Outliving love: marital estrangement in an African insurance market

Abstract

Marital estrangement and formal divorce are vital conjunctures for married women's kinship relations and life course, when a horizon of future possibilities are revalued and negotiated at the interstices of custom, law, and social and ritual obligations. In this article, after delineating the forms of customary and civil marriage and the possibilities for divorce or estrangement from each, I describe how some married women in Swaziland and South Africa mediate this complex social field for their children and families through pensions and continuing to pay for their partners' insurance coverage. This was not solely out of avarice to reap future benefits as spouses. Rather, in a context of patriarchal relations, gender-based violence and economic dispossession, women seek to maintain potential financial grounds through insurance resources, acknowledge their children's paternity, and fulfill enduring obligations to in-laws by partially contributing to the eventual funerals of their spouses and kin.

Love matters: exploring conceptions of love in Rwanda and Swaziland and relationship to HIV and intimate partner violence

“…In Rwanda, women in informal marriages have been found to be more prone to social discrimination, have less influence in household decision-making compared to married women, and have less legal protection than do married women regarding land and property rights, custody of children, and IPV (Stern & Mirembe, 2017). In contrast, Simelane (2011) and Golomski (2016) provide evidence that Swazi courts (both traditional and civil) do not protect married women against mistreatment by husbands, even in cases of extreme physical violence.…”

Not marrying in South Africa: consumption, aspiration and the new middle class

“…Reluctance to marry, or readiness to embrace single parenthood, goes beyond problems with bridewealth (see Golomski 2016). Nor is this reluctance a new phenomenon: it has been widely documented in previous studies of both urban and rural South Africa (see van der Vliet 1991).…”

Ironies of Solidarity

“…Thus, the care that funeral insurance enables contributes to organizing a funeral model of how life should have been. Golomski (2015Golomski ( , 2016Golomski ( , 2018a argued along these lines when he examined funeral insurance in Swaziland. According to Golomski (2015), funeral insurance is a "compassion technology" because it facilitates care while simultaneously transforming gender relations among kin.…”