Opinion / Columnist
Misogyny in our discriminatory social institutions: Taken from the book: My roots my proud identity: Part one
20 Feb 2017 at 18:53hrs | Views
Psychologist: Let's discuss the societal aspect of your home and the culture of your people regarding women. I have left this question too long but when I listen how you relate issues regarding your siblings, your parents especially it boils down to how the society treat women. Let us discuss this bit; it may give us clues about the way forward. Remember your home and your society is the back-bone of your life. It is always good to understand them well to understand your own actions.
Nomazulu: It will not be easy to elaborate this aspect of the society. I lived in Zimbabwe for a very short space of time. The time I lived in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia I was young and I had serious personal problems, I was a school dropout at 13 years, at some time in my life, at 15 years, I was homeless, I was not sure if my mother was going to help me or not, she was deep in her own marital problems. It is for this reason that I can only relate about my society with the experience I went through with my parents, siblings and near relatives. I do not think these experiences can be brushed to the whole society as the standard of the culture of the people I come from. It will need another woman to relate her story similar to mine to deem my experiences as cultural related or cultural norm. However I can see that you want to tell me that my family cannot exist outside its society. What I experienced could be a reflection of what the society actually is. When my mother contested to the courts by divorcing my father and asking the court to give her custody to the children, she lost it. She divorced, yes, but was denied the custody of all the children. She was rudely told that she has to give up the child she was to give birth to back to her husband after birth. The reason was that, according to the law back then, the children belonged to the father and not the mother. The mere application of dowry gives the husband and father the absolute power over the children. Again my father told the court that he did not chase or fight his wife away, she just left the home on her own. That played badly against her. She came out of the marriage as a bad second, almost empty handed with only one child who was an infant back then, my father could not take the infant whom he was also entitled to by law, his mother was ailing and the means were becoming meagre for him. It was indeed the tradition of dowry!
My mother was caught up in these traditions, these cultural appropriations; dowry in our society disadvantages the woman badly in a family relationship. It is still practiced even to date. I am sure you know what dowry is. It is the money paid by the son-in-law to-be to the prospective in-laws, the parents to the young woman. This tradition is still intact and very existent in our society. The set of cultural values and traditions are not written values. For generations the societies in Rhodesia and, after independence, Zimbabwe have been transforming in a very fast way. At the beginning of the 20th century, the societies in my land were imputed with Christianity and colonial values at the same breath. I mean these colonial, and Christian values where imputed already in societies that had its own patriarchal patterns. All these values are still practiced parallel to one another and they tease each other of their existence. (In IsiNdebele ukusikizana) Let me give you one classical example. When a young girl gets married today, a dowry will be paid and she and the husband to-be will go to the church to tie the knot. By so doing they are upholding the Christian values. So already there are two cultures that have interplayed parallel to each other. I do not have problems with that at all. I do give credit to current governments that have tried to define these traditions and set up clear demarcations between cultural values and the laws of the state towards its citizens for the purpose of protecting the rights of women. But it does not mean that women are free in the sense of your cultural values in Germany. There are some unwritten laws, traditional laws that still pin the women to be subservient to males, namely becoming second to your husband, a woman should never be equal to her husband, and such a marriage is poisonous from the onset. Next, the man can allow himself to still have extra-marital affairs after marriage. This should balance the fact that the law does not allow men to marry more than two wives except in customary laws. Here again is the colonial law practiced parallel with the traditional law. A man is a man if he still can maintain an extra woman outside his marriage. Those extra sex escapades that will have been corrected by traditional values that allowed him to have more than one wife, he can still square that "illegally", without the approval of the newly-wedded wife, remember she may know that her husband is having another woman in some "beautiful flat" in town. This illegal set up can begin to reproduce, have children. There will be children born in the marriage set up and children born out of wedlock almost at the same time. The society tolerates this, it is not written but it's accepted but in low voices, spoken in high regards of the "phallic power of this man who can do it". Certainly, there is no pun intended. The rhythm and grammar is male and chauvinistic. It is this illogic masquerading as virtue at every turn. So you see the evidence of one cultural value teasing the other. My society can be described as misogynous in many ways because of these unwritten laws that women are expected to adhere to. These much unwritten misogynous laws are mostly carried out by women themselves to punish other women strangely enough. The fact that it's not impugned by the very society, the women especially makes one believe that it is wholly accepted practice as long as it is the man doing it and not the woman. I will give you another classical example of these unwritten laws. There is no written law that told women to overly respect males as if men are demi-gods, a cultural logic but a tissue of nonsense. It is the lines that divide the dynamic culture and the static. You will find that these men will demand that from women. You disobey these laws and you tell them that, look I am an adult, you will have espoused the red line, rebelled against the norm. You will be punished firstly by women and lastly by men and you will suffocate. In my society, the adult status is denied to women but again is selectively given to those women who have been overly obedient to men as they are then allowed to occupy the space of masculinity from which they can oppress other women. They will express views congruent with the masculine thinking to gain acceptance. It is these sub-groupings in the families that are managed by women, give each other positions, a social recognition, to oppress other women who are deemed cultural rebels. In IsiNdebele culture a woman is a child, if a man is alone and he will be asked, "how are the children at home" {banjani abantwana?} this statement is meant for the wife and her offspring together, it means the wife together with the children born by the wife are children.
