Retrospective 1: Traditions II: Everyday Lives of African Men

Traditions II: Everyday Lives of African Men was held in Addis Ababa on 28-30 November 2011. The event came after a long year of planning, near-disasters, miracles, obstructive bureacracy and of course wonderful people who negotiated institutional limits and boundaries. As you can tell, it was a mixed bag of highs and lows.

Following the conventions of events planning meant we needed to do certain things, that is, adhere to the traditions of academic conferences. The people must eat, must have somewhere to sit amidst the pondering and presenting, not worry about where they will sleep at nights or put on their armour of silks or sackcloth, have ample water and heat to bathe, must be moved from one point to another. Now, of course humans are social and biological and these logistical things are just part and parcel of the work of bringing people together. The traditions, resistances and compliances to mores and conventions are in the details though.

Traditions II delegates in Africa Hall

The space should surround one with the requisite institutional gravitas that the work of pondering, expounding and so forth presumably necessitates. We chose two venues. For the first day, the UNISA  Regional Learning Centre in Akaki, and so infrastructure became indicative of and showcased the transcontinental reach of our institution and the relationship to minds, hearts and bodies coming together. Maybe it was a choice of institutional power too and thus our ability as representatives of the institution to effect the making of tradition. For the second and third day, we were located in Africa Hall at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa. It is a space of now historic power. The room is reminiscent of a different era and that sense of history and time past almost lulls you into forgetting that traditions were made in this room that affected the lives of millions of Africans, the legacies of which we still contend with. Or rather one should say it is a space where history slipped practices of everyday life quietly into tradition; the dry centrifugal and yet contingent policies of states transforming the possibilities of livelihoods, romances, parenting, healthcare, travel and transportation, entertainment and who knows what else happens in rarefied spaces.

And yes, the price of corn does affect tradition. If corn is too expensive, and monocultural farming practices are enforced by global politics using Africa as a breadbasket to produce its wheat, then more people will eat bread and develop ritual practices around now scarce corn or to centralise the necessity of the wheat sheaf. The woman who insists on practicing outdated or new modes of food production in the domestic or household economy when she can no longer find corn might be scorned by her in-laws for being old-fashioned or modern, not get sex from her ravenous for corn/wheat husband for her dis/respect for traditions, will be unable to pass on her embodied histories via tradition to her children or grandchildren, has to renegotiate the caregiving and health practices that was enabled by corn production or fava beans if you will, has to make new circuits of bringing food to the home due to the un/availability of seed for corn/wheat or now go to the super baker of wheaten bread three roads or houses or neighbourhoods over rather than the has-been corn muffin old lady down the road, has to cook and experiment with new foods for the feasts and who knows what else. So yea, the space was meaningful. Does sound like a well-considered decision to have held it there, given the corn/wheat dilemma.

Did I tell you we fell in love with the space? The room is just beautiful too. At our first meeting with the space we gushed about history, and the artwork and the maroon velvet sofas and blue chairs and the enormous mural with only men in it. It is a man's space, this incredible room. Men at the apex of power making masculinities in obscure ways. For an academic conference,  that sought a renegotiation of praxis around African masculinities and tradition it was a marvellous space.

So, post-conference why have I not waxed erudite about the content of the conference and instead gone on and on about the spaces? Why am I not cataloguing the facts and themes and being all academicky about the presentations? The simple reason is I am still processing. The more complex one is that it is not possible to contain experience, no matter how gravitas-inducing the space. Memory is selective and reproducing Traditions II as tradition will be contained by the outcomes of the negotiation of memory. And that perhaps  is tradition in practice ...

The almost totally new black manifesto for dummies continued: 2 more things to remember in a world where blacks are free to be who they want to be

To continue (http://transformingtraditions.blogspot.com/2011/11/almost-totally-new-black-manifesto-for.html):

7. A critical black consciousness - here meaning a critical consciousness about all what being black entails - does not just bubble up from the biological fact of one’s body. There is not ready-made relationship between a person’s skin colour and her thought about the ideological meaning of skin colour. Dark-skinned can be - well, anything. Sometimes that thing is great. At other times it is something not to be proud of. The same applies to Africanness of course. One does not develop a questioning attitude about what Africanness mean because one lives in Africa or is referred to or refers to herself as African. Indeed, this unsettled relation between body and thought, physical location and intellectual view, holds for all identities historically oppressed or marginalised by European, patriarchal, capitalist, (hetero)sexist and racist power: a black lesbian woman does not become radically feminist simply because she has endured sexist violence all her life, and a rich African boy might not necessarily turn out to be the enemy of the poor. Even while ‘there is no doubt that the pain is always felt more by those who lives with oppression than those who have intellectually converted to the cause of the oppressed” then, as Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya has said, a critical view of the state of the metaphoric black-and-white world needs nurturing, arises out of deliberation.

