For an African man, this thing called love has a different spin. If Jeff lived in Africa, this wouldn’t be much of a big news as it is now because though we are in 2019, only a few African men hold their grounds in total commitment to their women. There is also a difference between total commitment to the woman versus to the marriage.

 

A typical  African man thinks that by all tradition and norms, he has gender superiority over the woman, and thus should get away with infidelity and even more.

 

 It’s why there is plenty-plenty sugar daddies a.k.a ‘Alhajis’ or “Mugun Money Spenders (MMS)”. They are ‘godfathers’ for young beautiful ladies who are oftentimes well educated, but can’t find a job, and yet must pay bills and sometimes take responsibility for the care of their siblings.

 

The sugar daddy, whom Jeff would have easily been were he an African man living on the continent, would prodigally spend out family income lavishing money for blows and attention from needy women and thereby furthering the perpetration of male dominance over  ladies in many African societies. His woman at home who  must remain calm would  even appreciate the fact that he at least return home and sleep on the bed.

 

 

In Africa, infidelity between a married couple isn’t socially unacceptable, and many see it as an exercise of men’s “[in]balance of power”. This thinking is so fundamental that an African man even thinks he’s doing his wife a favor by ‘only’ sleeping around versus marrying the second or the third, or even worse, divorcing her. Flip the scenario around, and you would have awoken the men gods and unleashed the war of the entire neighborhoods against you.

 

 Unless the family of the woman is rich, or the woman is somehow financially comfortable and well educated to fight for her own, divorcing a man in Africa, for whatever reasons, may mean that the woman is accepting (i)to not lay a claim on anything earned by the couple during marriage, and in fact, depending on the country and the society within Africa, it may also mean (ii) a denial of access to the children.

 

In Africa, there is an hierarchy of patronage, or at least an expectation of it, between  husband and wife as it were between a boss and his/her employee.

 

 

 The Gist Continues-