Ukuthwala in Rural South Africa: Abduction Marriage as a Site of Negotiation about Gender, Rights and Generational Authority Among the Xhosa

This paper examines the practice of ukuthwala, a kind of abduction marriage that occurs in some rural communities in South Africa, notably in the Eastern Cape. While this issue has recently been debated in the legal sphere and in the popular media, these discussions lack grounding in the lived experience of people in communities where ukuthwala is practised. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this paper discusses ukuthwala as a contemporary practice. I show that ukuthwala is a site of negotiation over rights to gender equality in rural communities, which have long been socially stratified according to gender and generation. As such, I show that ukuthwala is a site of anxiety over changing structures of gender power and generational authority. Questions of pragmatic concern for public health in relation to ukuthwala are also raised.