Just over a decade ago in South Africa, a flurry of media reports surfaced about a customary practice known as ukuthwala. The reports described a rise in ukuthwala characterised by the kidnapping, ...

A 60-year-old man was sentenced to life and 17 years imprisonment by the Greytown Regional Court after he raped a 17-year-old girl in an attempt to force her to be his wife. Natasha Ramkisson-Kara, ...

Babalwa Ntutu’s* parents thought their prayers had been answered. They were looking forward to spending Christmas Day with their daughter — even if it was at her hospital bedside. But, on Tuesday last ...

What is marital rape and why should we pay more attention to it? Though marriage rates in southern Africa have decreased over the past decades, marriage is still considered to be an ideal social tool ...

“Back home in the Eastern Cape, ukuthwala is normal and has always been, so long as one has the means to pay lobola and if the girl’s family consent to have her married,” a man at the Clare Estate ...

A man who practised ukuthwala many years ago is still happily married, a briefing by the Commission for the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Cultural, Religious, and Linguistic Communities ...

More than 90,000 South African girls between the ages of 12 and 17 were either married, divorced, separated, widowed or living with a partner as husband and wife in 2016. The latter formed the ...

Ukuthwala is a term in Nguni languages which has various meanings. It can refer to ways (including abduction) of making a customary marriage happen quickly. South Africa has a varied cultural make-up, ...