 

8. Ghanaianness isn’t part of anyone’s make up, you don’t pass on Ghanaian DNA to your children. Percy Zvumoya said that in a well-thought piece on the Italian Mario Balotelli in the Mail & Guardian. Of course he is right that Ghanaianness isn’t genetic. However he is wrong that you can’t pass Ghanaianness to your offspring. Yes you can, just as you try to pass on Balotelliness, Italianness, Africanness, blackness or any other sense of collectiveness. It isn’t only our DNA that we pass on to our issue, because it’s not only biologically that human beings try to reproduce themselves. Because we are aware that children come into the world as strangers, it is not enough that they have our genetic material. We also want them to have our way of life. We want them to learn to see the world, themselves, us and others the way we see things. We induct them into our language. We hand over our memories, and pray they will not be betrayed. We pass on out tastes, aspirations, fears, dislikes and hopes. That is what tradition is all about. And that’s the only way Ghanaians, Africanness, Italianness, blackness or any collective sense of us-ness, that thing we refer to us culture, can manage to live on when we are gone.  

Why South Africans don't get the question of the coconut

In this interview Kharnita Mohamed of the Programme on Traditions and Transformation at the University of South Africa’s Institute for Social and Health talks of why South Africans don’t get the question of the coconut. The interview followed her piece, 'I see coconuts everywhere!' (http://transformingtraditions.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-see-coconuts-everywhere.html). Why do we not get it? Because, she says, the politics of someone like Lindiwe Mazibuko, the new Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader, whatever they are, will get tainted by her black body that sounds wrong, lives wrong, dresses wrong, affiliates wrong, because she is thought to be a coconut. She says the idea that if you are black (or white) you ought to sound or look a certain way and live in a certain place is unfair, cruel, limiting besides its wrongness. She says we must love coconuts. She says we should get over the lies of whiteness and blackness, otherwise we are continuing the tradition of policing racialised boundaries and so reproducing apartheid ideologies.That's what she says.

About Changing Traditions and Stories about Men

Traditions 2 is happening in just over two weeks time. Ready or not, Ethiopia here we come. 

Nothing will change, and yet something will have changed come 30 November 2011. Where there was nothing before, there will something afterwards.

There have been a lot of anxious moments, anyone who has brought people together to talk about something as elusive as tradition will know. But I think you can't have a clear idea about the anxiety I have been experiencing. A lot of sleepless nights, of tossing and turning, and getting sick with worry, that is. It wasn't only about the central theme of the event, though that almost certainly worsened the troubles we are experiencing. Several times I have asked where are the Ethiopian scholars? Where are the Eritrean ones? Sudanese? I'd say the moment for South Sudanese thinkers to talk about masculinity, nation-building, peace, development, gender in education, and the many other things that are connected to men's lives, or rather things men do for and about power is now when their new nation is being built, is it not? What about scholars in Djibouti, Somalia, Somaliland, Kenya (we received 2 abstracts from that country), Uganda (1 abstract), Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi? Aren't the images from Libya and Egypt to the north west of Ethiopia of men with weapons and others in suits indicative of the fact that there is so much to say and very little being said about men with power and other without? So why aren't African men and women not interested in changing traditions, if not changing men? In my view, tradition, whether under its own name or freighted in various names like philosophical outlook, ideology, paradigm, theoretical framework, discourse, the way we do things here, and even culture, is always central in all fields of human endeavour. There is much about traditions then in all these societies and the rest of Africa that needs actively changing.

At one point I was of mind to abandon the whole thing, I was. What the hell was I thinking that we could just rouse men and women from all over Africa to get curious enough about men's lives, I said to myself? What was I thinking that it is only in talking more to each other, much more, that we will able to bootstrap ourselves out of all the pessimism, misery and despair about what we are and can be? A lot of pause it's given us then. 

But it feels like it's happening. Something is changing. The apprehension is still there, but it's lessened. 

There are some people outside the Institute for Social and Health Science and the Programme for Traditions and Transformation who have been incredibly helpful in getting more men and women from other African countries - especially from Nigeria - to get interested. Others, at the University of South Africa, after a months-long struggle with marketing materials have made the load bearable. I suspect that it will show. Or rather, I believe.    

The emergence of the metrosexual: producing acceptable forms of feminine masculinities

by Sherianne Kramer

Traditional constructions of men evoke images of wealth, strength, psychological and physical power, aggression, lack of emotion, patriarchy and virility. Young boys are presumably socialised into sex roles that embrace these characteristics. Moreover, the media has historically drawn on these constructions to demonstrate traditional representations of masculinity as a desirable point of reference for men. These images most usually imply wealth, power and status as opposed to the traditional representation of women as weak or ‘sexy’.

Traditional cultural definitions of gender equate femininity with passivity and objectification while masculinity is associated with activity and the subjectification. Additionally, men’s authority in knowledge-making practices rests on their capacity to objectify others while remaining invisible or disembodied. As such, traditionally, men are meant to be uninterested in ‘superficial’ and ‘feminine’ things such as appearance or emotions and those men who are overly focused on their appearance have historically been accused of being weak or homosexual.

During the 1990s the term ‘metrosexual’ was utilised as an ironic reference to heterosexual men who had an inordinate interest in grooming and appearance. Metrosexuality did not align to the circulated discursive practices about what it means to be a ‘real’ man. Women (traditionally constructed as falling somewhere along the madonna-whore spectrum) were the only images offered up for the desiring gaze- women were portrayed as sexy, as housewives, as fashionable and elegant and as desirable objects. While images of masculinity did exist, these were not commodofied in the same way as their feminine counterparts.

