The shadow of the president's father and his collective handling by different mothers

Firstly I think it is basically my background, how I grew up. I come from a large family. I lost my father when I was very young. I don’t even know him properly. I just know the shadow of him. I therefore grew up in a kind of a collective handling by elderly people. Also because my mother had to go and be a domestic worker and could not stay with me all the time, I was handled by different mothers. All this and more made me appreciate Ubuntu, a culture of respect, which I was taught very strongly. Up to today you would never hear me losing respect, even when there is political debate, I don’t. And I believe even when you disagree with a person you still have to give that person respect, whether old or young people. I think this, to me, was a critical element that moulded me into what I am.

The speaker is Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, president of South Africa. He is being interviewed by Elias Mnyadu and Adriaan Groenewald. (The full interview can found here: http://www.iol.co.za/business/business-news/q-a-with-zuma-1.1137856). The question put to him was, "what do you consider to have best prepared you to fulfil the task (of CEO of South Africa)"?

With my interest in question of boys and men, how we raise boys and how we father,  I was naturally struck by his answer. The first thing that got hold of my attention is how he starts with his family circumstances, in particular the loss of his father when he was very young, as well as being raised by different mothers and elderly people. Not his experience as a worker, trade unionist and leader in the liberation movement in South Africa. He mentions these other shaping influences, but he appears to give primacy to his family circumstances.

The second is his choice of words. He talks about being handled - "collective handling by elderly people" and "handled by different mothers". Perhaps this is a metaphorical rendering of the Zulu word, "ukuphathwa", and nothing more should be made of it. 

However, I want to think that Zuma, a master of the Zulu language, could have chosen other words. He could have spoken about being raised - ukukhuliswa - or gone on and used 'grow' that he mentions at the beginning.

I suspect that he used "handle" because wanted to communicate something more, in his own subtle way. That something more is being fathered and having your mother home every night. It is about presence. About a steadfast and intimate support that all children should take for granted. Zuma wanted to tell about the difficulties of a black boy growing up in a disrupted family life during apartheid. Not in so many words, he says, being without a father and my mother being away at the kitchens, I had to be strong, although I still got to learn about admirable stuff connectedness to others and respect.

The young Jacob must have been 6 when the apartheid governent came to power. Like many a black family in the 1940s, his must have felt the full effects of an enthusiatic white patrirachal supremacist government. Without a father, and with a mother trying to make ends meet, he couldn't have had adequate warmth and intimacy of present and close family.

As all the presidents of democratic South Africa have to differing degrees shown, one can reach as high as possible in one's career without having grown up with stable family environment. Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma, are examples of what men can do against the greatest of odds, when an oppressor denies a people's very humanity. It's called resilience.

However this growing up without constant and warm support of one's parents is not an ideal situation. Resilience is fine, but the warmth of a parent's bosom is irreplaceable. There is no doubt in my mind that it is better for a child's well-being to have a fully present father and mother, not just grandparents, aunts and uncles, if that child is to know what love and happiness means. This in no way privileges nuclear family or biological parents. Quite the contrary, it says the more family connection there is, starting from mother and father, whether adoptive or biological, the less harsh life is and the better outcomes for one's life.

One can't but wonder then what kind of man President Zuma would have become if his father had been more than just a shadow and his mother had been a professional woman. What great society will we be able to create if we manage to put black family life together. If we have been able to achieve so much with so little, to have a president who never went beyond primary school because he didn't enjoy the kind of family support and receive the education many others took for granted, how amazing will we be if we can fix black families and increase the love. 

Fashioning Masculinity: Retrospective 2 - The Elusive Perfect Space for the Fashioned Masculine Body

There is a reason academics have events at academic venues or maybe at the occasional museum or gallery. See, spaces have a tradition of use and certain kinds of events with certain kinds of people and certain kinds of activities belong in certain kinds of venues. You wouldn't expect a soccer match in an art gallery or even on a basketball court, that is if you have the luxury of single-use spaces. At any rate, when we were brainstorming this event, way back in January, we decided to upset the tradition of the academic event and instead merge the form and content according to our topic, masculinity rather than, according to our roles, academics.

