“Is it possible that some women may choose to undergo female circumcision?”

“Is it possible that some women may elect to undergo female circumcision?” This was the question that popped up on my face book after I had joined a group against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Some may want to get into a debate on the term FGM. There is a difference. The practices vary from circumcision which involves cutting the tip of the clitoris. Then there is what couldn’t really be called circumcision, it involves removing everything except for a tiny opening to pass water and for an excruciatingly painful intercourse. That is mutilation and any other name is nothing more than euphemism. There is also something called introcision involving an elderly man who enlarges the girl’s vaginal orifice by tearing it downward with three fingers bound with a string or a stone knife.

Back to the question, luckily I know the person who asked about women who may chose to be circumcised. He is someone who applies his mind. So instead of flipping out, I probed him to say more because I was genuinely curious of someone’s take that is different from those who blindly follow certain causes just because they are fashionable. I also thought it would be interesting to get a man’s perspective on an issue that I normally discuss with women.

I suspected that what may have been the issue for J was how most Westerners cry barbarism in most of African cultural practices. Like him I find that kind of empty cultural arrogance offensive. But his argument went further to point out that “there was this other issue about individual rights and freedoms. The right to determine for oneself what is wrong or right, good, bad or even harmful. Remember in South Africa people died for these rights. The liberation movement was pretty much about these rights, the right to determine our own destiny.”


Again this was the point I fully support. I am all for basic reasonable codes that serve as a form of social cohesion to avoid chaos but when they begin to take away my personal choice I balk. I begin to have a problem, when certain practices in culture pay unwanted attention on girls body parts to control procreation. I am enraged when it comes to a fact that such acts as FGM and circumcision are performed not on women but on girls. I am all for women making their own choices, but the thing is that infant girls and teenagers do not have a choice.


Sadly, the elderly women who oversee these practices have always been custodians of frozen tradition, how things were in their days. This is where the power of hegemony lies, it ensures that the practice is approved and seen as way of life by elders including women themselves.


As for Westerners thinking their cultures are clean and superior, it should be duly noted that FGM or female circumcision is not a uniquely African cultural practices. History would show that:
“The origin of FGM has not yet been established, but records show that the practice
predates Christianity and Islam in practising communities of today. In ancient Rome,
metal rings were passed through the labia minora of slaves to prevent procreation; in
medieval England, metal chastity belts were worn by women to prevent promiscuity
during their husbands' absence; evidence from mummified bodies reveals that, in ancient
Egypt, both excision and infibulation were performed, hence Pharaonic circumcision; in
tsarist Russia, as well as nineteenth-century England, France and America,
records indicate the practice of clitoridectomy. In England and America, FGM was
performed on women as a "cure" for numerous psychological ailments.” (UNCHR, Fact
Sheet No.23,)

As the global village becomes smaller, I have had the pleasure of befriending women who at a tender age have had to endure unimaginable pain of being circumcised . The issue of sex for them is a thorny issues. Excuse the pun since some them were literally stitched with thorns.

The question however remains, is it possible that there could be women out there who would offer to be circumcised and be left nothing but a tiny bit to pee with? Well, we have people piercing every part of their body. We have people who inject poison on their lips and faces, we have those who have operated on their tongues to a shape similar to snakes or kept they nails until they look like claws. People have done amazing sometimes bizarre things to their bodies. They have one thing in common – Choice. They chose. So yes J, there is a possibility that some adult women may choose to do it. But genitally mutilated and circumcised girls are mostly pinned down kicking and screaming and bleeding and shitting scared.

Special Lesson from Susan Boyle

Yesterday I watched a you tube clip of Susan Boyle and it’s still on my mind. She is a 47 year old woman who had a dream of becoming a professional singer for over 4 decades. She couldn't realise her dream because she put her life on hold to care for her sickly mother who has since passed on.

When the chance presented itself through the "Britain’s got talent" show, at 47 years of age Susan grabbed it despite the cynicism so prevalent in most of these shows. Her looks are the total opposite of the wanna-be successful singer - the X factor. Susan is neither young, tall, slim nor blonde as it would be expected. The cynics chuckled and looked rather amused by the sight presented to them.

The moment of truth arrived and she blew their socks off. Susan sang "I Dreamed A Dream" from Les Miserables, she sung it beautifully with such ease. She affirmed my constant support for the underdogs, those forced to survive on the sidelines by society's fake norms.

If you haven't had a chance to see this special lady's lesson to society's plastic rules, do yourselves a favour check www.youtube.com and key in Susan Boyle. Watch and weep. Thanks Susan Boyle for affirming the power of simplicity.