During the twenty-first century the media took up the image of the metrosexual as a new type of masculinity that could be objectified and commodofied. The media used the term as a new tool for marketing various products for men which has resulted in the emergence of a metrosexual cohort of masculine identities. In fact the metrosexual man can be defined as, “a commodity fetishist: a collector of fantasies about the male sold to him by advertising”[i]. He arose in the 80s, grew in the 90s and achieved monumental popularity in media, popular culture, and marketing by 2000. While the term has a number of connotations, Flocker’s definition broadly outlines the primary aspects of the metrosexual – he is a twenty-first century male trendsetter straight, urban man with a heightened aesthetic sense[ii]. He spends time and money on appearance and shopping and is willing to embrace his feminine side.


The metrosexual, according to Anderson, has materialised through four distinct areas of commodification[iii]:

1. Fashion: He is a trendsetter, fashion conscious, young, urban male concerned with his appearance and he accessorises. He chooses aesthetic home décor and shops at designer stores.

2. Food and Beverage: He is health conscious, eats only at the best restaurants and is often known for hosting dinner parties.

3. Grooming: He uses the ‘best’ available products for better skin, hair, and nails. He practices hair removal, shaving, and styling. He is concerned with fitness and will work out or undergo surgery to achieve the ‘perfect’ body.

4. Emotions:    He is ‘in touch with his emotions’ and is not afraid to allow others to see that.

Metrosexuality, by virtue of its characteristically feminine traits, is seemingly a potential threat to the hegemonic and traditional productions of masculinity. However, despite this threat, metrosexuality is not only produced and reproduced through the media but it is also consumed by a large number of men who regard themselves as masculine subjects. Furthermore, the production of metrosexual images in the media has resulted in the traditionally male subject being transformed into a commodofied object of the gaze- a space most often reserved for female subjects.

The production of metrosexuality has therefore resulted in a socially acceptable as well as desirable feminine male subject. For example, male commodification in the media 30 years ago would have been shunned and rejected however, in 2011, we barely react to these images. Additionally, men frequently shop, visit spas and spend hours grooming. Thirty years ago this type of behaviour was reserved for women or homosexuals only. Most significantly, ‘sexy’ and desirable images of men are available as objects for everyone’s consumption – as desirable objects for homosexual men and heterosexual women and as role-models and points of identification for heterosexual men. As indicated by Simpson, “metrosexuality is such an integral part of a mediatised and consumerist world…the metrosexual trend, whereby the male body is transformed (‘transfigured’ if you work in the fashion industry) into an aesthetic commodity, is apparently irreversible[iv].” In other words, a recoding of the masculine body has taken place whereby the masculine subject is constructed and reconstructed according to historical and sociological shifts in the public consciousness. This has implications for body politics, hegemonic masculinity and the apparent divide between hetero and

homosexuality.

In terms of body politics, metrosexuality threatens the very definition of the male body. For example, if the male body is the foundation for the definition of masculinity, can any male-sexed body exerting any behaviour be defined as masculine? Grooming the body versus the body in a wrestling match encompass two very different versions of masculinity. Meterosexuality therefore demonstrates that the body is not as reliable in defining sex, gender and sexuality as we are constructed to believe. Traditional constructions imply that sex role differences are presumably based upon ‘natural’ body

differences. However, the metrosexual body inverts sex roles. Accordingly, the metrosexual body clearly demonstrates that an entrenched ontology of gender exists and that gender can and often does surpass naturalised norms and discursive practices. However, this said, metrosexual masculinity is just one of the many types of multiple and competing forms of masculinities that together surface gender fluidity.

Meterosexulity also has implications for patriarchal hegemony. Hegemony, in this sense, should be understood with regards to the institutionalisation of power and its ability to silently relay knowledge through socially constructed and accepted discourse. That is, male power is not simply held by individual men but rather, it is institutionalised in social structures and ideologies that support the gender order in favour of men. In fact, it may be that very few men actually occupy the hegemonic position. Additionally, men are not only organised hierarchically in relation to women, but also to each other in relations of marginalisation and subordination. This said, all men receive a patriarchal dividend, even if they are excluded from the dominant definitions of masculinity. This, in turn, allows for resistance on the part of men who are subordinated or marginalised by the hegemonic form. For example, metrosexual men have a subordinate relationship to hegemonic models of masculinity in some societies, but have exercised social power to resist their marginalisation and to claim a legitimate social and political space.

Finally, meterosexuality may threaten the divide between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Traditionally, homosociality; relations between heterosexual men regulated by fear of homosexuality; has characterised male relationships. However metrosexuals demonstrate that gay and straight men may not be as different as homosociality implies. Metrosexuality therefore demonstrates that changes to men’s embodiment and social practices challenge ‘traditional’ notions of heterosexual masculinity. This is significant as heteronormativity, which is sustained by definitions of masculinity (and relations between men) that are based on homosexuality as the ‘other’, becomes threatened in the face of the metrosexual.

