Calculate your lobola with this smartphone app

LOBOLA, sometimes translated as bride price, is a traditional Southern African custom whereby the man pays the family of his fiancée for her hand in marriage.

Traditionally the Lobolo payment was in cattle, however, many modern urban couples have switched to using cash.

Lobola ‘stress’ is known to cause both the prospective bride and groom to have sleepless nights leading up to the nuptials, but for completely different reasons.

But never fear, help is on the way in the form of a Lobola Calculator app.

The app is easy and simple to use, and provides users with a Facebook post, but it’s not to be taken seriously. Marketed as ‘fun and playful’, download the app to see what you are worth.

How does it work?
You begin by stating whether you’re male or female and then answer a series of questions like how much you weigh, what your height is and what qualifications you have.
And at the end of the questionnaire, you find out how many cows you’re worth, in livestock and in Rands.

To test the theory, ZO Digital Manager, Angela Kelly tried it out and found out that her lobola would be 10 live cows or a hefty R80 500.

We then tried it again, this time using a fictional, employed, 46 year old woman with children, who had been married before.
Her ‘bride price’ was – 4 cows.

Good thing this is a game, because real life just doesn’t work that way.