In
a sleepy village known as Slovo Park near Siyabuswa, villagers were
torn with joy and surprise as they witnessed a rather strange wedding
where, a mother and son exchanged wedding vows.The son, a traditional healer from Siyabuswa in Mpumalanga, said he married his biological mother in a wedding ceremony to appease his ancestors. He now calls his mother “my wife”.
On Sunday more than 2000 people turned up to witness the wedding of Buti Mphethi , 28, to his mother Francinah Makunyane, 62.
Mphethi said that his forefathers had instructed him to pay lobola to his mother’s family before he could marry his wife, who stays separately from her own husband, Buti’s father.
Mphethi paid the lobola of two cows to his mother with a street value of R14 000.
The wedding was arranged and took place at his mother’s home in the same village on Saturday and finished at his home at the weekend.
Mphethi dropped out of his second year studies in sound engineering at the Tshwane University of Technology in 2003 to become a sangoma.
He felt it was a calling from his ancestors.
Mphethi said he had been married before, but it did not work out. His wife left him four years ago.
Mphethi said that his father William Mphethi was still alive, and had four wives. The father stays with the elder wife in Burgersfort, Limpopo.
He was confident that marrying his own mother had been in line with his culture.
Speaking to The New Age, the beaming bride, Makunyane, said she never imagined having a ‘white wedding’ because she was a grown up.
“I am now old enough and getting married was never in my mind. My son really did a good thing to marry me before he can marry his wife.
“This process is part of our culture. I am now a married woman because he represented his father,” she said, before bursting into tears of joy
