Nomboniso Gasa 30 / 12/ 09
It is just more than a month since the first day of the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children campaign.
The critical aspect of this campaign is to promote behavioural change to ensure that our society lives the reality of 365 days of no violence.
During the 16 days, two major days are marked across the globe: World Aids Day and the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Regrettably, on both days, the government was not able to draw the links – in many of our communities, we know of many women who are sexually abused by able-bodied and often men of position, because of sight challenges, mental-related disability, and so on.
The women and girls continue to be silent victims. And when they dare to speak, it is like spitting in the wind.
In the past 10 years in particular, South Africa has shown a disturbing and dangerous tendency to distort cultural norms, and the re-invention of “African culture” is often expressed in singular and static fashion as an explanation for all manner of practices and decisions.
In many public discussions on this thing called “African culture”, the dominant voices have been from men, especially black men.
There’s nothing wrong with that, it is a free country, and it is about time, too, that people engaged on matters that affect and concern them – be these philosophical, cultural or religious, or issues of social practice.
This is not unexpected from a society that has emerged from a system that sought to destroy the very core of who we are as a people, including white people.
Systems of racial supremacy destroy not only those who are oppressed, but generations who come from the oppressor and privileged sectors.
Admittedly, the nature of harm, trauma and psychological wounding takes different forms.
Literature on race subjugation has eloquently shown the critical necessity of buy-in and internalisation of racial supremacy by the subjugated subject.
James Baldwin said that when the oppressed recognised oppression and articulated it is as such, the first and most powerful step towards self-liberation had been taken.
Critical as that step is, we all know from our respective positions and experiences that it is merely a beginning and much work needs to be done, consistently and at deeper levels.
As a feminist, my own location is important.
Therefore, let me state that I come to the historical and contemporary subject of subjugation, oppression and inequality as a married heterosexual African woman in her 40s who grew up in poverty in an apartheid Bantustan – the subaltern of this country.
The place of origin and its multiple nuances, and the texture of my childhood, affected my life in different and fundamental ways. Thus at all times I am conscious of the interconnectedness of race, class, rurality, sexuality, gender, ethnic hierarchies and contradictions among many others.
As a girl, I had the privilege of jumping trees, punching and being punched by girls and boys in the playground.
When the fists failed, my friend who knew the art of stick-fighting taught me its delicate balance and how to land a killer hit, ever so lightly.
On the playground, I learnt the dignity that comes with humility and the delicate ways in which the victorious have to handle themselves.
I was not even 10 when I learnt that to beat your opponent to the ground or rub someone’s nose into dirt is undignified – Myeke (let him be), friends would whisper when they saw the other person faltering. It all had to be quick and discreet.
We swam with boys in the river, exposing ourselves to water-borne diseases of which we knew nothing. We caught little worms – inkwili – and coached them to bite our nipples in the never-ending quest for womanhood – breasts not only being evidence but a crown of grown-up status.
The childhood I have just outlined was not idyllic. We did witness more than a fair amount of violence between adults.
I was seven when I first heard the word ukuqhomfa (to abort) whispered as an explanation for someone’s sudden death.
Often, mothers were blamed and beaten when their daughters were pregnant, made to take responsibility for isehlo – the shameful fall of the daughter. In my safe place, between the sofa and the curtains, I heard terrible and terrifying stories and once saw a woman telling my mother of what had happened to her.
Speaking through swollen lips, she said, pointing to the lower region of her body: “Yes, he wants this and uyithatha ngolunya (takes it forcefully).”
I find myself revisiting that childhood, not because of nostalgia, but to understand the complexity of the world I inhabited as a girl and that which is inhabited by many girls of the same age today – not necessarily better, but different.
This year’s 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children were set in a context where South Africans, especially African communities, are scrambling to cope with the breakdown of their families and communities.
Regrettably, the methods, approaches and strategies deployed lead to even greater destruction.
I followed and took part in the campaign in the company of mental images of young girls of Cwija village in the Mpondo area in the Eastern Cape, which I visited early this year.
