Supplementary wives were culturally preferred to bear more children and to serve as economic assets for managing a rich husband's cattle or land plots.
[4] For husbands who could afford it, each wife resided in separate, economically self-sufficient compounds that they each managed in addition to their domestic duties.
Her compound was not considered a primary household, though if she bore his first son, his status as his father's successor would gave her a particular importance.
This included deposing King Yuhi V Musinga for his refusal to convert, limiting administrative positions exclusively to Christians, and a 1931 polygamy tax on additional wives.
[7] Despite organized resistance from the Nyabingi cult in northern Rwanda, the conversion of King Mutara III Rudahigwa led to a mass adoption of Roman Catholicism.