Women sang about their dilemmas and the burdens they faced, but they also negotiated with men and children within households for control of labour, access to resources and services. Fathers, husbands and in-laws had customary rights to claim women's labour, but never without boundaries of support and protection. Paid hoe labour in the sugar or rice fields along the Incomati River, referred to by the irate husband above, was also hard work, but the wages women earned there also went into their own hands. Poor women increasingly shifted from seasonal to more full time labour on these plantations. Indeed, women in unsupported or abusive situations concluded that they, not their husbands, were the ones who knew how they should work. Thousands used the money they earned to solve some of their problems, problems that unfortunately might well involve their husbands.

Men's ability as spouses, fathers, siblings and uncles to provide for and protect their families had a great impact on women throughout this period. Women did not ‘destroy their homes and abandon their husbands’ because of ‘a small criticism’ or out of sheer bravado. The evidence simply does not support that. Women knew the price they would pay for their decision to leave – nothing about that price was small. It was only when a spouse or parent died, when spouses, parents or others failed to support women or actively abused them, only when women were stretched to breaking point or feared retaliation did they decide to leave. Leaving meant repaying lobolo and perhaps having to leave one's children.