It is no longer news that the women of South Sudan practice a common and proper tradition to be married off to a dead man. Amazingly, after marrying the dead, such women are not labeled as widows but and married women who have functioning families and children for their dead husbands.
Women in South Sudan are women who live in and are from South Sudan. Since the Independence of South Sudan on 9 July 2011, these women have gained more power but still face issues of inequality. Many women in this area do not have adequate access to health resources and education.
The “ghost marriage” is a practice similar to the levirate, whereby a woman marries a man in the name of his deceased brother. We find this rare form of an alliance in very few cultures and aims at ensuring the legacy of a lineage.
For rich women among the Nuer of South Sudan, it is a means of preserving their own wealth; a woman can thus take on the role of a man and marry another woman, who will bear children in the name of the “ghost pater.” Sometimes, as in China, this marriage can erase the shame of being an unwed woman and can appease the spirit of the dead man.
Posthumous marriage has been legal and not uncommon in France since the 1920s. The scarcity of data around this practice prevents a longitudinal approach and an in-depth analysis of patterns of change through time.
They make a woman have a ghost marriage for several reasons; one of the most popular reason being that her husband-to-be suddenly died before the set date of marriage. In such cases, the ghost marriage will happen when both families have been introduced to each other, and they have made the union official.
During the wedding ceremony, the brother of the dead represents the dead partner, and the wedding ceremony proceeds like many other regular wedding ceremonies. While several women continue to be married off in ghost marriages against their will, a bigger number can now speak against it while others continue to see it as a mere part of the culture.
Ghost marriages are slowly becoming a thing of the past as the practice is not as vibrant as it used to be. However, it is not likely to be totally wiped out of society soon as several groups in South Sudan still find it very necessary and keep passing it on to the younger generation.
