I often find myself considering the price we pay for tradition. As a staunch supporter of cultural practices like lobola, I’ve witnessed how tradition often becomes an attempt to appease the dead by bullying the living.

I stood helplessly watching a grieving husband being denied the right to bury his wife. His crime? An outstanding lobola balance. The pain in his eyes as he scrambled to borrow money, even as he struggled to explain to his children why their mother’s funeral was delayed, shows how tradition has mutated into a weapon of control. What began as a sacred covenant between families has transformed into a tool for emotional and financial extortion.

The vulture-like behaviour that follows death particularly illustrates this perversion of tradition. Relatives swoop in with calculating precision, armed with mental inventories of what “belongs” to them. The wife’s family claims the kitchen utensils, stating, “Our daughter worked for these,” while conveniently ignoring the grandchildren who still need to eat from those very plates. On the other side, the husband’s family strips the house bare of “what our son worked for,” leaving a bereaved spouse and children in a hollow home filled only with grief and emptiness.

During my cousin’s wedding preparations, I watched her struggle silently with the elaborate ceremonies the family insisted upon. Her tears, hidden behind the heavy traditional veil, spoke volumes about the price we pay to maintain these ancient customs. The elders spoke of honouring our ancestors, but all I could see was the weight of the past crushing the dreams of the present.

Our selective adherence to tradition reveals its true nature as a tool of control. We cling fiercely to the parts that benefit us financially while ignoring the traditional obligations of support, community, and family care. The absurdity of this selective modernisation struck me most forcefully watching my brother’s wife navigate her role as a new bride. At my parents’ suburban home, equipped with every modern convenience – running water, washing machines – she was still expected to wake up at dawn to cook and clean for more than twenty people. The other family members insisted she provide individual bathing water for everyone, despite the perfectly functional modern bathrooms at everyone’s disposal.

But then mum did something remarkable. In a moment that still fills me with pride, she stood before the relatives and declared that in her house, she didn’t have “varoora” (daughters-in-law), but rather sisters and children. Her intervention demonstrated how tradition can be reimagined with humanity and wisdom, how the older generation can choose to break cycles of oppression rather than perpetuate them.

Yet for every enlightened soul like my mum, who transforms tradition into a force for unity and respect, there are those who wield it as a weapon of humiliation. Recently, I watched in horror as a traditional leader in Zimbabwe ordered someone in his court to remove their prescription glasses, using crude language that stripped away both dignity and basic human need. The absurdity of denying someone their ability to see clearly in the name of “tradition” sets everything wrong with how custom is often enforced. Here was a modern medical necessity being dismissed with contempt, the leader seemingly more concerned with asserting his authority than considering the basic wellbeing of those under his jurisdiction.

In my professional life, I’ve watched talented women colleagues struggle against the invisible barriers of “traditional roles.” Their ambitions are quietly suffocated by well-meaning relatives who remind them of their “traditional duties.” I am reminded of my friend Tanatsiwa, who turned down a promotion because her family insisted it would make her “too successful” for marriage – a modern sacrifice on the altar of tradition.

I’ve sat through meetings where innovative solutions are dismissed because “that’s not how we do things here,” watching brilliant young minds deflate under the weight of outdated protocols. A colleague proposed remote work options long before COVID forced our hand, only to be told by our C suite that “successful businesses are built on face-to-face interactions” – this same C suite now proudly broadcasts company success stories over Zoom from his holiday home. The irony of sending such messages through a smartphone is apparently lost on him.The same managers who resist digital transformation tools will spend hours on social media, much like traditional leaders who denounce modern changes while enjoying their benefits.

What’s particularly jarring is how this resistance to change often comes wrapped in pseudo-wisdom about “paying your dues” or “respecting the process.” It’s the corporate equivalent of forcing someone to remove their prescription glasses in a traditional court – an exercise in power disguised as preservation of culture. The result is a toxic work environment where innovation is stifled, talent is wasted, and progress is seen as a threat to authority rather than an opportunity for growth. Anyway I digress.

The enforcement of tradition often feels like a game of generational telephone, where the original meaning gets lost, but the rules become increasingly strict. My dearly departed grandmother once confided that many of the traditions we hold sacred were far more flexible in her youth. Yet now, these same practices have become rigid laws, enforced with an almost religious fervour by those who claim to honour her generation.

The collision between tradition and modern reality echoes loudly here in the diaspora, where our cultural practices meet new social and economic demands. Recently, a heated debate erupted on Twitter, – can never bring myself to call it X – about Zimbabwean families struggling abroad because husbands refuse to help with household chores. The irony is striking – families who have embraced modern migration, international careers, and global opportunities still find themselves shackled by selective interpretations of tradition that insist household labour is exclusively women’s work.

These women, often working full-time jobs in foreign countries, are expected to maintain the same domestic duties as their grandmothers who lived in completely different circumstances. Their husbands, citing tradition, conveniently forget how our ancestors actually lived – in communities where labour was shared, where men had their own domestic duties, where the burden of running a household wasn’t left to one person alone. Instead, tradition becomes a convenient excuse for maintaining privilege, even as it threatens the very stability of these families trying to build new lives abroad.

What’s particularly revealing is how some men will readily adapt to foreign technologies, workplace cultures, and social customs, yet steadfastly resist any evolution in their domestic roles. Like my brother’s wife being forced to provide individual bathing water in a house with modern plumbing.

What troubles me the most is how we’ve become accomplished at using tradition as a mask for naked greed and control. We speak of cultural preservation while acting in ways that undermine the very values our culture was built upon. We invoke the ancestors to justify actions that would have horrified them. When did we decide that grief should be measured in monetary terms? How did we allow traditions meant to unite families to become tools for tearing them apart at their most vulnerable moments?

Yet, I cannot deny the comfort I find in certain traditions. The familiar rhythm of festival preparations, the shared stories during family meals, the ancient tribal chants that still roll off my tongue with practised ease – these moments connect me to something larger than myself. But even as I find solace in these practices, I question whether this comfort comes at too high a price for others.

I do not know if there is a way forward but wherever and whatever it is I sure do know that we need courage to speak against the monetisation of our traditions, courage to stand up for the vulnerable, and courage to rebuild the original purpose of our customs as bridges between people rather than weapons of control. We must learn to distinguish between traditions that nurture and those that constrain, between practices that unite and those that divide.

As a generation, we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that questioning tradition is rejecting it wholesale. Instead, it means examining our practices with both respect and critical awareness. It means understanding that our ancestors’ wisdom can guide us without ruling us, that their practices can inspire us without binding us.

In the end, tradition should be a conversation between generations, not a prison built by the dead to confine the living!