HOW MANY?

HOW MANY FRITZL’S ARE OUT THERE PREYING ON THEIR DAUGHTERS?

What of the daughters? Who is to protect them when their mothers are too weak and terrified to stand up for them? Could it be love that blinds these mothers from seeing the monsters who sleep next to them at night? Is it helplessness? Are they co-conspirators in such crimes?

What of the children born out of such violations? Born to witness violence, ugliness and weakness? Should such fathers be called animals? But what animal rapes? Do animals rape each other? Should they growl and take offence on being equated to rapists?

How many are they? These things in the form of men? These things with inhuman thoughts and plots for their own flesh and blood? What have the girls done wrong to deserve such heavy punishment?

These are the questions that came to mind when I read that yet another man and his son have been busy raping their own flesh and blood for decades. It is nauseating to read these stories that are far stranger than the fiction we use to make sense our realities. It churns my stomach, it is beyond sick.

Reading "A Mercy" by Toni Morrison

I am reading and trying to understand "A Mercy" by Toni Morrison. There seems to be layer after layer of meaning that is illusive in this narrative. It's always the case with Morrison's works of genious.

I find myself reading ten pages and having to go back again to see if I missed something. Slavery without racisms or is it is without? There is a Portugese trader who sells Angolans, a young slave girl's hunger for love and approval, and a freed black blacksmith who confidently looks at Europeans in the eyes. It seems to me race still plays a large part although Morrison maintains a point of departure from race in this novel. It is a fascinating but complicated read.

So far I like the character of Lina the most because she seems to be very clear when it comes to why she has chosen to stay out of the misery of belonging to some man. She did once but what she learnt was her own limits. She says: "I will walk behind. I will clean up after. I will not be thrashed. No"

Perhaps when I finally get to the end of it, I will have gained some understanding. I should be done soon because after that I am keen to get to the "Lost Colours of the Chameleon"

Recalling the formative years.

This is a piece I did for the Oprah Magazine (SA). It was a pleasure to remember the happy days of innocence.

MEMORIES MAKETH WOMAN

If wishes were horses I would gallop back to my formative years and relive those December festivities that contributed positively in the making of the woman that I am becoming. My playground was the village field where I played to my hearts content. I jumped rope braided with kikuyu grass. My friends and I played “three tin”, a game of ducking a ball and stacking the tins into a little tower. Tins were recycled from food stuff. I think we were green before green became fashionable. I climbed trees in search of vitamin C filled guavas, peaches, oranges and black mulberries. I carried water from a natural well on my head using 25 litre containers.

Back then in a semi-rural Mpumuza village in KwaZulu Natal just outside Pietermaritzburg only one house had television. Today kids get a Blackberry as their present, but back in the 80’s a blackberry to me meant a black juicy berry fruit that was in abundance in the trees of Nodwengu, a grumpy old man in my village. My friends and I used to stealthy climb his trees pick the berries. My mother always knew I had been feeding off mulberries because my dress and my tongue would be black from the juice.

Peach mobile adverts that I see today, remind me of juicy peaches I used pick from Manzuza’s yard. I would eat them until my stomach complained from Vitamin C overload. Since Manzuza was an old lady, my friends and I would do chores for her and in return she would let us pick as many peaches as we wanted. The kinds of fruits that I now seem to only get in mini-markets were in abundance in the village. There certainly was no money for fat laden take-aways and fast food.

A farm that was kilometers away from my village had sugarcane and oranges. During school holidays my friends and I would walk there to pick on leftover sugarcane after the harvest. We would come back with bundles of sweet juicy sugar cane and oranges. I learnt my letters using “Zulu mottos”, a glucose filled kind of candy with phrases written on them. I would be allowed to eat them only after reading the phrase correctly. It made learning sweet, literally. My intake of processed sugar was sort of minimal though, because almost everything I ate came straight from the soil. Christmas day however is another story, me and my friends used to go from house to house getting sweets and biscuits. We would be dressed to the nines in “new” clothes some of which were bought from thrifty shops of course. Labels were not in then. The excitement was in the abundance of sweets shared in good company of friends.

