Swaziland bans divorces

MBABANE - King Mswati III says that there is no divorce in a marriage conducted under Swazi Law and Custom. The monarch said there was no earthly forum that had the powers to declare a customary marriage null and void. Only death, the King said, can bring a customary marriage to an end.

Of late the kingdom's courts have seen an upsurge of cases where individuals married under Swazi Law and Custom want their marriages nullified. But the King said: "We do not even need to sign any documents to prove that marriage because you find that in future such documents are torn apart when some members of the family say the marriage is not in existence and, therefore, the documents should be torn. We do not have such under Swazi culture; we do not encourage it and practice this. All we know is that a person dies at their marital home. That is the Swazi way which was designed by God."

The King said once a woman was smeared with red ochre (libovu), that meant the person was now a wife and therefore cannot be smeared with red ochre again by another family.Red ochre is a substance that a woman is smeared with during a ceremony known as kuteka, which is one of the early stages in customary marriage."

"Once you are smeared with red ochre, it is not like in a marriage where you can divorce and then go on to sign another marriage document with another man. Once you are smeared with red ochre, no other family can also do that to you because that would be taboo to them. Nothing would ever go well for that family."

The King said even if a wife was to desert her husband, she would be fetched to mourn him once the man died. He noted that Swazi customary marriage was good and therefore encouraged that the youth should be taught about it."The youth should know that once you get married traditionally, that marriage cannot be undone, yet other foreign forms of marriage can be undone," said the King.