor Siv Gustafsson. “There is a big gap and it’s exacerbated by the quality of marriageable matter in the marital choice of women who have at least one child.”
Gustafsson said the study looked at income and education levels as minimum requirements that women look for in men and found that the chances of women finding an available male that qualified were slim.
“We looked at whether the men are employed — with at least R800 income a month and a minimum of high school education,” she said. “ These qualities are connected to evaluating whether the men can afford to pay lobolo for the women. It sifts out a number of men thus limiting the chances for women to get a marriageable man.”
Gustafsson said women with high- school education did not mind a man with the same level of education, while men usually aimed for lower levels.
She said most women preferred civil marriages, followed by customary and then living together without legal bindings or “vat and sit” as it is known.
Seble Yergou, a co-researcher who will be joining StatsSA to continue the research, said exposing African single mothers to the white marriage market only increased their chances by 8% .
“The marriage market in South Africa remains divided according to race. The HSRC [Human Sciences Research Council] did a study and concluded that mixed-race marriages were still very rare,” said Yergou.
She said the study made no distinction between Africans from the rest of Africa and black South Africans.
The HSRC’ s Professor Yaw Amoateng said the study reflected common patterns in most African societies.
He said in the past this problem had been dealt with by polygamy but women were now rejecting the practice.
“Women are more assertive now and they have a modern outlook on life. They want to have their own men and keep them to themselves. They don’t want to share and they insist on their rights as individuals.”
Amoateng said single men needed to work to improve their “quality” . “If there should be any policy intervention, it should be a concentrated effort to give men opportunities in terms of education and access to the job market .”
Thembi Ngubane, 32, a human resource officer at Umgeni Water in Pietermaritzburg, said the most important criterion for a prospective husband would be acceptance of her 13- year-old daughter, Mbali.
“He must be able to look after himself financially to prove that he can look after the family,” says Ngubane. “I have an eye for pretty things so he must have money for my taste.”
Deli Zikalala, secretary at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’ s medical school in Durban, is the 36-year-old single mother of a 17-year-old boy. She has given up on getting married “unless it happens by a miracle from God”.
Zikalala’s gripe is that she cannot stand doing household chores alone while her man sits and watches television. “At night he is the first one to touch you, meanwhile, you are too exhausted from the house chores.”
The other problem is infidelity. “They have mistresses all over the place because their wives are too tired from taking care of him and the children,” Zikalala said.
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