The time has come to bring to a close our video series on marriage and its various facets among the Akele of Gabon. This week’s featured video covers a fitting theme to end our series: death and widowhood, in particular women’s widowhood.

Once again, Papa Kédine, the patriarch of a small Akele community in the Lake region surrounding Lambaréné, discusses this topic in a short interview. He describes the practice of levirate marriage (i.e. the remarriage of a widow to a brother of the late husband), which is intended to guarantee the material and financial security of the widow and her children.

Throughout Antiquity, levirate marriage was practiced by the Egyptians and the Phoenicians. Mention of levirate marriage is also made in the Bible, most notably in the story of Er and Onan. According to its biblical interpretation, levirate marriage only takes place if the surviving brother has no male heirs, in order to perpetuate the late husband’s name and to ensure the transmission of his patrimony.

In Africa, levirate marriage is far more flexible, and can take on different forms depending on the community, on the age of the widow and her capacity to bear children, and on the marital status of the late husband’s brother. The sociologist Isabelle Gillette-Faye specifies that this tradition can result in women co-habitating with a man who thereby becomes a polygamist, if he isn’t one already. « Their relationship does not necessarily include sexual relations », says Gillette-Faye, « but if the woman is still young enough to give birth, she will have her new husband’s children, who later will contribute to the improvement of the community’s daily life. » In the other case, when a male polygamist dies, his sons marry the co-spouses of their biological mother.

That being said, the institution of levirate marriage is now under fire, even in Africa. While this custom was initially meant to protect widows, it is now being corrupted by far more mercantile motivations: increasingly more men accept the responsibility of a new wife solely for the purpose of collecting their inheritance. Many testimonies record occasions wherein men sell off the land or livestock that they have inherited, then leave their new wife and her children to fend for themselves. In Kenya, levirate marriage has been manipulated to the point that « wife sponges », a type of levirate gigolo, are payed by the family-in-law to seize the property of wives who have just lost their husbands…

It is also noteworthy that the practice of levirate marriage coexists alongside its female equivalent, the sororate marriage (i.e. when a male widow remarries a sister of his late wife). Again, the origins of this tradition give way to corruption and manipulation. If a wife is barren, she is compelled to supply her husband with a sister who is able to have children; the first wife, however, will be considered the mother to these children.

Today, while levirate marriage is still largely accepted in certain African countries (Burkina Faso, Togo, etc…) it has been strictly banned in other countries, because it is considered to be subjugating practice that goes hand in hand with polygamy. In Benin, for example, levirate marriage was banned simultaneously with polygamy, on 17 June 2004.

Linguist: Jean-Marie Hombert
Camera and sound: Luc-Henri Fage
Translation: Hugues Awanhet
Editing: Caroline Laurent