Social Security

Was it fitting & proper for the Fon (King) of Bikom to have as many wives as he liked? The U.N. has been burdened with this question since July 1948, when St. Joan's Social and Political Alliance of London (a Roman Catholic lay organization dedicated to women's rights) presented a complaint concerning plural marriage in the British Cameroons. One missionary, said the complaint, had reported that the Fon had 600 wives, charged that he had taken one girl to his harem by force. Last year the U.N. Trusteeship Council sent a visiting mission off to West Africa to investigate. Last week the mission sent in its report.

Accompanied by fierce-looking Fulani horsemen and hundreds of the Fon's loinclothed subjects, the U.N. emissaries had crossed formidable rivers, climbed 3,000 feet up slippery mountain paths. A bit footsore, they finally reached the Fon's tiny city of elaborately decorated houses and well-paved courtyards. Reported the mission, of the Fon: "Probably more than 80 years of age [he himself claims to be more than 100), he is now in a stage when he can take a lenient view of this interference in what he might regard as his private affairs." But he pointed out that he did not deliver opinions upon the peculiar habits of Christian society; why, then, had the outside world taken exception to his own tribe's age-old customs? In his capacity as King of all Kom Villages, Rainmaker, Custodian of the Tribal Lands and Link between the Dead, the Living and the Unborn, it was his job to see that tradition was preserved.

Furthermore, by latest census, the Fon has only 110 wives, not 600.* Forty-four of them are very old ladies whom he inherited from his predecessor. All of them, the Fon explained, lead useful and happy lives, and they are all free to leave the compound. Often the older wives themselves ask the Fon to take new wives to help with the housework. The U.N. investigators found no case where a girl had been forced into marriage. The wives of the aged Fon had only one regret: he was too old to sire any more children.

"Plural marriage in Bikom," the U.N. mission report concluded, ". . . is a type of social security which will have to remain until Western civilization through education convinces the Africans that other ways are better and preferable."

* The Fon is in more danger of loneliness than King Solomon, who had 700 wives, and King Mtessa of Buganda (1857-1884) who is said to have had 7,000.

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