In conclusion then, meterosexuality can be treated as a gender deconstruction tool that challenges the binaries which limit our understanding of gender and sexuality (man/woman, male/female, heterosexual/homosexual, subject/object). Metrosexuality provides a model example of how the body and the practices of embodiment are performative of multiple and competing masculinities. It therefore seems that while a gendered ontology exists, body performances and practices often negate this ontology, thus demonstrating the existence of fluid gender forms. Identity is therefore dynamic and malleable whilst simultaneously a product of social, historical and cultural forces.

Notes

[i] Simpson, Mark (2006, 3 October). Here Comes the Mirror Men. The Independent. Retrieved July 25, 2011 from Mark Simpson Website:

http://www.marksimpson.com/pages/journalism/mirror_men.html

[ii] Flocker, M. (2003). The Metrosexual Guide to Style: A Handbook for the Modern Man. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

[iii] Anderson, K. L. (2008). From meterosexual to reterosexual: The importance of the shifting male gender role to feminism. Thinking Gender Papers, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UC Los Angeles.

[iv] Simpson, (2006, 3 October)

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I see coconuts everywhere!

As a visiting Fulbright scholar to the US, a group of international students and I, were given a series of workshops on living in America. There were the practical things, you know, how to deal with your landlord, open a bank account, purchase a cellphone and so forth. In an effort to account for and reduce the stresses of cultural diversity, we were also advised on how best to build relationships with Americans. ‘Most Americans are like peaches’, the workshop facilitator advised, ‘they are soft and very friendly on the outside. But don’t be mistaken, Americans have a hard inner core that is difficult to breach and take a long time to become friends. Most people from the rest of the world’, she went on, ‘are like coconuts. They are hard to get to know initially, but  once you get through the hard, unfriendly, outer shell, they are soft on the inside.’ My eyebrows raised to my hairline, I looked around the room filled with all the different shades of humanity from all the different places in the world, and saw my surprise at being called a coconut reflected on others’ faces. The surprised murmurs quickly became amusement as the multicoloured coconuts started teasing each other. Well, I won’t go into what that spelled for my first year in the US, wondering just how peachy people were being and how much of a coconut I was being. As you may know, being called a coconut is a racial slur in other contexts and frankly, I might not have liked the conclusions I drew about Americans but I did not mind the metaphor of a coconut to explain cultural differences. I do mind the way coconuts are tossed around to impugn others and dis-authenticate post-apartheid blacknesses.

Not so long ago, a colleague and I were discussing the possible inclusion of a critical race scholar in an event we were planning. This particular scholar, at a seminar when someone cited my colleague to question this scholar, replied that the refutation was insubstantial because my colleague was a coconut. And just like that, an alternate viewpoint was silenced and this critical race scholar was the only authentic black voice in the room, never mind the dinner party. Any disagreement, disjuncture in perspective, was invalidated as there could only be one way of thinking blackness, remedying it and voicing it. Is there not room at the dinner party for many black voices, and tolerance for different kinds of blackness? In order to liberate ourselves from white racist capitalism, does it require a cookie-cutter black liberation narrative? Does trying to think ourselves out of the poverty of imagination enforced by Apartheid’s grand, totalising narrative mean its replacement is no tower of Babel, are we all to speak in one tongue, authenticated by the self-identified non-coconuts amongst us?

The speculation around Lindiwe Mazibuko has returned me to the question of the coconut. The sadness of the coconut if truth be told, in the same way dialogue about the black diamond makes me sad. I don’t think we get it. This woman, who knows what she stands for, we will find out in due course. Whatever her politics are will be tainted by a black body that sounds wrong, lives wrong, dresses wrong, affiliates wrong. In the same way those strange apparitions, those black diamonds who dare to have black bodies and live prosperous white lives are so darn wrong. Wrong wrong wrong black body doing wrong wrong wrong white things.  And just like that, there we are caged by the narratives of race and Verwoerd and his disciples have won again, they win in academic seminars, in the media, in literature, in our living rooms. Once we were kaffirs, Boesmans, Hottentots, Slamse, Coolies, Boere, Kaffir-boeties and on and on we were trapped by the behaviour expected to come from a specific body. We are still trapped by race, expected to behave in accordance with the bodies we bear or else be coconuts: race traitors.

What is a coconut? Really, what is a coconut? It is a fruit, with a hard, dark, hairy outer shell, layers of white on the inside, surrounding a milky white liquid. What strikes one with a coconut is the visible distinction of layers. Humans, unlike fruit, don’t have these starkly differentiated  layers. We are made up of complex experiences that intertwine, the beginnings and ends of which we are rarely aware of. We are required to navigate in the world, following a host of divergent traditions. The critical race scholar for instance did not consider himself a coconut for being at an academic seminar, using academic language, imbibing academic formats that were imported from elsewhere, and yea mostly from white centres, some imported traditions are just unmarked and presumably do not form part of the milky white stuff in some black centres. And what about the ad hominem argument, pointing to the character defects of the person making the argument rather than debating the merits of the point, let’s be honest, entire groups of people were subjected to ad hominem arguments to silence their humanity. Does this not sound a lot like apartheid, they cannot rule for they are not yet developed. A general hush ensues while the developed speaks for the undeveloped.