You are already labelled as a rebel if you critique such appropriations of this cultural convenience. As you can see these traditions are fluid and imprecise, the interplay between culture and difference. The fact that they are undefined the better for the men, they remain in the air there. I easily became victim of them because I have not lived in the country long enough to know where they start and stop, where are the demarcations. They must be read between the lines by every female in the society if you want to survive it. Again nothing in my background predicated such a response to my reactions and few women in my family shared my disposition.
Again you can see how traditional values can be outplayed if the adult in the home does not want certain costumes to be practiced. In the IsiNdebele traditions, when a person dies, a year after that there should be some séance, some remembrance ceremony (Umbuyiso). This tradition is done in most households of many societies in Zimbabwe. In Shona culture, they call it "Kurova guva", a very important ceremony after the death of a person in the family. But if this tradition does not go well with the man supposedly the "the social father" he may cancel it and prevent it from taking place altogether. And he will say "Well I am a Christian I do not do such things, heathen practices, it's against my Christian values". Here is a man who is enjoying all the trappings of most conservative traditional values of IsiNdebele culture all around him but will cancel what does not suite him as heathen practice willy-nilly. He conveniently dresses his values from the wardrobe of his personal emotions that suit him. He Cherrie picks what he wants to adhere as tradition and stops as he wishes, phallic power, patriarchal per se! Again no pun intended, it is when you begin to critique such appropriations, you are a rebel and a prostitute and a witch in their midst and therefore very dangerous to the status quo. You should be decimated from the society, if it was possible, and labels absolutely irrelevant to what one is criticising. (Mati hapana chihure here mukati? Saka munechitsvina mukati!) It has become a song to be told about my toxic foreign German culture, I have learnt from Germany. I have been told to leave those cultural traditions in Germany and never bring them to Zimbabwe. The moment it's spoken like that with those high emotions it's polite never to argue with them, you lose the argument and come bad second in it. It is both men and women who will attack you and leave you in a state of emotional bankruptcy. I never coveted German culture consciously, but how do you tell it to them and you are understood? Again they will decide not to understand you if they want to complicate everything further, rendering you irrelevant to the society you thought was yours by birth.
It was common at home in Tshabalala that girls would come and visit my brothers, sometimes only for sex. This habit will be tolerated even by Mama. Somehow it was tolerated that boys needed to practise sex on girls for future purposes. But when I got myself a boyfriend at 18 years I would be beaten to near death by those very brothers who would bring girls of my age home for sex purposes. Now whose daughters should be used for sex practice and the other daughters remain as virgins? My brother Charles hit me with the cable of a pressing iron, I would have died of the internal injuries of it, for just suspecting that I had a boyfriend talking to me through the window. I would be beaten savagely in the past-and- present tense not to be a prostitute in future-tense! A good future woman and wife must endure beatings, even savage beating from the male domination to be made into a "good and decent woman" of the future. Sis Heather was badly beaten by her father when she got pregnant. But he was abusing children of 9 and ten years old because they were not his, he still wanted values maintained in his daughters. He was protective of them. My brother Bigboy sent his daughter away to her Aunty and he remained staying with three little girls as old as 11 years playing in-laws games with them by touching their breasts and making sex with the little girls. We are even supposed to term him a paedophile! Paedophiles live in far-away-places and not in our homes! His daughter has to remain perfect but not these other girl children who are not his! There are from poor background anywhere, they can be abused anyhow and even sexually.
