According to Isaac Schapera, a leading anthropologist on Setswana customs, bonyatsi is when 'a man who is already married takes a concubine (nyatsi). The concubine maybe a divorcee, or a widow who would formerly have been taken over by one of her late husband's relatives; but most often she is a lefetwa that is a woman who has never been married and is held to have passed the suitable age for marriage.
The man visits her openly and regularly at her own home, and her people acquiesce in the relationship, so long as he feeds and clothes her and the children he has by her, ploughs for her, and helps her in various other ways..." Bonyatsi, more especially among men, is encouraged by Setswana sayings like, "Monna selepe o a amoganwa," and "Monna ga a nke a bodiwa gore o tswa kae." The latter saying is normally emphasised when a newly wedded bride is being counselled during the go laa (bride's counselling) ceremony.
Mothebe recalls that during his days as a young miner in South Africa, his married colleagues used to sneak out of their lodgings to meet their concubines at 'locations' where they were exposed to all sorts of dangers. The artist says that the tsotsi's used to lure the unsuspecting miners to the locations with their beautiful girlfriends. "Many of our guys went out to locations and were killed fighting for dinyatsi with local tsotsi's," Mothebe says. He says that money was always the motive with the tsotsis because what they did was that if they caught a miner courting their girlfriends, they would demand cash by threatening their lives. To avoid practising bonyatsi, Mothebe claims that he used to save all the money he earned at work and returned to Botswana as soon as he went on leave. Mothebe says it is not only men who practise bonyatsi. "Sometimes it would so happen that you would come back home to find that your wife is pretending to be sick and denying you your conjugal rights. If you investigate the matter you will discover that the woman is pregnant with another man's child," Mothebe says with a cynical smile.