But let’s make an ad fructus argument and accept that a human is not a coconut and the world we inherited and live in, is much more complex than to imagine easily distinguished white and black layers within an individual. In other words, let’s shake off the classificatory regimes imposed by totalising institutions like apartheid and begin to read what a black person should not be, using the coconut as our guide. Unlike white people, a black person, a real black person would not circulate a public opinion that disputes another critical black person’s vision of the ideal course of liberating black people. Only real black people care and know what other blacks need and are allowed to speak for them. A real black person may only speak with a particular accent, never mind that it denotes poverty or exclusion from educational opportunities and will not have a good command of English or be educated. An authentic black person will not associate with whites and be in political office alongside whites as only genuine blacks care about black interests.

Let’s not be mistaken, corrupt blacks are not real blacks either, they are the mis-formed results of white oppression and alienated in a different way to the coconut. Just think about the black diamond, that scandalous lot who dares to be wealthy and prosperous. As we all know, being upwardly mobile and decadently rich is the provenance of white people and the real blacks are mired in desperate poverty. The real black is that mythical all knowing, wise, good and poor black person filled with righteous anger (unless they do not husk their coconuts like real black people do). To return to the coconut: the coconut is that rare creature whose inside does not match the god-given place they should inhabit with pride. Therefore real black people are all the same, are not allowed to change, and should not show solidarity with anyone who is not a real black person.

Yes, it is true that black people become seduced by the power of whiteness and mobilise white tactics of engagement, whether social, economic, intellectual or political to negotiate a world that stigmatises black ways of living in the world. It is true that some black people view themselves through judgemental white eyes and shift their political positions and identities ever so slightly and gradually until they are complicit with oppressions that favour white interests. It is also true that most black people are disconnected, and alienated and fearful and desirous of a white life. It is true that sometimes black faces speak white lies, that black faces mouth white revenges, white fears, and white cruelties and of course, white loves. It is true in this transforming society that black children will come home sounding like the former oppressors whilst unable to speak their grandparents’ languages. It is true that some black people become as uncaring of the suffering of others with the same wilful ignorance and blindness as their white counterparts. All these are true.

What is also true is that whiteness and blackness are both lies, that they do not have a real basis in physiology but are socially and culturally constituted. What is also true, is that every one of us is not a real anything but have been forced to act in ways that allow us to be recognised as real. Make no mistake, the white man, during Apartheid, wielding power and using his sjambok and teargas to fatal effect whilst stilling his compassion and empathy or the white woman treating her black maid like an object, is no less wounded than the black body in the crowd and the objectified black woman separated from her family so they may live another day. What is real are the effects of racism and inhumanity. What is real is that we have the agency to become. What is real is that the anti-apartheid struggle was not intended to allow us to become trapped by an opposing racial classification. We live in a world where we are able to transcend racial classifications and not be expected to have our bodies determine our pleasures, dislikes, moralities or even the way we relate to our cultural others, be they coconuts or peaches.

The right to freedoms entitle us to take some Beethoven, mix it with Mandoza and Jack Parow to make a melody all our own. It is not always where the inspiration comes from that determines the magnificence of the symphony but how it is put together to produce a new roar in the world. In our haste to silence these new blends, to authenticate our own blacknesses and shush our fears of complicity with the very system we have to navigate to change it, we should be careful of stifling new becomings that we as yet cannot imagine. We have to transform the very bedrock of our belief system that certain bodies belong to certain actions and that we are comfortably entitled to racially recognise each other.

The coconut-centred conversation, is a symptom of a deep discomfort with change, of a failure of our imaginations to imagine a deracialised world, of our inabilities to transcend the very system that we abhor in the same breath as we condemn another through a racist tactical lens. The coconut disrupts the certainties of race. We are all going to have to be comfortable with seeing coconuts everywhere, lest we be hypocrites seeking to assert racial difference. But really, how about foregoing the racist talk and recognise that what we are witnessing is humanity’s ingenuity and the reality of how people mix and match cultural inspirations, behaviours and patterns. But mostly, lets learn to be comfortable with the discomfort of not knowing how a particular body will speak, act, think, feel and just maybe we may give ourselves or some fruit of one kind or another a chance to imagine and inhabit a future where bodies do not determine possibilities of becoming.



The almost totally new black manifesto for dummies: 6 things to remember in a world where blacks lead white political parties, companies, communities and countries

A great deal of discussion followed in the aftermath of Lindiwe Mazibuko’s contestation of the parliamentary leadership of the Democratic Alliance (DA). For those unfamiliar with South African politics, the DA is the historically white and current main opposition party in South African politics. The 31-year-old Mazibuko, as many have noted, is the rising star in the party. Her English pronounciation is what in South Africa is called a Model C or private school accent. This is shorthand for the fact that she did not receive the crappy, limited and limiting Bantu education many black children experienced in rural and township schools during apartheid, and the bad deal that many continue to get under the current black government.

