Carnivorous Cow shook her head sadly. She'd also read the report. It seemed clear from the one reported comment in particular that these boys equated the transaction of lobola with the purchase of the woman, despite other representations of this practice elsewhere.
Which made the Cow wonder - if someone arrived at the home of one of these boys with a reasonable number of cattle, and a request to the boy's family, would the boy consent to be purchased as a sex slave? To be beaten as a sign of love, should the purchaser feel he was "misbehaving"? To be set aside for another love interest should the purchaser desire sex elsewhere? There were, after all, men who preferred male partners to female, and the Constitution provided for equality in terms of sexual preference, so should these men not be allowed to exercise their consititutional rights in terms of lobola, and traditional marriage, too? And, given the Constitutional equality of the sexes, should women - among whom there were now some who could afford to pay lobola - not also be afforded the opportunity to pay lobola for the men of their choosing, and have the same rights of access to which the schoolboys felt lobola entitled one?
But, as a Cow, she felt deeply aggrieved at being commodified as an exchange medium in the spousal purchase transaction. She wondered if some political party could be lobbied to champion the extension of the provisions of the Constitution to other species, too.