Educational Media Reviews Online

Focusing on women who are co-wives in a village in South Africa, the filmmaker interviews several women - both first and second wives - while going about their daily routines. The men of the village, who are able to work, are living and working in other cities for 5-12 months at a time. The women, left to run the village and their families, have to do the work of both sexes.

The sometimes brutally honest interviews reveal the women’s feelings about their husband, their individual relationships to him, their fears of rejection, their attitudes towards each other and their struggles trying to make ends meet. Each woman has a different relationship with her co-wife, some talk to each other and work together while others ignore or badmouth each other. These women are caught in the middle as they struggle with their independence in providing for themselves, their families, and the subservient nature of their relationships with their husbands and mothers-in-law.

This documentary was created after the filmmaker conducted similar interviews with men in a Johannesburg hostel. They talked about their village and their wives and their work that kept them away for months and years at a time. The addition of those interviews would have been an interesting juxtaposition to the views of these women. A good anthropological study of women in a South African village trying to provide for themselves and their families, Zulu Love Affair is a good addition to any public or academic library women’s studies collection. Recommended.