I see their small waists, not fully formed, with scarves that are worn by married women going twice around their bodies. These girls, who look like they are playing house, are part of a group of young women who are given away in the practice of ukuthwala (forcing of the child into marriage, often with an older person, or forcing parents into agreeing to the forced marriage – in some cases, it may count as statutory rape).
As imbizo was in progress, these girls watched – some with vacant eyes, some with a sadness that cut deep into the heart. Others had expressions I could not read. Their faces and bodies – many were already pregnant by the time we went there – are always in my mind’s eye.
Whose children are these, I wondered as I heard elderly Mpondo men refer to the girls as whores who will bear multiple children to get government grants.
They blamed everybody.
The government, for introducing child grants and for its laws, including those concerning child abuse. The church – it was not clear for what exactly, but the institution came under vicious attack.
One old man replied to my question with indlal’ibomvu mntra’mbhem (the wolf is at the child of my brother).
Whose children are these whose bodies belong to all to use in any way they want?
Two weeks before the 16 days campaign began, a weekend paper carried a leading story about the introduction of compulsory virginity testing in the Qunu schools.
The paper reported that HIV/Aids statistics were alarmingly high, that drastic steps had to be taken.
The principal wrote to parents informing them that because of this, compulsory virginity testing would be introduced.
Not a single government department made a statement about the illegality of compulsory testing – or the futility of the exercise.
Already, we know from that article, that many parents have been cowed by the voice of authority in the village. Many parents, it was reported, take their children as far as Butterworth to have private tests done.
It would be interesting to see whether virginity testing in this context is going to bring down the numbers at all.
More likely, it will simply contribute to the stigma and feminisation of the disease.
Even during the 16 days campaign, the violations of the girl are left out of the picture.
How can these violations be interrogated? They are committed in the name of culture and that makes them sacrosanct.
(If HIV infection is going to be controlled by testing girls’ virginity, with whom do they have sex? Who tests the man, often older sugar daddies, who manipulate the girls into having sex?)
Those who are familiar with human physiology tend to doubt the accuracy of these virginity tests on the grounds that the hymen breaks in so many contexts – sport, boyish acts such as jumping trees, perhaps – not only during sex.
That is not to even think of whether the “traditional testers” actually pick up anything.
Visiting Cwija last year, we had a conversation with a hilarious girl who is part of “izintombi zenciyo” – inciyo is the bead apron worn by “untouched” girls.
The giggling girl told us that the whole thing was a joke – yindlalo. She gave me rather shocking information about cover-ups, tricks of the trade and so on.
When I asked her whether she did not believe in virginity she replied: “I am in this group because of the pressure and we are told there are opportunities, scholarships and so on. And no, I have not been with a boy, but even if I were who would know? Her?” She pointed her head towards the leader. “She has no clue. What about her own daughters?”
Looking at Cwija alone, we can already tell that in fewer than 10 years South Africa will have serious problems.
Like in so many countries, especially parts of east Africa and Sahelian west Africa, these girls, after multiple pregnancies, will be roaming the streets, social outcasts because of the unpleasant nature of their cervical complications.
We can tell now that many children are trapped between staying in the forced marriages, bearing children and getting HIV along the way, or running away.
But few can go back home – they are damaged goods.
Some of us are still grappling with the unintended consequences of promoting male circumcision as a preventative intervention, wondering what this means for the girl who may be involved with a boy who has just been circumcised.
I am still finding words to articulate how this so-called preventative intervention is going to skew the numbers and expose girls.
Even the World Health Organisation acknowledges that the benefits of circumcision in prevention are minimal.
The truth is more sinister than we dare imagine.
The silence on these issues during this year’s 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children spoke powerfully, even more loudly than the denials and justifications.
The violence threatens to overwhelm us, that much is true.
And yet, it is the silence of the “innocent” that wounds deeply. The impact will be felt for generations to come.
Whose children are these?
Wole Soyinka answered this question in his poem The Children of This Land
“…These are the offspring of the dispossessed,
The hope and land deprived. Contempt replaces
Filial bonds. ….
A gleam
Invades their dead eyes briefly, lacerates the air
But with one sole demand:
Who sold our youth?”
• Nomboniso Gasa is contributing editor to The Star and the editor of Women in South African History (HSRC Press, 2007). She is a gender policy, political and cultural analyst
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