“There is only one place for me. It is here, entabeni” Inxeba (2017), Kalushi (2016) and the difficulties of “the urban” for the New South African Man

ABSTRACT

In Inxeba (2017, dir. John Trengove), an initiate, Kwanda, asks his ikhankatha (initiate guardian), Xolani, why he keeps coming back to entabeni (the mountain). Xolani responds that it is important to return with his “hand” to help the initiates’ journey to manhood. We later learn that Xolani’s return to entabeni can further be explained by his ongoing passionate affair with Vija – another initiate guardian, who is married to a woman. While much of the analysis of Inxeba has focused on this dynamic and volatile relationship between Xolani and Vija, this paper returns to Kwanda’s question: why do seemingly urbanised men like Xolani and Kwanda’s father, Khwalo, in Inxeba, and Solomon and his brother, “Bra Lucas” Mahlangu in Kalushi’s (2016, dir. Mandla Dube), perceive leaving the city as important for the attainment of personhood and manhood? While Inxeba is set in the rural areas, and Kalushi is set in the city, both postapartheid films represent what I call the “New South African Man” (NSAM). Building on the conceptual terrain of the “New South African Woman” (NSAW), developed by scholars such as Pumla Gqola, Nthabiseng Motsemme and Athambile Masola, among others, this paper employs the concept of the NSAM as a conceptual term to unpack the cinematic representation of postapartheid Black masculinities in these films.

KEYWORDS:

• Same-sex desire
• Inxeba
• Kalushi
• traditional initiation
• amaXhosa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Eastern Transvaal is the area now constituted by Gauteng, North West and Limpopo.

2. Somagwaza is usually sung by older men to accompany the new initiate.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gcobani Qambela

Gcobani Qambela (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0634-4704) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Johannesburg. He is a Research Fellow at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities. He is working on a monograph broadly around what he terms “the Anthropology of Boyhoods” which argues for considered attention to the interior lives of boys.