At the altar of sacrifice: traditional inequalities and democratic equalities traditions 18 .11.2009 soweto hotel

1. Kgamadi Kometsi National Coordinator: Racism and Non-Discrimination kkometsi@sahrc.org.za At the altar of sacrifice: traditional inequalities and democratic equalitiestraditions 18 .11.2009soweto hotel

2. Ain’t nothing like a real thing: Things authentic • Social identities • Racial • Sexual • Gender Inclusion/Exclusion = haphazard Us + them dynamic => Effect may be fatal! introduction

3. Binary gender system • Men and women essentially different • Prescriptions and discrete boundary • Straddling => negative sanction • Call into line • Coerce into commitment • Dismembering introduction

4. Gender identity = relational Masculinity depending on what it means not to have some other identity Depends on femininity and boundaries with alternative masculinities Being man = not being woman NB: Rival masculinities introduction

5. Qualifying as a man - Demonstrable characteristics: • Not a woman • (Hetero)sexual prowess; sexual conquest of women; heading a nuclear family; siring children; physical + material competition with other men; independence; behavioural autonomy; rationality; strict emotional control; aggressiveness; obsession with success and status; certain way of walking and talking, etc. *** INTRODUCTION

6. The need to empower women Powerful groups and redistribution of power (change) Masculinity (security) resting on female repression: => Resistance Constructions of desire/conceptions of death in constructions of masculine identity: Considerations of how one wants to live or die Democratizations and masculinities

7. Democratizations and masculinities • Appeals to change = • Appeal to be un-masculine • Affront to what it means to being real man, normal man, natural man • Inhabit the unknown • A male without masculinity (female) • A monster • A body without its essential spirit • A mutation with no specifiable identity

8. Appeals to change or challenges against their dominance  expose fragility of men and their practices Changing positions of women  men’s subjective understanding of what it means to be men Being men and the essence of femininity: Where ‘real’ masculinity fails, femininity takes over Democratizations and masculinities

9. The power of tradition • becoming a man: In Xhosa tradition, this is achieved through one means only: circumcision • Resistance => cultural (or social) impasse • The reverence and commitment that seem to characterise how lessons from these practices are received and lived out rare moments of receptivity in the construction of men and their practices UYINDOD’ ENJANI?

10. UYINDOD’ ENJANI? • The making of man • certain rituals, which are perceived to create men • ‘men are artificially made while women are naturally born’ • an important intervention for a reading of changing men’s practices: ‘subject positions are coercive and complex’ • NB: Pain of circumcision and risks involved!

11. The making of man – effect of initiation rites: ‘...to dramatize the change of status through symbolic rebirth – while at the same time operating directly and drastically at a psychological level, on the bonds to women and their world, which the novices must live behind’ NB: Individuation process ‘completion’ UYINDOD’ ENJANI?

12. Problematics: • Women : visibilities and invisibilities • Isigqwathe/snort • Ukwesula / ‘House of the lamp’ • Marriage and gradations • Other masculinities UYINDOD’ ENJANI?

13. The intending bridegroom, with one or two friends will waylay the intended bride in the neighbourhood of her own home, quite often late in the day, towards sunset, or early dusk, and they will forcibly take her to the young man’s home. Sometimes that girl is caught unawares, but in many instances she is ‘caught’ according to plan and agreement. In either case, she willput up a show of resistance to suggest to onlookers that it is against her will, when in fact it is hardly ever so ukuthwala

14. Differentiation from abduction • Marriage = basis • Resistance and the preservation of dignity So acceptable is the thwala custom to the people, so pretended is the resistance put up by the girl known to be, and so good is the reason for the thwala, viz, the formation of marriage, that no onlooker ever interferes and tries to stop the thwala because of the crocodile tears that the woman sheds in the process Ukuthwala

15. OR Tambo District Municipality – Mthatha Seminar Ascendancy of Ukuthwala in the 1920s 50% of marriages were initiated through ukuthwala NB: Newer developments UKUTHWALA

16. Manifestations (Inkolo Kantu): Woman of marriageable age – willing party Woman of marriageable age – refuses to marry Parental disapproval – man and woman elope Economic circumstances – man and woman marry themselves and work to pay lobola together NB: Constitutional value of equality! ukuthwala

17. The insertion of children in this practice Men and women involved in the abduction Supposed spouse forcing himself on girl child Supposed spouse and HIV or AIDS or TB 14 year olds expected to bear children Escorts and restricted movement Sexual custody by migrant workers Promises of further schooling – pipedream UKUTHWALA

18. Complicity and resistance of women • Less complicated • Selective understanding of rights (CRL) • The best interests of the child • Women as primary oppressors/participants in the oppression of other women => complexification! • NB: African feminism and Western feminisms UKUTHWALA

19. Primordial or Instrumental: Support! Approach traditional spaces with care Inherent challengers within patriarchal systems Imposed, external attempts to change – futile WAY FORWARD: Researchers and activists

20. Claims to truth Ideological positions of researchers/activists Claims to truth are discursively situated and implicated in relations of power However, not simply effects of power Truth involves regulative rules Truth internally related to meaning WAY FORWARD: Researchers and activists

21. Claims to truth Appreciating the participants’ vantage point Power visibility – when claims of universal truth present contradictions to observed practices Researchers: What we see is what we already value (constructionists) NB: Research value orientations should not influence research findings WAY FORWARD: Researchers and activists

22. THANKYOU!