Marital Litigation in Early Colonial Lesotho 1870-1900
Résumés
Litiges conjugaux au Lesotho au début de la période coloniale, 1870-1900. – En s’appuyant sur des témoignages juridiques, cet article explore l’expérience des femmes africaines dans le système juridique du Lesotho à la période coloniale. Il montre comment les femmes utilisaient des moyens légaux et illégaux pour faire valoir leurs intérêts conjugaux et obtenir la garde de leurs enfants. L’article conclut que malgré tous les effets pervers de la restructuration des liens entre les hommes et les femmes BaSotho, notamment les liens conjugaux, les efforts des missionnaires et la législation coloniale ont offert de nouvelles opportunités aux femmes. Celles-ci ont utilisé ces nouveaux acquis (pendant une courte période seulement) pour s’extraire d’unions indésirables et pour obtenir la garde de leurs enfants.
This article mines court testimonies to explore the experience of African women in the colonial judicial system in colonial Lesotho. Focusing on spouses embroiled in marital litigation before colonial justices, it investigates how women manipulated legal and extralegal avenues to advance their marital and child custody interests. It concludes that for all their ill effects of restructuring BaSotho gender, especially marital relations, missionary endeavours and early colonial legislation opened new opportunities for women. Women used these newly acquired and short-lived advantages to extract themselves from undesirable marriages and to successfully claim their children’s custody.
Entrées d'index
Mots clés :
tribunaux, missionnaires, adultère, femmes et droit, mariages africains, garde d’enfants, colonie, violence conjugaleKeywords :
marital litigation, women’s agency, women and the law, colonial, missionaries, gender, divorce, adultery, courts, Lesotho, African marriages, child custody, domestic violence, marital discordsNote de la rédaction
Pule Phoofolo is a senior lecturer of history at Walter Sisulu University, South Africa. His newly-acquired interest in gender and legal history has already resulted in the publication of his well received article on “Female Extramarital Relationships and their Regulation in Early Colonial Thembuland”, published as a lead article in volume 30, no. 1, 2005 of the Journal of Family History.