Today we are going to be looking at another hot topic in the nation concerning Zimbabwean Roora, and we will be taking an in-depth analysis of the Roora Squad. The name seems to be popping up often when you talk of paying the bride price so let’s take a closer look…
A Roora squad is a group of ladies who accompany a woman (muroora) who is about to be traditionally married on her official lobola ceremony
Roora Squad or Lobola Squad is a new term or slang referring to the team girls at a traditional African wedding ceremony, Roora (Lobola). These are somewhat the equivalent of bridesmaids on a white wedding. Sometimes the term also refers to the men and his team of supporting friends.
The term gradually gained popularity from around 2017 and the Roora squad name has now become a staple name since 2020, because of the lockdowns white weddings were hard to come by, and the girls had to come up with something right. Can you blame them?
Roora Squads usually dress for the Roora occasion just as deliberately as people have traditionally done for “White” weddings and the choice of dress is almost always traditional African prints. The bridesmaids in the squad are usually a group of friends supporting the bride in the Roora process as she celebrates and enters a new phase of life – that of a married person.
In the past bride’s best friends have always played an unofficial supportive role in Zimbabwean traditional marriages, but because white weddings are becoming less and less Roora squads are a new phenomenon. Usually, the bride’s friends would wait for the wedding day to send off their friend, but since there are more limiting factors because of the pandemic we are seeing a rise of this new tradition. The number of friends is larger, averaging 5 and sometimes more. The deliberate dressing, posing for photos, and sharing them on social media under the hashtag #RooraSquad is also new.
Ladies can do whatever is necessary to prepare for the Roora day although most of the stuff is up to the main family, the squad is responsible for helping the bride to look for tailors or designers that will make the dresses they will wear on the day and make sure they are the perfect fit, help the bride to look for photographers, caterers and make-up artist as well.
Before looking pretty, the ladies might help with a lot of things like helping the bride prepare to dress and makeup, cooking food for the vakuwasha and serve the food to the available guests.
Most often, bridesmaids cover the cost of their dress, shoes, accessories, and hair and makeup for the Roora day. The bride may offer to cover any of the costs if she has the money to do so.
The idea that a bride needs to be surrounded by unmarried women is ancient history, the Roora squad can consist of mum’s, aunties sister in laws and even grandmothers etc there is not set age or marriage requirement for a Roora squad since friends and relatives are fit for the role.
It now seems if you don’t have a Roora squad these days it’s the equivalence of not having a bridal team on your wedding day, there was no hype or attention around the Roora squad practice but as fate would have it Roora Squads have been made popular following the reported Roora Squad drama in April 2021 in which we had comments from people like Relationship counselor and United Methodist Church Evangelist Bernard Banda and Mai Chisamba commenting on it. Chances we all had our fair share of viral stories so I will not get into much detail but will probably make another article about it in the future talking about the advantages and disadvantages of modern-day Roora so do keep an eye out.
There isn’t much at the moment that the Roora squad can do since it is a fairly new practice that people are still discovering, there is also the idea of a combined Roora / weddings that is on the rise again these days but is a topic for another day.