Retrospective 2: Traditions II: Everyday Lives of African Men

Jimmy Manyi

One of the relatively big stories of 2011 was triggered by the comments made by Mr Jimmy Manyi, President of the Black Management Forum and Head of Government Communication and Information Services. The story went big because of the protagonists, but also for the reason that it was yet another dreadful replay of the effects of the inherited misunderstandings of the racialised past that made us into who we are.

Like other ugly stories of race, Manyi’s words and the exchanges that followed entrapped our imaginations because they played on the masochism and misrecognition that, since apartheid at least, have become an unhappy part of black traditions. I also suspect that the story was a salutary lesson on the unrealised hopes and persisting uncertainties of what it means to be us in this suspended present moment.

Occupying the position of director-general of the Department of Labour at the time, Manyi had expressed the view on KykNet's Robinson Regstreeks show in 2010 that coloured people “must stop this over-concentration situation (in the Western Cape) because they are in over-supply where they are so you must look into the country and see where you can meet the supply”.



Trevor Manuel



One of the political figures who was angered by the comments and publicly responded to Manyi was the minister in the presidency Mr Trevor Manuel. To Manuel, Manyi was “the worst-order” racist, formed “in the mould of HF Verwoerd”.



In turn legal adviser to the minister of defence, Mr Paul Ngobeni, known to have been part of the “brains trust” that helped President Jacob Zuma during his corruption case, came blazing out in support of Manyi. Ngobeni said Manuel a gangster and racist.

The tone of the whole affair was rather unsavoury, from start to end. It is sometimes inevitable that such eruptions will happen, given the continuing trauma inhering in our identities. Still, because of what this regrettable exchange says about us as black people, I found it instructive about how not to think or talk about others.

Yet even though the subject of racial feelings and thoughts is something one does not carelessly broach in polite company, we could still have taken the opportunity to learn, and teach other especially younger people, about how we got here. We could still have fruitfully used the apparent possibilities even while recognising the hurt that Manyi caused in many black or coloured-identified people.

I am also aware, as all the central actors in this story might well be, there are many older people of all hues and creeds who could use some considered lessons about what apartheid racialising and tribalising traditions we employ to identify ourselves continue to do to our language and interior lives.  

The Manyi-Manuel-Ngobeni affair came back to mind at Traditions II, the second travelling pitso held in Ethiopia on 28-30 November 2011 by the University of South Africa’s Institute Social and Health Sciences. Hosted under the theme of Changing Traditions: Everyday Lives of African Men, the biennial tradition pitso is one of the pillars of the Changing Traditions Project which emerged, among other things, from amongst others the observation that there tends to be an incapacitating conflation of tradition and traditionalism.

Delegates at Traditions II: Everyday Lives of African Men 
held in Ethiopia on 28-30 November 2011



During the discussions, when highly emotional disagreements as well as serious distortions became apparent, I was reminded of one statement by Ngobeni that should have but never got much discussion. Ngobeni said Manuel acted as though he was “the king of coloured people”.

Clearly intended to offend, the sentiment plays on the untruth that those who claim a coloured identity do not have a cultural tradition, specifically not one of kingship.

This unfortunate miseducation about tradition which parses coloureds as cultureless is one which I have encountered also in my interactions with coloured-identified students when I used to teach at the University of the Western Cape. I am afraid it is far more common than that though, widely believed among many old and young people identified as African.

The idea that a people who have roots traceable to at least more than 450 years old in South Africa can be without tradition or culture is plainly incorrect, besides being offensive.

Yet this lie that only some people – specifically those who were once referred by apartheid laws as Bantu – can claim the right to be recognised as a traditional community is the very one freighted by the South African laws on traditional leadership and governance. These laws, to be clear, have the unwitting purpose of primitivising or retribalising ethnicity on the one hand, while also denying the equal fullness of the traditions of coloured-identified people on the other.

