Masculinities without Tradition

Abstract

‘The fear of being perceived as gay, as not a real man, keeps men exaggerating all the traditional rules of masculinity, including sexual predation with women’. This view on men's sexual (Following feminists such as Tamale [2011. African Sexualities: A Reader. Nairobi: Pambazuka Press] that thinking on ‘sexuality without looking at gender is like cooking pepper soup with pepper’, meaning that they are mutually imbricated with and shape one another, unless I wish to stress a point or indicate otherwise, whenever sexuality and associated concepts are used here it is meant gendered sexuality) and gender practices in relation to ‘the traditional’ expressed by Kimmel is shared with other leading scholars on masculinities. Yet, in situating queer sexualities against ‘the traditional’ or outside tradition, studies on masculinities have engendered a paradox which needs untangling in any serious attempt to unsettle traditionalist positions that clash with claims for the recognition of sexual equality. The main purpose of this article is to offer a different reading of the relation between masculinities and ‘the traditional’. Arguing that it is at the moment that the word ‘critical’ or its equivalents is uttered that a tradition leaks through, the article offers a critique of anti-‘traditional masculinity’ critiques which reinforce the homogenisation and retribalisation of African (While acknowledging the complexity accompanying the use of the terms in South Africa, as well as recognising their ideology-ladenness, in this article African and black are used interchangeably and refer to those historically defined as Bantu.) tradition and culture. At the same time, the article examines and seeks to undo some of the arguments of patriarchal hetero-masculinist traditionalism resistant to the recognition of desires and rights of women and men who are attracted to others of the same sex through foregrounding claims for equality for queer attraction and recognition.

Notes

Constructionist studies of masculinity in this case includes all studies which view masculinities as constructed while critical studies of masculinity are those that identify as feminist or profeminist.

The dividends of patriarchy mainly accrue to heterosexual men as a social group. However, it is false to think the patriarchal system only benefits and is backed by heterosexual men. Gender inequality and homophobia, which characterise the system, are not unknown in most parts of the world, and men and women from many countries can and do spread and support gender and sexual inequality and bias.

Traditionalism refers to a set of statements, beliefs, practices, etc., that show an inordinate respect to the authority of tradition, and traditionalists refers to a person who exhibits such beliefs.

‘In South Africa’, Mafeje said, ‘the indigenous population has no word for “tribe”; only for “nation”, “clan”, and “lineage” and, traditionally, people were identified by territory—“Whose [which Chief's] land do you come from?”’ (1971, 254). The words used to identify groups labelled as tribe under these laws and under colonial and apartheid legislation include setshaba (Sesotho), morafe (Setswana) and isizwe (isiZulu).

Compare, for example, the TLGF Act with this excerpt from the Bantu Authorities Act. It states:

The Governor-General may—with due regard to native law and custom and after consultation with every tribe and community concerned, establish in respect of any native tribe or community, or in respect of any two or more such tribes or communities or one or more such tribes and one or more such communities jointly, a Bantu tribal authority. (Union of South Africa 1951, 1154)

‘In many instances the colonial authorities helped to create the things called “tribes”, in the sense of political communities; this process coincided with and was helped along by the anthropologists’ preoccupation with “tribes”’ (Mafeje 1971, 254).

‘“Traditional leader” means any person who, in terms of customary law of the traditional community concerned, holds a traditional leadership position, and is recognised in terms of this Act’; ‘“traditional leadership” means the customary institutions or structures, or customary systems or procedures of governance, recognised, utilised or practiced by traditional communities' (RSA 2003, 8).

See footnote 3 above.

‘Traditional council’ is said to mean ‘a traditional council which has been recognised and established under Section 3 of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act, read with the provincial legislation required by the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act’; and ‘traditional justice system’ is defined as ‘a system of law which is based on customary law and customs’ (RSA 2011, 4).

Section 4 states among other things that ‘(1) The Minister may, in the prescribed manner, after consultation with the Premier of the province in question, designate a senior traditional leader recognised as such by the Premier, as is contemplated in the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act, as presiding officer of a traditional court for the area of jurisdiction in respect of which such senior traditional leader has jurisdiction. (2) The Minister may, in the prescribed manner, after consultation with the President, designate a king or queen recognised as such by the President, as is contemplated in the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act, as the presiding officer of a traditional court for the area or areas of jurisdiction in respect of which such king or queen has jurisdiction’.

For instance, according to the Population Registration Act (No 30 of 1950), ‘A native’ was defined as a person who in fact is or is generally accepted as a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa. It also stated that ‘every native whose name is included [in the register] shall be classified by the Director according to the ethnic or other group to which he belongs’ (Statutes of the Republic of South Africa 1950, 279, emphasis mine). (Union of South Africa 1950)

This denial is interesting if it is thought of as an apology of sorts, a disavowed apology, and is given some attention later.

By object it is meant ‘the person from whom the sexual attraction proceeds’ and by aim ‘the act towards which the instinct tends’ (Freud 1905/2011, 135 and 136).

Certainly, it is not only African men (and women) who express fear and loathing of LGBTQi, for politicians in, for example, Latvia, Poland, the USA, China and India, and other parts of the world, have expressed unfavourable sentiment against homosexuality (Human Rights Watch 2002, 2005).

The point about tradition is marginal to her argument about the association of masculinity to nationalism, but is still clear in her conclusion.

It has always seemed a mystery to me why the men in military and paramilitary institutions—men concerned with manly demeanour and strength of character—often seemed so agitated and afraid of the entry, first of blacks, then (still) of women, and now of homosexuals into military institutions and organisations. This unseemly, sometimes hysterical resistance to a diversity that clearly exists outside military boundaries makes more sense when it is understood that these men are not only defending tradition but are defending a particular racial, gendered and sexual conception of self: a white, male, heterosexual notion of masculine identity loaded with all the burdens and privileges that go along with hegemonic masculinity. Understanding that their reactions reflect not only a defence of male privilege, but also a defence of male culture and identity, makes clearer that there are fundamental issues at stake here for men who are committed to these masculinist and nationalist institutions and lifeways (Nagel 1998, 258–259).

In 2007, several women in the township of Umlazi in Kwazulu Natal were humiliated and a house burned down because some men had declared that as per tradition women were not permitted to wear trousers (The Mercury, July 25, 3).

Eric Hobsbawm defined ‘invented tradition’ thus:

‘Invented tradition’ is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past … . The historic pasts into which the new tradition is inserted need not be lengthy, stretching back into the assumed mists of time. … However, insofar as there is such reference to a historic past, the peculiarity of ‘invented’ traditions is that the continuity with it is largely factitious. In short, they are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition. It is the contrast between the constant change and innovation of the modern world and the attempt to structure at least some parts of social life within it as unchanging and invariant, that makes the ‘invention of tradition’ so interesting for historians of the past two centuries (Hobsbawm 1983, 1–2).

Amaqaba refers to heathen but also uncivilised (Bank 1999; Manganyi 1974; Msibi 2012).

Xhosa males who are at a certain stage following their initiation, and ubukrwala means the stage in which Xhosa males pass following a certain period after their initiation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kopano Ratele

Institute for Social and Health Sciences, University of South Africa/Co-director, Medical Research Council-University of South Africa Safety and Peace Promotion Research Unit, South Africa.