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Nobody is saying it out loud, but I’ve seen people genuinely freaking out about their engagement announcement on Facebook not getting enough likes.

You know the one – a picture of the happy couple, another of the couple holding hands, and then the up close shot of the engagement ring.

Can’t go skimping on that ring with the close up in the mix, but at least there’s some resale value on the jewels if things go south.

As for a refund on lobola – nope, not so lucky.

Huffington Post asked around about what happens to lobola that’s been paid, should a couple split, and here’s what they found:

According to Zulu culture, if you pay lobola, you are not due a “refund” should things go haywire between you and your wife-to-be.

“Lobola is not forced on anyone, a man pays lobola out of the willingness of his heart,” explained cultural expert and lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Gugu Mkhize.

This is why Zulu proverbs say “Khethile, khethile” [you’ve made your pick, you’ve made your pick] and “izinkomo azibuyeli emuva” [cows don’t go back].

“So when lobola is paid, so to speak, culturally, that’s it. It’s not refundable,” she told HuffPost.

Looks like ‘pay back the lobola’ ends the same way as ‘pay back the money’.

There is a catch, though – Mkize stresses that it’s actually up to the lady’s parents to decide:

“It wholly depends on them. They can out of the goodness of their hearts do so, but according to my understanding, it is up to them and not necessarily mandatory — because you were never forced to pay lobola in the first place.”

Mkhize said we must remember what the initial intention of lobola was: “For a man to thank the girl’s parents for raising her and to build family relations between the two new families.”

…”I’ve heard that some men have taken the girl’s family to court for lobola refund, arguing that they paid too much for it to ‘go down the drain’. I’ve also heard of women that actually pay back lobola to their exes, wanting to ‘owe no one’. This makes it complicated — as lobola, for one, was not meant to be a commercial transaction or a safety net you can withdraw at a later stage, should things go sour.”

The topic of refundable lobola was also discussed at length back in January of 2016, when local football star Jimmy Tau coughed up R200 000 in lobola payments, only for the woman to leave him before the wedding took place.

That time around, Destiny Connect spoke to cultural expert Dr Nomagugu Ngobese:

“We need to first define what lobola is: It is a gift made by a man to the bride’s family and the man gives what he can afford. Traditionally there is no prescribed fee, but today people make a competition out of it, saying so-and-so’s daughter got this much, so I want more for mine,” she explains…

She says the bastardisation of the culture has now complicated things to such an extent that family members now have to keep receipts of what they have given each other.

“Before, it was possible for a girl to run away from her intended to someone that she loved, and lobola would not be an issue because there wasn’t a lot of money involved in the transaction,” she laughs.

I guess it pays to be sure that you’ve met the one, before you start forking over the cash and the cows.

Unless you’re Jacob Zuma and you have cash to burn.

[sources:huffpost&destiny]