In the run up to the election, a black DA member, Masizole Mnqasela, expressed the view that the DA should not act as if diversity was only about skin colour. He argued that the DA would fail to attract black voters because Lindiwe Mazibuko was only “window dressing” – effectively saying, I suspect, she was not really black. In fact he said, Mazibuko sounded like a white person. But it should be said that he added that he disqualified her because she was not experienced enough to lead the DA in parliament. Mnqasela's money was on then incumbent white male parliamentary leader, Athol Trollip, who was standing for re-election and against Mazibuko.

The leader of the DA, Helen Zille, would subsequently weight in and refer to Mnqasela as expressing “Verwoedian thinking”. She also likened him to Julius Malema, the African National Congress Youth League Leader.   

As a matter of fact, this brouhaha is only the latest local instantiation of a debate about what it means to be black. Earlier in the year, Blade Nzimande, higher education minister, called the same Mazibuko a coconut – meaning black on the outside and white inside – who knew little about township life after Mazibuko complained about the use of the word darkies in parliament. I also recall when two well-known South African scholars fought about the issue on the pages of a Sunday newspaper about five years ago. Similar debates have taken place in other parts of the world. There was much talk of a post-race society and post-blackness when Barack Obama emerged as a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency of the United States of America, and his eventual election as the president of that country. Something similar came up when Diane Abbott entered the leadership contest for the Labour Party in  Britain.

These then are only a few of the endless discussions about who is really black and who is not that takes place all over the world in multi-racial societies on a daily basis. And don’t forget the related issue of what is or isn’t black. So even as I offer my thought about how to think blackness I know that this is one subject that is as longstanding as it is interesting. I don’t for a second believe I will resolve it. Actually, I don’t think there has to be total agreement, but I do think it helps to understand something about the construction of blackness. My main motivation in offering these thoughts is that discussions about race are not always very enlightening for anyone who has not read enough on the latest theories on identity, and racial identity. They can be very confusing for younger people who may be trying to understand what it means to be black in this changing world.

Here then are 6 things to remember in a world where blacks lead white political parties, companies, communities and countries.

1.    Blackness comes in all colours.

Don’t expect all melanin-rich, coffee-coloured-, chocolate-tone-, one-drop-of-black-blood-, light-skinned-but-descended-from-African, dark-skinned individuals to think about blackness or do it in similar ways. Some do dislike their skins and anything black except clothes perhaps. Stephen Biko was expressing a similar thought when he spoke of black and non-whites. Black is an economic, political, social and cultural condition. Consequently, there will be different positions on blackness taken by those who are apparently black. One woman’s blackness is another's non-white and yet another new black. This internal differentiation of blackness becomes even more so as black people have increased choices about how to define their lives and the world becomes increasingly connected and globalised.

2.    Being black is more than the sum of its parts.

Blackness is not only your skin colour, or your general acceptance as a black person, or your ethnicity. Neither is blackness your poverty or money. It is not your car, the fact that you use a taxi, train, bus, bicycle, scooter, or that you walk everywhere. It is not your lack of schooling or your doctorate. It is not house, mansion or shack. Blackness is not equal to your accent. Blackness is not Afro, weave, wig, cheese, or human hair. Blackness is not reducible to the village, township, town, city or suburb where you are born, forced or choose to live. None of these actions, characteristics, choices, stuff, or any other element on its own definitively describes what it means to be black you.

3.    Use whatever talent or advantage you have to be all you can be.

You should refuse to be narrowly defined on the basis of skin colour, reputation, ethnicity, education, occupation, money, house, hair, place or any single characteristic or possession because you are more than any of them. Good education can be of use even in a deeply racist society. So is fluency in many languages. Money is important, of course. As is being well-employed. Where you live does make a difference. There are many other things which one can mention – such as being tall, strong, physically attractive, the way you dress – that can give you an advantage over others. And it does not hurt to have a clear, unblemished and beautiful skin or good hair. The point is that you should use them, certainly. However, be careful not to worship them, use the characteristics to oppress others, or allow them to imprison you.

4.    Don’t waste your hope by investing it in politicians or any other would be messiahs.  

To invest hope in a black political messiah is to waste a valuable asset. While hope for a better future for the generations to come is absolutely vital if one is to keep fighting the good fight, or even just to be able to wake up day in and day out, any hope is misplaced if it is put in politicians or any other kind of would be messiahs. One place where you can safely put your hope – that is, when you have learned as much as possible about the world and yourself – is in the collective yet dispersed aspirations of your self-identified community. Nearly all politicians, however well-spoken, and whatever their hue are first and last interested in acquiring and maintaining power; as for messiahs, they tend to think of themselves as gods and perhaps they are better when you meet them in the afterlife. 

5.    Recognise that while you believe in justice others may just have very different beliefs

It is undeniable that white racism is primarily aimed at oppressing black people as a group in fundamental ways and little ones for the benefit of whites. However it is also true that intra-group oppression and prejudice exists amongst blacks (as it does among whites, Chinese, Arabs, women, men, and any other group you can think of). For as much as one believes in fairness, others believe in the natural inequality between individuals and groups. You better recognise it - which is not the same thing as saying you should support injustice and oppression of some by others. 