What baffles me is how a politically black democratic government fails to realise that the groupings brought under the term traditional communities in post-apartheid South Africa are the very same abhorrent tribes Archie Mafeje showed in the early 1970s to have been the creation of colonial rulers and racist anthropologists.

Let us be clear then that identifying as Zulu or Venda does not necessarily make you a tribesman or tribeswoman, just as being identified coloured or white does not by itself make you a tradition-less post-modern subject. Surely being an indigenous native speaker of isiZulu does not mean you have more traditions than being a native English-language speaker.

Perhaps the argument the dominant discourse on black traditions wants to convince us of is that those who were once Bantu are more strongly tied to their cultural traditions than others. That also is not quite true, for Europeans and North Americans may be said to have stronger traditions precisely because these tend to go unremarked, and often do come under the rubric tradition. It is when a tradition does not call itself a tradition, such as in eating with a fork and knife or calling ourselves by our race names, that it is almost unchallenged in its power over us.

Yet it also needs stating that to be black in the way black South Africans are black is very modern political tradition, but a tradition nonetheless. Furthermore, being black, because it is political identity, does not have ready correspondence with ethnicity. Indeed all racialised identities are first and foremost political identities. 

The fact is while all rituals are part of a tradition, not all practices within a tradition are ritualised. Tradition, that is to say, is not about primitives, pure tribes, traditional communities, kingships or whatever object a person or government wishes to employ to refer to the alienating Otherness we have become used to and use on ourselves.

Tradition is the basic question that all of us try to work from the moment we become cognitively capable of recognising both our individuality within and connectedness to our families, what remains unarticulated in our interactions with each other. Whereas we tend to think of tradition as that practice, rite or custom we do once a year or in a longer while, like being initiated into manhood, celebrating Christmas or Eid, paying mahadi, or burying the dead in a particular way, at its most productive moments tradition is what goes unspoken. Like gravity, tradition is the force that holds down the responses of the insiders to the tradition to the everyday problems of being human.

Though they may be out of sight, traditions are always an underlying dynamic in any practices where one person consciously or otherwise seeks to hand down – this being the principal meaning of the term tradition – the usable parts of a culture, whether that behaviour is what to eat, how to pray, who to love and how, the best way to raise children and how to raise them, and of above all how to be a person in the world of others.

Being at the centre of these traditions lipitso I have become even more aware that there is a great deal of ignorance, confusion and distortions that exists about what traditions mean. It is especially when one tries to square up the very modern, highly improvised, daily lives of black men and women in the Africa of today with how tradition is apprehended that one comprehends the misconceptions, myths, and caricatures that dogs our lives. Black men and women are perhaps the most post-modern subjects of all, and that does not negate that they can and may need to recognise where they have been.

However, it must be said, the paradoxical pull for many to define traditions in barely concealed tribalistic or racialised terms may be due to the uncertainties first provoked by imperialism and colonialism as well as the search for an elusive search for an old wholeness that may or may not have existed before those racist ideologies gutted our cultural life supports.

The Changing Traditions Project was conceived with the aim that, if we want to contribute in building Africa one figurative kgotla at a time, we have to set time aside whenever we can to help each other to more carefully think through what tradition means. We all need to carefully figure out and where necessary rethink what our traditions are, and that done, build on our best. Careless words, lazy thought and insulting each other are not the best way to build one other and our collective black lives.

Refashioning the local: Black masculinity, class and clothing

The latest issue of the South African feminist journal Agenda has published my article on masculinity and clothing as signifiers of race/class identity. One of the questions that motivated the study was to explore why poor black men spend so much money on clothes. Though reductive, my argument is that despite their socioeconomic status, young men in the townships seek to produce powerful self-images through expensive, designer clothing. Their clothing and the discourses they value and perpetuate around clothing (such as masculine individualism) are derived from a model of masculinity found in the magazines they read. The upper-class masculinity in Gentleman's Quarterly provides an imaginary of masculinity which participants deployed to resignify their class aspirations. The abstract can be found here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.2011.630578

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)

---