Since I used to write an essay defining the word marriage and one of the aspect I considered was polygamy, this article instantly catch my attention. It is an article in the magazine section of the BBCNews which is "How do Zulus explain polygamy?”.
The article is about the defense of South African president Jacob Zuma over the UK press attack of his polygamous marriage. It turns out that Mr.President of South Africa has three wives and he claims that it is the culture of his country. He also explains that polygamy fits very well in his society because, in Africa, there are more men than women as the result of dangerous activities men have to do. Also, the more members in one family the more assets they can raise together. He also points out some more points to justify his personal life in this aspect. However, not every South Africans agree with him. Also, some of his, and his supporters’, points are proved to be wrong, for example, some say that polygamy helps to balance men and women population so that women can be married and not left out and it helps on HIV issue. However, there are 5 million people in the country who have HIV positive.
At first glance, my response to this article is that I don’t think polygamy is the solution for the imbalance in population of men and women, especially in modern world. We live in such a small world, if guys in your country are so scarcely, go to China! And it’s not like girls can not live on their own, right? Nevertheless, that is just my opinion which reasoned in accordance with Thai culture that is in my head. Actually, we live in the multi-cultural world where issue like this would occur more and more. I think in the mean time, different cultures must find the way to compromise. We have to be more open-minded to other cultures but it’s also necessary that we not abandon our own culture. However, I don’t think that culture shock is supposed to be a battle; we don’t have to specify which culture is better than the rest.
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References
Diffin, E.., How do Zulus explain polygamy?”. (2010,March 4). BBCNews, retrived on Mach7, 2010 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8549429.stm
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