At first we wanted a shebeen, there was a murmur of a museum, then a boxing ring, then a gym, then a sports stadium, then a men's clothing store and off we went to find these places so people could sit in a space where masculine bodies were transformed, maintained, fashioned and ultimately regimented into an acceptable masculine form. We wanted to show the facticities of crafting manhood whilst having a conversation of how masculinities are brought into being.

The idea was grand, its execution was not, as we just could not find the perfect space. We entered a wonderful process of discovery but ease of use for an academic event, not so much what with the chairs and tables that needed to be brought into Green Point stadium, who knew that most 'upmarket' stadiums did not have their own furniture. The arduous bureaucracies that had to be navigated were not quite what we were accustomed to (an engineering plan for a stage, I am just  interested in why people are the way they are and like to hear people talking about it in an exciting space; what do I know about an engineering plan for a stage or a waste management plan or a security plan or a medical plan). 

Redesigning an unconventional space to merge with a traditional academic event was a challenge and nevermind that boxing rings disappear from community halls and one has to drive around to find it, we never did. Or reallising that in black townships community spaces or halls, truly are community spaces and are always busy, they are filled with the sounds of children, and adults accessing the state and in Mitchells Plain we even saw men with AK47s guarding something or other. There isn't the luxury of single-use spaces and the wonder and excitement of unconventional usage. They do have their own furniture though!

If anything the tradition in black under-resourced neighbourhoods is overuse of certain spaces which clearly indicate a lack of infrastructure. However the expectations of providing multiple plans to hire the local gym in Langa by the municipal authorities so stymied me despite having the resources of an organisation behind me, that we decided to look elsewhere. The bureaucracy and its demands, indicate that perhaps there is more need than usage indicates as with less gatekeeping, more people would make use of community spaces. If we found it difficult, how hard is it not for the average resident in Langa to hire the community sporting facility?

Anyway, the hunt for the venue delayed us, so did the wait on marketing and in the end we capitulated and did not merge form and content. Masculinity had to emerge in the conventional academic tradition in the conventional space of the Medical Research Council without the sensory experience of a space men made themselves in. We did bring together people who would not ordinarily have been in the same room, voicing similar concerns, interests and hopes and perhaps the bland backdrop showcased the spectacular and some unconventional connections a lot better than the smell of sweat might have.

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.

 

Everybody needs someone to look out for them, but the social fabric around young white men doesn't need as much repairing

Earlier this month I was asked during a public conversation why white young men do not die at the rates of black young men. Who is protecting them? Or is that what's protecting them?

I am experiencing some kind of Groundhog Day. I feel as if I said this yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. If you have heard, don't stop reading.

As you may know, levels of violent death are never uniformly distributed across the sexes. That's a well-established finding from research. Males die from violence at much higher rates than females. You may also be aware that age is a significant predictor of dying from violence.  

But here are other variables that put an individual at risk of dying from violence: how much money you have, where you live, and race among others. There are studies from the United States and from Europe, and a few from Africa, in support of this. In South Africa you are more likely to die violently, on average, when you are male, in your late teens or early adulthood years, when you are black or coloured as opposed to white and Indian, live in a poor and low-income neighbourhood, live in a metro than in the more rural municipalities, live in Cape Town in comparison to Tshwane. Those are only some of the variables.

However, the question I was asked though is why: why are young white men at a decreased risk from dying prematurely? One of the major reasons is because men who do not achieve socially respected masculinity are likely live in or get into violent situations. Say that again? They are likely to live in or get into violent situations. That is to say, an attempt to achieve culturally valued manhood is interwoven with other reasons. Some of these are structural and others personal.

