Meet the African king with 100 wives

Abumbi II, the 11th fon, or king, of Bafut, Cameroon, has
close to 100 wives. They weren’t all his to start with.
According to local tradition, when a fon dies, his successor
inherits all his wives and then marries his own queens. He
inherited 72 of the women from his late father. He has
also taken on over 500 children from all of his wives.
“The queens have a great role to play in the
fondom,” notes Prince Nickson, also of Bafut, noting
that it is up to these women behind the man to shape
him in his kingly role.
“Behind every successful man must be a very successful,
staunch woman,” says Abumbi’s third wife, Queen
Constance.
“Our tradition has it that when you are king, the elderly
wives remain to hand down the tradition to the younger
wives, and also to teach the king the tradition because the
king had been a prince, not a king.”
Despite the fact that polygamy is legal in Cameroon, the
data shows that there are far fewer polygamous
marriages across the African continent. The practice is
being challenged by changing values, the spread of the
Christian faith, the growing appeal of the western way of
life but also the rising costs of having large families. It is
against this backdrop that Cameroon’s traditional rulers
must walk the fine line between two often conflicting
cultures.
“During colonialism other values came in, of governance,
different from the traditional values we had and
therefore there is this constant conflict between the
traditional values and modern western values,” admits
Fon Abumbi II, who has ruled Bafut, the largest fondom
in the region, for 47 years.
Some of the king’s wives
“My role is to blend them, to find the way forward so my
subjects can enjoy the fruits of development and
modernity without destroying their culture. Without a
culture, you are not a human being, you are an animal.
And therefore the chieftaincy institution is the guarantor
of our culture.”