Nomalanga Mkhize, Business Day
THE "maiden bursary" offered by the
uThukela district municipality affirms two points. First, it shows why the
principle of constitutionalism is necessary in a pluralist society. By
pluralist I mean a society in which many cultural institutions, customs and
codes coexist and interact.
We can continuously debate and change the
content of that Constitution over time, but a constitution is necessary to act
as final arbiter lest we give way to extreme cultural relativism that can
legitimise abhorrent practices.
Second, the bursary demonstrated a major
ideological faultline of the postcolonial state. Not neocolonialism, but
neotraditionalism. By this I mean the tendency of postcolonial political orders
to express power and statecraft through a toxic mix of conservative politics,
culturalist rhetoric and very masculinised political practice.
In our analyses of why postcolonial states
fail we tend to focus on the structural aspects. But we have to see how the
macroeconomic setup interacts with, and is shaped by, the confluence of daily
power plays expressed through social norms, customs, gender relations and
localised politics.
In uThukela, we see perfectly how big
problems such as HIV/AIDS, poverty and unwieldy local government collide with
deeply held social beliefs and customs to give local elites the opportunity to
deepen their political traction by aligning state resources with conservative
cultural practice in conservative communities.
In and of itself the act of reimagining
cultural practice to tackle pressing contemporary social questions is not
inherently wrong; culture is a rich intellectual resource. But often what is
repackaged as culture is really a political ploy intended to entrench
controlling ideologies.
Take, for example, the public attacks against
African women for wearing miniskirts, deemed immodest and "unAfrican"
by conservatives, even though most traditional sub-Saharan African attire
exposes women’s body parts. Another is the way people insist that African women
must take their husbands’ surnames on marriage even though this practice
arrived with missionaries and Christian marital rites.
I was left bemused once when I debated with a
prince on radio as he maintained that it was imperative for married African
women to go by the title "Mrs". I tried to remind him that southern
Africans referred to each other by clan, not this western concept of a
"surname". He confounded me into silence with his defence of a
practice first adopted by Christian converts who had abandoned their culture.
Had I not been so amused, I really should have asked this prince why we refer
to President Jacob Zuma’s wives as "MaKhumalo", "MaNtuli"
and so on.
Neotraditionalists are not interested in
using culture to liberate Africans, but to find culturally sanctioned avenues
to increase power, exert social control and evade accountability.
Yet our history tells us stories of
"cultural" defiance by African women. Take the famous Ingcugce
Regiment Rebellion of 1876. The Ingcugce was a regiment of female regiment
under King Cetshwayo ka Mpande. As the colony encroached, Ingcugce members were
instructed to marry men in a senior regiment. Some young women found this
unacceptable, and ran off with their lovers. Those who defied this kingly edict
were tracked down and some were executed.
Neotraditionalists do not actively promote
these histories of African women defying African men, especially not where it
also relates to sexual liberty. Neotraditionalists would prefer for us to
imagine that long, long ago in "our culture", "our women"
were stoic and culturally compliant.
This brings us back to the principle of
constitutionalism. It is unlikely that advocates of the "maiden
bursary" will yield to reason. The most effective method will be to take
the municipality to the Equality Court.