Studies show that, for instance, Khayelitsha has higher levels of homicide than Constantia. Why is this so? Because young men who live in Constantia are better protected against assaults or murder. It’s not only because of the alarms, spikes, and barbed wires. It’s because of conditions in the two areas. It’s because of their life circumstances, which in the end reduces the choices available to them to make something of themselves, that young men in Khayelitsha, most of whom are unemployed, will put themselves at greater risk of victimisation while trying to get recognition and success as men.

It's a damning situation. You can die slowly and on your feet from poverty, hunger, and distress. Or you can go out, in a world that says risk is good, take your chances and be shot to death.

Of course the risk a stock market trader takes is different from the risk a would-be bank robber takes. They are all trying to get money. But the risks for the latter can be deadly. The one with his qualifications has a lawful space to take risks with other people's monies; the other, whose education has left him standing at the corner with few prospects, has very few opportunities this side of the law and so steps outside of it. 

This is not to condone criminality. It is to explain the difference between young white men and young black men. The difference, which looks like one of race, like it is essentially racial in nature, is actually about historical economic advantages and the legacies of inequality. Social and economic advantages mean life advantages. It contributes towards a longer, safer, and happier life. Historical socio-economic discrimination imply that young black men today will find it harder to enjoy a happy, protected and long life.

But they were born after apartheid, I have heard it said. Their parents were not. Those parents raised them, for better or worse. Those parents may not have jobs today. If they have, those parents are not able to support them to go to university or with connections to get an internship into a good company. And most of those young men who die still live with the abjection that their parents experienced under apartheid.    

In societies that are racially and economically highly unequal the odds to get respect are stacked against young poor black men then. Whereas young middle-class and rich white men live in conditions that offer them protection, young poor black men have decreased safety nets. The conditions that make some young men better protected include things like a having a room of one's own instead of living in a small crowded house. Being able to spend time surfing the net as opposed to standing at the corner also helps. Surfing the net will keep you off the street. Having a job as opposed to standing at the corner will keep you out of trouble for a chunk of the day. Having a car instead of walking past a group of young men standing at the corner will get you past the corner. If that corner is next to a place where people drink, that adds to the risk. If you like to get drunk, it does not help: alcohol tends to make some people more likely to get into fights. If you are a teenager or young adult and your own father and mother are drinkers or even just disengaged from you, that removes a layer of social protection. All these factors multiply the risk as they interact. 

There are other factors that put some and not other young black men at increased risk of premature death. These are psychosocial.  They are gendered. Because of their psychosocial vulnerabilities and feelings of not being valued by society, young men may lash out at those nearest to them. The historical gender system denied their fathers their manhood which the sons are trying to regain, the traditionalist cultural system of gender has miseducated them, the education system has warped their sense of social equality, and the economic system excludes them. Men’s violence, then, often enough functions towards deflecting their internal states of vulnerability of being a surplus group. They get violent with women or engage in fights with other men to deal with feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, abandonment or insecurity. Some of this violence will go unremarked or have any visible consequence. Yet this violence is what puts a man at risk of dying violently. In a situation where another man is unwilling to walk away or talk things over, the ensuing argument is likely to result in injury or death of one of the protagonists. As the South African police have said, over 50% of what they call “social fabric-related murders and attempted murders result from arguments which subsequently deteriorate into fights”.

White young men don't die at the same rates as black young men because they have much better protection. They have far more opportunities to achieve culturally successful manhood without resorting to physical violence. And unlike young black men, the socio-economic fabric around young white males does not need as much repairing.       

Connecting can save your life and make you happier, man

Like some men, it took me a long while to fully realise that durable relationships and reciprocal connections were pretty much all there is. Make that the majority of men. Many of us, and nearly all young men, act as if sex is completely and incontrovertibly central to their lives. Not relationship, coitus. At least they talk that way.