Also Read: Misogyny in our discriminatory social institutions: Taken from the book: My roots my proud identity: Part Two
Nomazulu: It will not be easy to elaborate this aspect of the society. I lived in Zimbabwe for a very short space of time. The time I lived in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia I was young and I had serious personal problems, I was a school dropout at 13 years, at some time in my life, at 15 years, I was homeless, I was not sure if my mother was going to help me or not, she was deep in her own marital problems. It is for this reason that I can only relate about my society with the experience I went through with my parents, siblings and near relatives. I do not think these experiences can be brushed to the whole society as the standard of the culture of the people I come from. It will need another woman to relate her story similar to mine to deem my experiences as cultural related or cultural norm. However I can see that you want to tell me that my family cannot exist outside its society. What I experienced could be a reflection of what the society actually is. When my mother contested to the courts by divorcing my father and asking the court to give her custody to the children, she lost it. She divorced, yes, but was denied the custody of all the children. She was rudely told that she has to give up the child she was to give birth to back to her husband after birth. The reason was that, according to the law back then, the children belonged to the father and not the mother. The mere application of dowry gives the husband and father the absolute power over the children. Again my father told the court that he did not chase or fight his wife away, she just left the home on her own. That played badly against her. She came out of the marriage as a bad second, almost empty handed with only one child who was an infant back then, my father could not take the infant whom he was also entitled to by law, his mother was ailing and the means were becoming meagre for him. It was indeed the tradition of dowry!
My mother was caught up in these traditions, these cultural appropriations; dowry in our society disadvantages the woman badly in a family relationship. It is still practiced even to date. I am sure you know what dowry is. It is the money paid by the son-in-law to-be to the prospective in-laws, the parents to the young woman. This tradition is still intact and very existent in our society. The set of cultural values and traditions are not written values. For generations the societies in Rhodesia and, after independence, Zimbabwe have been transforming in a very fast way. At the beginning of the 20th century, the societies in my land were imputed with Christianity and colonial values at the same breath. I mean these colonial, and Christian values where imputed already in societies that had its own patriarchal patterns. All these values are still practiced parallel to one another and they tease each other of their existence. (In IsiNdebele ukusikizana) Let me give you one classical example. When a young girl gets married today, a dowry will be paid and she and the husband to-be will go to the church to tie the knot. By so doing they are upholding the Christian values. So already there are two cultures that have interplayed parallel to each other. I do not have problems with that at all. I do give credit to current governments that have tried to define these traditions and set up clear demarcations between cultural values and the laws of the state towards its citizens for the purpose of protecting the rights of women. But it does not mean that women are free in the sense of your cultural values in Germany. There are some unwritten laws, traditional laws that still pin the women to be subservient to males, namely becoming second to your husband, a woman should never be equal to her husband, and such a marriage is poisonous from the onset. Next, the man can allow himself to still have extra-marital affairs after marriage. This should balance the fact that the law does not allow men to marry more than two wives except in customary laws. Here again is the colonial law practiced parallel with the traditional law. A man is a man if he still can maintain an extra woman outside his marriage. Those extra sex escapades that will have been corrected by traditional values that allowed him to have more than one wife, he can still square that "illegally", without the approval of the newly-wedded wife, remember she may know that her husband is having another woman in some "beautiful flat" in town. This illegal set up can begin to reproduce, have children. There will be children born in the marriage set up and children born out of wedlock almost at the same time. The society tolerates this, it is not written but it's accepted but in low voices, spoken in high regards of the "phallic power of this man who can do it". Certainly, there is no pun intended. The rhythm and grammar is male and chauvinistic. It is this illogic masquerading as virtue at every turn. So you see the evidence of one cultural value teasing the other. My society can be described as misogynous in many ways because of these unwritten laws that women are expected to adhere to. These much unwritten misogynous laws are mostly carried out by women themselves to punish other women strangely enough. The fact that it's not impugned by the very society, the women especially makes one believe that it is wholly accepted practice as long as it is the man doing it and not the woman. I will give you another classical example of these unwritten laws. There is no written law that told women to overly respect males as if men are demi-gods, a cultural logic but a tissue of nonsense. It is the lines that divide the dynamic culture and the static. You will find that these men will demand that from women. You disobey these laws and you tell them that, look I am an adult, you will have espoused the red line, rebelled against the norm. You will be punished firstly by women and lastly by men and you will suffocate. In my society, the adult status is denied to women but again is selectively given to those women who have been overly obedient to men as they are then allowed to occupy the space of masculinity from which they can oppress other women. They will express views congruent with the masculine thinking to gain acceptance. It is these sub-groupings in the families that are managed by women, give each other positions, a social recognition, to oppress other women who are deemed cultural rebels. In IsiNdebele culture a woman is a child, if a man is alone and he will be asked, "how are the children at home" {banjani abantwana?} this statement is meant for the wife and her offspring together, it means the wife together with the children born by the wife are children.
