By Farayi Mungoshi

RECENTLY, in one of the tabloids, a man is reported to have hung himself because he couldn’t provide for his wife.
The report states that the man used to witness his wife bring other men to their marital abode.
It seems marriage issues are frequently headlining our newspapers these days.
Marriages are falling apart, Zimbabweans are divorcing at an alarmingly higher rate now than the previous generation regardless of where they are staying, be it Zimbabwe, South Africa or the UK.
Discussions on whatsapp groups are full of arguments between men and women about who should do what in the home.
For example, things such as who should prepare bathing water take centre stage.
It seems women feel used by men, while men feel women are abdicating their duties which they must perform because a bride-price was paid on them.
Sadly, both parties are wrong to think like this; roles within the marital home should not be performed as if they are some kind of forced duty but rather should reflect the love and care within the home.
The truth is that we are not living under normal circumstances; the invasion of our culture by Western culture through media bombardment is changing us and putting ideas in our heads that are contrary to our African ideologies and beliefs.
What this man might see as pampering (the boiling of bathing water) by the woman he loves, we have the woman on the other hand viewing it as a duty a slave is expected to perform for her master.
Why are we thinking like this now when these practices have been carried out for centuries without complaints? Why now?
The fact that a woman is married to an abusive husband does not in any way qualify our ideologies as being abusive too.
Basically what I am trying to say is that we are now a mixed bag, our views and thoughts are flying all over the place; husband and wife are failing to understand each other in the home because they are being influenced by different cultures, therefore they are failing to steer the household in the direction it ought to go.
Most married couples who moved to Western countries can concur with what I am saying because life is expensive there; most men have had to adjust and agree to taking turns changing nappies, doing dishes at home while the spouse is out working because hiring a nanny or maid to do all these things is also quite costly. Most marriages that managed to adjust survived.
The reason marriages are facing difficulties is simply because we have already welcomed an alien culture but we are failing to live it.
When we look back to the core of hunhu/ubuntu and how it can be summarised according to Michael Onyebuchi Eze, we understand that:
“A person is a person through other people’ strikes on affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an ‘other’ in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the ‘other’ becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am. The ‘I am’ is not a rigid subject, but a dynamic self constitution dependent on this otherness creation of relation and distance.”
Our culture nor tradition throughout the years has never disrespected women or looked down upon them or humanity as a whole.
Even though our predecessors carried out different duties within the home, they did this together as a team, benefitting the whole household; not the husband alone or the wife alone but the whole house, including the children.
While the men were out hunting or fighting off raids, the women were tending to all the household chores.
They had an understanding and I would like to believe that this did not make either sex the stronger or the weaker, rather it made the house a household.
It is not about pointing fingers but about humbling ourselves to a greater cause, which is the family.
I am because you are. I am what I am because of you. Family is what binds us together it is what gives us identity.
Through family, values we hold dear are taught and in that we are defined.
I recall how my grandmother rebuked me at my uncle’s funeral when I told her I had to rush back to Harare before the distribution of the deceased’s effects and possessions ceremony the next day. “Who do you think will bury you when you die?” she asked.
With the inception of the new culture (Western), our people have lost their way.
They seem to favour money now more than preservation of life as taught by hunhu/ubuntu philosophy.
For us to preserve our families, our marriages, we need to look back at those principles that made us a people.
Only hunhu/ubuntu or good moral values can help us understand that even without money, the household will stand if husband and wife work together as one, without fighting.
Performing a household chore does not necessarily make one the lesser or weaker sex.
It is very possible to cut down on divorces and cases of domestic violence if we remember who we are as a people.
I am what I am because we are.