The Ties that Bind

In tin-roofed village halls throughout Tanzania, angry members of the National Women's Organization stamped their feet and raised their voices in a rhythmic chant: "One man, one wife, is the proper way of life." Petitions poured in to the government, including one that warned in Swahili: "To admit a second wife is to bring poison into the home." A letter to a Dar es Salaam newspaper cautioned simply: "Polygamy will give men big heads."

The subject of this distaff dissent is a controversial marriage-reform bill proposed by the Tanzanian government. Among the East African country's 12.5 million people, Christian monogamy has traditionally existed side by side with Moslem and pagan polygamy. The situation is fraught with inconsistencies and injustices. As Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere, a Roman Catholic, explains: "We have always accepted that Moslems can have four wives, and tribalists can have ten or 20. But if I should take a second wife, I could be prosecuted. Yet the police constable who arrested me might be a polygamist. The prosecutor might be a polygamist, as well as the magistrate who sentenced me to four years at hard labor. This is ridiculous." Under the new proposals, said Nyerere, "It will be between a man and his wife and his God."

Installment Plan. The plan specifies that a man may take a second wife if his first wife gives her consent. Partly to ensure that the consent will be freely given, it forbids either spouse from inflicting corporal punishment on the other. It also ends child marriage by raising the wedding age to 18 for men and to 15 for women and sets up village conciliation boards for mending broken marriages. Such red tape will deprive the Moslem male of his traditional right to shed a wife simply by declaring "I divorce thee" three times. The plan would not abolish the ancient custom of bride price, which often amounts to ten or 20 prime cows. But it would ease the young man's burden by permitting him to pay his in-laws on the installment plan after the wedding.

For six months the marriage proposals were heatedly debated throughout Tanzania. Some women demanded that, in the name of equality, they be allowed to take more than one husband. Christians denounced the provision permitting polygamy. Moslems quarreled with the requirement that a first wife must consent to her husband's taking another. A male legislator said of the proposed ban on corporal punishment: "Some women never feel satisfied with their husbands' love if they are not beaten."

More Harm than Good. Despite such arguments, the Tanzanian Parliament, which has 179 males and only seven females, overwhelmingly indicated its approval of the new code. When the bill comes up for a formal vote, perhaps at Parliament's session next June, it is virtually certain to be enacted. The ladies of Tanzania did not accept defeat gracefully. "Let the men marry as many wives as they please," shrugged Lucy Lameck, the Member of Parliament from Kilimanjaro Central. "They will come to realize that they are doing more harm than good to themselves."

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