6.    Whatever one thinks about blackness will likely change as the world in which blackness is constructed changes.

Blackness is contingent. It emerges out of the conditions in which people defined as black find themselves in. It is shaped by all the extant forces in a particular society as well as what occurs elsewhere in the world. Thus what it means changes from one place to another, from one historical era to the next. At the same time, blackness itself is one of those forces that shape the world. As such, whatever prevalent meaning is attached to blackness is likely to change as the world changes.

Perspective on Boys in Africa Roundtable

The Boys in Africa Roundtable was a joint event hosted by UNISA’s Psychology Department and the Institute for Social and Health Sciences, Programme on Traditions and Transformation’s Changing Traditions Strategic Project. The UNISA Changing Traditions Strategic Project’s focus on masculinity in 2011 is intended to highlight and generate positive traditions of masculinity and transform harmful masculine practices. The Boys in Africa Roundtable was the second in their series of events focused on masculinity, following after Fashioning Masculinity in the lead-up to their biannual major travelling pitso, Changing Traditions: Everyday Lives of African Men.

Professor Kopano Ratele, who provided the impetus for the Boys in Africa Roundtable, very poignantly made participants aware of the dire correlation of violence and masculinity. The Boys in Africa event was intended to challenge the underrepresentation of boys in work on masculinity and efforts to transform gender relations with the realization that boys are children first and are not responsible for violent masculinities. Boys are able to become generative members of society and increased efforts should be made towards providing them with assistance.

Michael Theron opened the day with an exploration of the stereotypes of ideal masculinities. He highlighted the burden of expectations men are subject to and how impossible it is to attain. Scholars in a mentorship programme from Fidelitas Comprehensive School and Prudence Secondary School were present at the event. and provided valuable insight into the lives, hopes and dreams of boys. Angelo Fynn, one of their mentors and a lecturer at UNISA’s psychology department informed the participants of the transformative value of mentoring young people and the dire need for more mentors. Baba Buntu, founding director of Shabaka – Men’s Empowerment group also emphasized the need for mentorship and the necessity of making African men proud of their cultural heritage, so as to alleviate the humiliations of cultural dispossession which spurs violence.

Umesh Bawa, a psychology lecturer at the University of the Western Cape, shared the findings of a photo-voice project taken by children in Broadlands Park and Nomzamo in Cape Town. He advocated for adults to be willing to listen to young people, give them a sense of agency and empower them to be agents of change in their communities. Yaseen Ally, a UNISA psychology PHD student showcased an intervention programme which fuses therapy and kickboxing, to assist young men with substance abuse problems. Yaseen demonstrated the necessity for adults to connect to boys on their comfort levels so as to help them transform.

The Boys in Africa Roundtable hosted artists from UNISA’s ‘Artists in Residence Project’ who displayed works by male artists on masculinity. Fred van Staden introduced the participants to the artwork. The art was a subtle reminder that despite the problems of violent masculinities, that it is possible to raise men who despite poverty and marginalization are focused on creating beauty and social critique through art. Musical performances throughout the day by Music Café created a lively spirit and the event concluded with an open drumming session. The Boys in Africa Roundtable was characterized by dynamic, engaged and active participation which left participants feeling inspired to bring change to boys lives.

Some images of boys' lives in Africa

When prejudice is peddled as ‘tradition’

When prejudice is peddled as ‘tradition’

Reposted with permission from Melanie Judge over at http://queery.oia.co.za/ 

Posted on: 10-7-2011

 

There is a long tradition of institutionalised prejudice and inequality in South Africa related to class, race, gender and sexuality. The power structures required to keep prejudice in place are still a prominent feature of the post-apartheid landscape. Certain institutions of ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’, like that of some religions, continue to perpetuate discriminatory social systems and practices. One such institution is the National House of Traditional Leaders (NHTL).

In its recent submission to the Constitutional Review Committee of parliament, the NHTL unashamedly proposed that Section 9 of the Constitution, the Equality Clause, be amended to remove sexual orientation as a ground for non-discrimination. Section 9 (3) and 9 (4) of the Bill of Rights prohibits both individuals and the state, respectively, from discriminating against persons on the basis of sexual orientation. The NHTL’s submission to parliament is that gays and lesbians no longer be afforded constitutional protections from unfair discrimination. This is a reactionary manoeuvre and reflects the continued intention of the NHTL to chip away at principles and institutions aimed at dismantling historical prejudice and discrimination.

In 2005, ahead of the then imminent legislation to enable same-sex couples to marry, the NHTL stated the following at its annual conference: “The practice of same-sex marriage is against most of African beliefs, cultures, customs and traditions, and this in turn goes against the mandate of traditional leaders which is to promote and protect the customs of communities observing a system of customary law. Traditional leaders have vowed to make it their mission for the coming five years to campaign against this wicked, decadent and immoral Western practice”. As their recent parliamentary submission suggests, the NHTL has kept that promise.