Again you can see how traditional values can be outplayed if the adult in the home does not want certain costumes to be practiced. In the IsiNdebele traditions, when a person dies, a year after that there should be some séance, some remembrance ceremony (Umbuyiso). This tradition is done in most households of many societies in Zimbabwe. In Shona culture, they call it "Kurova guva", a very important ceremony after the death of a person in the family. But if this tradition does not go well with the man supposedly the "the social father" he may cancel it and prevent it from taking place altogether. And he will say "Well I am a Christian I do not do such things, heathen practices, it's against my Christian values". Here is a man who is enjoying all the trappings of most conservative traditional values of IsiNdebele culture all around him but will cancel what does not suite him as heathen practice willy-nilly. He conveniently dresses his values from the wardrobe of his personal emotions that suit him. He Cherrie picks what he wants to adhere as tradition and stops as he wishes, phallic power, patriarchal per se! Again no pun intended, it is when you begin to critique such appropriations, you are a rebel and a prostitute and a witch in their midst and therefore very dangerous to the status quo. You should be decimated from the society, if it was possible, and labels absolutely irrelevant to what one is criticising. (Mati hapana chihure here mukati? Saka munechitsvina mukati!) It has become a song to be told about my toxic foreign German culture, I have learnt from Germany. I have been told to leave those cultural traditions in Germany and never bring them to Zimbabwe. The moment it's spoken like that with those high emotions it's polite never to argue with them, you lose the argument and come bad second in it. It is both men and women who will attack you and leave you in a state of emotional bankruptcy. I never coveted German culture consciously, but how do you tell it to them and you are understood? Again they will decide not to understand you if they want to complicate everything further, rendering you irrelevant to the society you thought was yours by birth.
It was common at home in Tshabalala that girls would come and visit my brothers, sometimes only for sex. This habit will be tolerated even by Mama. Somehow it was tolerated that boys needed to practise sex on girls for future purposes. But when I got myself a boyfriend at 18 years I would be beaten to near death by those very brothers who would bring girls of my age home for sex purposes. Now whose daughters should be used for sex practice and the other daughters remain as virgins? My brother Charles hit me with the cable of a pressing iron, I would have died of the internal injuries of it, for just suspecting that I had a boyfriend talking to me through the window. I would be beaten savagely in the past-and- present tense not to be a prostitute in future-tense! A good future woman and wife must endure beatings, even savage beating from the male domination to be made into a "good and decent woman" of the future. Sis Heather was badly beaten by her father when she got pregnant. But he was abusing children of 9 and ten years old because they were not his, he still wanted values maintained in his daughters. He was protective of them. My brother Bigboy sent his daughter away to her Aunty and he remained staying with three little girls as old as 11 years playing in-laws games with them by touching their breasts and making sex with the little girls. We are even supposed to term him a paedophile! Paedophiles live in far-away-places and not in our homes! His daughter has to remain perfect but not these other girl children who are not his! There are from poor background anywhere, they can be abused anyhow and even sexually.
Also Read: Misogyny in our discriminatory social institutions: Taken from the book: My roots my proud identity: Part Two
Source - Nomazulu Thata
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