Without regular copulation, I have heard some men state, they would die. If there is no sex, more than a few have even said, there is no relationship. That's what we are led to believe by other men, some women, pornography, quite a number of tv shows, women's mags, men's mags, and, if we didn't think so before we saw Mapona Volume 1, what we make others believe. But if you believe this partial rendering of your own being at 25, you better come right because it doesn't hold at 52. Soon you are going to have to start accepting that you got it terribly mixed-up. You got sex confused with connection, with acceptance, with what it means to be young and oh so cool. Even old presidents and world economic leaders confuse and are confused about this stuff.

What I think many of us are mistakenly looking for in beautiful young bodies is precisely this hard to describe enjoyment we confuse with sexual fun. Actually, the majority of women got and were socialised into it early on in their lives - while hanging out with their mothers and grandmothers - far more than you as a man got. Not in so many words, but girls more than boys learn without direct teaching that quality connection makes us more secure and happier. It turns out that connectedness to others also makes us healthier and live longer.

You didn't get the lessons in relationships as a boy because, in South Africa at least, the father and grandfather and older men who can give you the education about boy-stuff to match the education girls get have themselves disconnected, absconded, checked out from the families, even while they may be in the house or neighbourhood. In a research paper released in April 2011, the South African Institute of Race Relations said that the proportion of South African children with absent but living fathers in 2009 was nearly 1 in 2. At 30% black children had the lowest proportion of present fathers and Indians at 85% had the highest. 

It isn't sex that is central to our lives as men (and women) then. But don't get me wrong, sex is good. And good sex can be really awesome. It reconnects you to your body, and in some cases, your heart and mind. The question is, what makes sex good? Is it because the person you copulated with is so hot, so supple, so wild, so rich or so kinky you feel as if you just came into the world? Is it because you did it in the backseat of the car, the church graveyard, and the public toilets? Is it because you just did to her or him what you have always fantasised your tribe doing to the other tribe? I think not. 

What all of these factors indicate is that sex holds inexhaustible potential. There are myriad factors that go into making sex fantastic, from with whom you do it, where you have it, why, with what, and when in your life. Sometimes what kills the sexual mood can be as unrelated as worries about bills, something that your boss said to you last Friday, someone cutting in front of you in traffic, or not finding your favourite bread at the store. But the elusive nature of pleasure and innumerable factors that make it mind-blowing when it is good, also indicates that these spaces, fantasies, and sexual objects (in the Freudian sense), do not exhaust the potential of sex.

What makes sex an axis of what is good, and so damn confusing at times, in the world is more than the physical. The difference between sex that makes you feel good and good sex that leaves a bad taste in your mouth is reciprocity and recognition. I know, sometimes friends dispute this and argue that it's because one has never been fellated by a sexy foreigner who will never be seen again, otherwise I would not be going on about all this mutuality and sharing. Maybe not. Until such time, and following such unbelievable lasting happiness that I change my mind, I will stick with connection, communication, and intimacy. What keeps a man up between the rounds, I think, is being looked at in a certain way by a lover or spouse. That feeling of incompleteness even after coming hard is because, though you may not know it, you want to be touched, spoken to, told you are good - even if you are not so great. You might not know it at the moment, but you feel disppointed even though she or he is hot because what you are really missing is for her or him to wear your shirt, smile at you, tell you something interesting, listen to cds with you. 

It took me to be in another country, free to do as I please, to figure this out. And I am a psychologist for goodness sake. Also, I come from a people who almost on a daily basis use words like botho, motho, setho: that's not botho, that's what setho means, you gotta do that if you are motho, and all that cultural jazz. Botho is nothing if not connectedness. Setho is about being-fully-present-in-relationship, and thus motho is one of who cares about the other, and by extension the world.  