In response to the NHTL, parliament’s legal advisers argued that the removal of sexual orientation from the Equality Clause would be in contravention of the values of human dignity, equality and the advancement of human freedoms that are protected and promoted by the Constitution. It’s a no-brainer really. Whilst the NHTL thumbs its nose at constitutional imperatives, the Constitution itself expressly requires that customary laws, practices and institutions are consistent with the purport and objectives of the Bill of Rights. This requirement is directly challenged by the NHTL’s call for a constitutional amendment that in effect seeks to expunge gays and lesbians from protection against homophobic discrimination.

The NHTL, and its bedfellow the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa, claims a monopoly on defining ‘African traditions and values’. In assuming the right to define what constitutes ‘tradition’, and what not, these ‘traditionalists’ seek to be arbiters of ‘legitimate’ cultural expression. In doing so, they aim to hegemonise particular concepts of ‘African culture’. According to this cultural script, homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’. Both queers and other non-conforming genders and sexualities are disavowed within such an exclusionary manufacturing of culture.

The traditionalist lobby would wish for a social order that is re-rooted in immutable apartheid and colonialist categorisations of black/white, man/woman, gay/straight. It’s no coincidence that these are the very planes of difference upon which power and privilege have been historically enacted, and which continue to mark the frontiers of current day inclusions and exclusions.

Centralised traditional authorities, like the NHTL, are a powerful political force with significant economic interests. They often function in alliance with ruling elites seeking to centralise governance powers. The Eastern European journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, in his 1970s study on Ethiopia under Haille Selassie, describes how traditions can be mobilised in support of autocratic rule. In reference to the Selassie regime at that time, he states that, “While affecting to preserve the past, they [the regime] were constantly devising new ‘traditional’ institutions to strengthen their control”. This echoes Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani’s analysis of traditional chiefs as ‘decentralised despots’ in his 1996 book ‘Citizen and Subject’. Related to this is the work of Mazibuko Jara, from the Law, Race and Gender Unit at UCT, on the “retribalisation of the countryside” by centralised traditional authorities and how this undermines citizens’ access to constitutional justice and gender equality.

Unsurprisingly, the NHTL’s submission to parliament also proposes that its powers be extended through constitutional fiat. More specifically, that traditional authorities “be under Parliament and the Provincial Legislatures to enable them to function as proper parliament [sic] of traditional leaders”; that traditional leaders and councils be included “as intergovernmental structures, to facilitate intergovernmental relations”; that “traditional courts be included as one of the courts”[1] prescribed by the Constitution; and that “local municipalities be disestablished (sic) and be replaced by traditional councils as service providers within traditional communities.”

The Constitution, with its checks and balances for accountability, enables citizens to resist groups that seek to reinstate undemocratic measures – whether invoked in the name of ‘Africanness’ or ‘whiteness’. Ironically, the NHTL is reliant on precisely the inequitable power relations (sexual, gender and economic) that constitutional principles challenge. Drawing on such principles, a tide of gender and sexual rights claims have contested traditional authorities’ versions of culture. Women who legally challenged the discriminatory aspects of customary law[2] and African advocates for LGBT equality and an end to homophobic discrimination, are cases in point. Their advances in gender and sexual freedoms contradict essentialist notions of tradition and their associated gender power relations.

Cultural practices predicated on discrimination, directly undermine the pursuit of equality and freedom. This equally applies to the construction of ‘Western culture’ with its oppressive whitening impetus. In opposition to this, plurality and diversity act as powerful leverages to shift oppressive cultural formations and practices and to pry open spaces for inclusiveness and democratic possibility.

Cultural leaders and institutions do not passively bestow fixed cultures onto unsuspecting recipients. Rather, cultural subjects are made and remade, in and through practices that are named and marked as cultural. This dynamic process shapes contemporary iterations of what is deemed traditional, and what not. This is an ever-changing course.

What would it take for non-discrimination to emerge as a shared cultural value, an honoured tradition, owned by all who live in South Africa? Perhaps there is just too much at stake for those leaders and institutions that continue to peddle prejudice in the name of “the people”.

[1] The mooted Traditional Courts Bill effectively proposes a dual system of law, with those who fall under tribal authorities being subject (and perhaps ‘subjects’) to traditional courts.

“[2] See the Bhe case: When the father of two women died under customary law their house became the property of their grandfather. As a result of the womens’ legal challenge to this, the Constitutional Court (in 2004) declared that the rule of primogeniture rule as applied to the customary law of succession cannot be reconciled with the current notions of equality and human dignity as contained in the Bill of Rights. The judgment asserted the following “As the centrepiece of the customary law system of succession, the rule violates the equality rights of women and is an affront to their dignity. In denying extra-marital children the right to inherit from their deceased fathers, it also unfairly discriminates against them and infringes their right to dignity as well. The result is that the limitation it imposes on the rights of those subject to it is not reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society founded on the values of equality, human dignity and freedom…In conclusion, the official system of customary law of succession is incompatible with the Bill of Rights. It cannot, in its present form, survive constitutional scrutiny.”

An edited version of this blog was published in the Mail and Guardian (7 October – 13 October)