Kharnita Mohamed and Mohamed Seedat reflecting on Traditions 2: Everyday Lives of African Men, held in Ethiopia on 28-30 November 2011

Here are the anthropologist Kharnita Mohamed and community psychologist Mohamed Seedat reflecting on Traditions 2: Everyday Lives of African Men, held in Ethiopia on 28-30 November 2011. Kharnita Mohamed is a researcher at and Mohamed Seedat is the director of the University of South Africa's Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS). Part of the project Changing Traditions, Traditions is a travelling biennial pitso of the Programme of Traditions and Transformation (PoTT) within the ISHS. Kharnita Mohamed and Mohamed Seedat are being interviewed on their impressions of the pitso and the debates that took place by peace scholar and psychologist Shahnaaz Suffla of the University of South Africa-Medical Research Council's Safety and Peace Promotion Research Unit. Mandisa Malinga edited the pictures. 

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.

Traditions II: Everyday Lives of African Men

Every two years Changing Traditions, a project of the Programme on Traditions and Transformation of UNISA's Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS), hosts a major pitso. The aim of the pitso is to consider the state of traditions and transformation on the African continent. The event is the culmination of the theme for the year. The pitso brings together a diverse range of individuals from a range of disciplines and worlds, including but not limired to scholars, activists, musician, researchers, writers, journalists, filmmakers, actors, theatre practioners, businesspeopl and anybody else with interest to engage on traditions. If you do something that I have not mentioned and you have an interesting view on traditions you believe deserves to be heard, we would be interested to give you ears.   

If you have been following the blog you will know that traditions is defined from a variety of perspectives. We see traditions as those conscious or unarticulated pasts that shape the way we engage with each other and the world today, influencing every human endeavor from scholarly research to poetry and how we pray, from war to the way we kiss, from politics to sports rules. 

If you have be following the blog, you will know that we have talking a great deal about men and masculinity. That's because men and masculinity is the theme for 2011. And that's what we shall be talking about in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 28-30 November: the everyday lives of African men. More specifically, we hope that men and women interested in the lives of African men, in Africa and the diaspora, will come and talk. If you are interested, please submit a proposal/abstract/summary of what you would like to talk about to us. Talks should fit in the following panels.    

• Money and Work in African Men’s Lives
• Bodies of African Men
• Men at Play
• Masculinity and the African Diaspora
• Men and Politics
• African Masculinity and Belief/Religion
• Men and Love and Marriage
• Sex and Masculinity
• Men’s Friendships
• Representing African Men
• African Men in the Family

However, we would be interested to hear suggestions for other panels. More details will follow. You can also send for more information by contacting Kharnita Mohamed at kharnita.mohamed@mrc.ac.za.