Since I mentioned communication, and at times talking on a phone or smsing that seems the only worthy kind of connection nowadays, of course being connected means far more than choosing a Vodacom, MTN, Cell-C, 8ta or any other cell-phone services provider. Connectedness of course goes far beyond getting sexually connected, we have said that enough times now. Being connected to others - and, in this case, the more quality partners the better - could mean literally the difference between a long healthy life and dying young if you are a young man. It could mean the difference between happiness and suicide. Being securely attached to your son, father, grandparents, mother, sister, daughter, teacher, student, peers, colleagues, dog, whatever makes you feel recognised and valued - it makes a difference.  

'Makgaiso Adelise Mapeshoane with her daughter, grandson, and great-grandson, at a traditional ceremony introducing the great-grandson to his people, Vosloorus, Gauteng Province, April 2011

But the connectedness of young black men or lack thereof could make a differnce to your life too, whoever you are: woman, old, white, rich, or poor. Since the deadly male-male violence spills out of the group, working to undo the social disconnect many young black men experience demands far more attention that it is receiving.

This post was, I need to say now, was inspired by among others Jean Redpath's article on the disconnectedness or otherwise of young black men in Busines Day of 22 August 2011. What I liked about the article is Redpath's stress on the importance of connection. After reflecting on the disproportionate homicidal victimisation of young black men in South Africa and Brazil, Redpath states that from her research on victimisation in Galeshewe township in Kimberly, Northern Province of South Africa, the most important protective factors against becoming a victim of violent crime is associated to the connectedness of men. Actually, we know from some very good studies on schooling and organisation, connectedness is of uncontested significance to many other things and not just victimisation. I'd say it's time we reverse the serious and mind-boggling neglect of the concept in present-day South Africa, especially as it has do with young black male lives. It's time to restart reconnecting because being connected to others is a predictor of things like staying and finishing school, performance, health, and happiness, not just staying alive. Ok, let me say that again: in South Africa, connectednes is important because it can save lives, specifically of young black men. But surely it is important for each of us and the cohesiveness and conviviality of society . 

Fashioning Masculinity Retrospective 1 - Making Visible Uncelebrated Black Manhoods

Fashioning Masculinity, the event we anticipated and prepared for over the last seven months has come and gone. We are hoping the event starts a tradition of thinking about men as men with nuanced and careful deliberation.

In the first of a series of posts, I want to tell you some about the making of the event, and let you into some of the unseen activities that went into this new tradition we are trying to start. Now granted, we borrowed, like most traditions do from elsewhere. Masculinities and the thinking around it and its contestations has a history and we are inheritors and borrowers and also we would like to think innovators in this conversation about the makings of men.

The history of masculinity, as a concept that is good to think with, is tied to feminism of course and the recognition that gender is an organizing feature of society. Feminism, in turn, moves to resist patriarchy and overturn the oppression of women. Thus, the genesis of masculinity studies is aimed at understanding men as men. Feminist masculinity scholars  and activists are connected by the desire to uncover how and why men as a gender receive patriarchal dividends from the subjugation of females, de Beauvoir's second sex. Progressive black masculinity studies are provoked by black men's condition as oppressed, suffering from an unformed, deformed or denied masculinity, escaping into alcohol, drugs, rape, unsafe sex and beating black women. (This reality of black women bearing the brunt of black men's anger of course occurs in the world despite the mostly unfounded fears and discourse of white women as the object of black men's insatiable lusts). Right there we can see the ties to Black Studies. And then of course there is Critical Race and Subaltern Studies which make sense of black man's violence through the concepts of alienation and hypermasculinity driven by deprivation and inequality.

Kopano Ratele's innovation in this tradition is to consider black men not merely from their pains and psychic wounds but from their transcendence of their wounds. For every one black man who does not abuse a woman, there are at least three who live in the world with kindness, gentleness, community of spirit and care; this despite suffering the pangs of hunger, want in a world that maligns and wounds them in ways too large to comprehend and so small  we barely think it significant. How have these men been fashioned? Which traditions of care and self-love are they drawing upon? And how can we reproduce these traditions to create a kinder, gentler and enabling world for everyone? The stories of the good and nurturing black father, lover, son, brother, friend, colleague and comrade, the ones we can learn from, are largely unwritten, untold and unexplored. Some of these stories are as inspiring as they are common like that of Tyrese Bani and Vuyani Mnyamana, young men who grew up hard but have learned that disciplining the body can be a vehicle to changing oneself on the route to elsewhere. The statuesque Tyrese Bani from Port Elizabeth is a model and budding photographer doing his Bachelor of Arts degree. The articulate science student, body-builder Vuyani Mnyamana, has a low centre of gravity and a cool demeanour. Both are completing their studies at the University of the Western Cape. When they start to talk about working on their bodies at the gym, getting up at 5am before they go to their classes, something else you can't miss is how men are made, not born.  You also see and hear what is there, and made possible by other black men, but very much ignored in favour of the tsotsi, skelm and swagerring dominant image of young black men. 

 

Model Tyrese Bani and body-builder Vuyani Mnyamana, both students at UWC, in conversation with masculinity scholar Kopano Ratele and Kharnita Mohamed (not in picture) of the Institute for Social and Health Science's Programme on Traditions and Transformation, at the Fashioning Masculinity event on 16 August 2011



This starting premise, of masculinity of care, is what founded the Fashioning Masculinity event, and the series of events to follow: a critical exploration of black manhood that is not mired in despair. We desire to start a conversation about a black man many of us recognise in our everyday dealings with the men who sit around our boardroom tables, in our offices, at our dinner tables and who share our beds, our homes, our blood. When we stop to think about them, these good black men, we blindly count ourselves lucky and treat them as exceptions and not as a seventy-five percent majority, so as to comfortably hold onto the stereotypes of that other black man raging in a township, a suburb, or a mansion somewhere.

Are we trying to excuse and ignore the pain and suffering caused by the angry black man so wounded he is cannibalising himself and those around him? No! We are trying to make visible the unacknowledged, uncelebrated, everyday and kind black manhoods that already exist. We are trying to surface the kind of masculinities that already exist not in our academic perches but in the same township, suburb or mansion in the tired and yet persevering voice of a man trying to advise another on a better way to live with himself and those who love and/or would love him. These are the masculinities that men like Stephen Mentor, men's programme coordinator at CASE, is also trying to bring to the surface. Working out of Hanover Park on the Cape flats, a place riven by endemic structural, direct, and psychical violence Mentor and his male and female colleagues are trying to heal and change men's relationshisp with other men and women in their lives so as to change the place.



Stephen Mentor, men's programme coordinator at CASE, speaking about presenting the organisation's work in Hanover Park at the Fashioning Masculinity event


In allowing ourselves to rethink traditions of masculinity, we hope to provide space for positive traditions that exist to thrive. One thing that I was reminded of by Nadia Sanger and Melanie Judge at the event is that masculinity is not just tied to having a penis. Disconnecting masculinity from penises brings us to the optimistic realisation that traditions can be transformed to make all of us, men and women, girls and boys, flourish.
  




Feminists Nadia Sanger and Melanie Judge at Fashioning Masculinity event, MRC, 16 August 2011

 

Address by Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe during the National Women’s Conference, Boksburg, Gauteng, 03 August 2011

Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe addressing the National Women's Conference, Boksburg, Gauteng, 3 August 2011:

"Changing patriarchal attitudes and practices goes to the centre of democracy and the spirit of the South African Constitution. 

The opportunity is that there is recognition that patriarchy and economic exclusion are the root of discrimination against women and a lot of attempts are being made through policies and legislation at government level, and research and training at civil society level, to change these attitudes.

Policy and legislation are critical in changing practices based on patriarchal attitudes and behaviour but it is difficult to legislate the attitudes away.  For this purpose, there needs to be work that is focusing on attitudinal change.

The global strategy to transform gender relations should also include continuous education and the creation of spaces to debate issues relating to patriarchy, women’s empowerment and gender equality."

http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=4583