Normally it was unheard of to have meat in a meal during a weekday. Maize meal was the stable food made as porridge in the morning for breakfast and phuthu with a vegetable relish at night for dinner. I love meat so I enjoyed weekends because we used to have meat if not on Saturday, it would be on a Sunday. On a meat day we would have curry and rice and for everyone who finished the plate there would be red or green jelly with custard. I loved the feel of jelly more than the taste. It was fascinating. My mother would stir jelly powder into warm water and then put the container in a cold natural brook at the edge of our house leaving it there to set overnight. By the next morning it would be set, shaking and ready to melt into our fascinated mouths. In my village, electricity was non-existent and in fact when I first came across it I was unnerved. I mean watching a kettle boiling water without firewood was a toss between magic and witchcraft.

December also meant I had time to play with my friends who were not attending school. Friends were central in the village because most of the games involved more than one person. We were authentic social beings in a way that was not manufactured like it is today. This is why I didn’t know any child back then who had anti-social disorders. On family gatherings children entertained everyone by singing and dancing. I think we knew very little of what it was to be self-conscious. We danced Zulu dance which is very physical and fun. Of course, like in any human circumstance we had clashes and fights that were sometimes incorporated into all the fun.

I remember once fighting with a girl who later became one of my best childhood friends. My sister and I had been watching her and her many cousins skipping the rope. One of them skipped while two held the rope from each end and others waited for their turns in the queue. We joined the line and waited our turn; if you missed a step you would have to hold the rope, relieving whoever held it to have their turn. My turn came and in the middle of the chant I missed a step but I was not about to admit to it, never minding that all of them had noticed. I screamed denial while they screamed faulty step. The argument led into a full fist fight between us causing screams of delight from everyone. We made up and became best friends afterwards.

Now, news reports of children getting diseases of lifestyle like diabetes because of inactivity are disturbing to me. Television has turned some of them into depressed potato couches. When I hear that holidays have become a time of melancholy and suicides, I think back to my childhood and I see a lot of goodness that is still relevant in creating happy childhood memories for children today. We had calming games like pottery making. I learnt basic pottery not as a trendy in-thing to do but as part of what my friends use to do for fun. We would walk to a nearby edabe – a swamp to collect clay that was plentiful. We molded pots, miniature animals like cows and goats. Of course we never got to put them through the firing process like sophisticated art pottery studios do. Sun rays did the job of drying out our works of art.

There is this assumption that the past was all doom and gloom which to some extent it was but there was a ton of fun too. I choose the fun. I think I may have been deprived of a lot of privileges back then but I learnt to have fun with the little that I had. I recently bumped into Nonhlanhla, a girl who was my best friend in my first year of school. We spent more than four hours in a restaurant laughing and reminiscing. We had to tell our waiter who was impatiently hovering around our table that we were catching up on 20 years of life. As we parted ways, I thought to myself, the only thing I would change about my childhood is apartheid. The games, the food and the friends can stay as they were because they made me a healthy happy little girl who has grown in a woman I quite like.

A ZULU/WESTERN WEDDING FOR MY BABY SISTER

I have just returned to work after spending a week and a half at home attending my baby sister’s wedding. It was a week of a lot of things - busy, funny, loud, emotional, reunion with old relatives and just downright fun. It was mostly busy for me and my older sisters. We wanted to make sure that our baby sister, the last born of the family had everything in order for the big weekend.

It was a three day function but it actually starts a week before with relatives arriving and offering help. The house becomes so filled up, people end up sleeping on the floor in the lounge. Something about family being together is so warm and special. My feet are recovering from dancing and long hours of standing. I have discovered muscles in my arms from lifting boxes of presents and rearranging furniture in the hall, decorating and so on. There was of lot of driving to and fro, picking up this and that.

Zandile and her husband Slindile decided on a deeply traditional way to tie the knot. Some of things were done back in the sixties. Her wedding was actually similar to the way my mother got married. Like the Friday night tradition where she and her childhood friends and our neighbours spend most of evening at the groom’s family singing, dancing and competing with the people from the groom’s side.

They came back at dawn for a few hours of sleep before the big white Western wedding on Saturday. While her wedding was traditional, I was happy that they chose a female minister to bless them. Instead of my father, my mother spoke in the church. She spoke of the friendship she has forged with my sister’s new mother-in-law. There was a nice touch to it, combining tradition with a newfound recognition of a role by played by women in society. A role that is vital but often taken for granted.

Zandile looked all grown up and she was stunning in her white wedding dress. The little girl I use to help dress for school, fetch from school and fight for is now Mrs Zondi. She is now somebody’s wife and later somebody’s mother. Girls get together are going to be slightly limited. Christmas and New Year celebrations at home are going to be with a tinge of loneliness since she may have to be with her new family now.

Sunday was my favourite part of her wedding day where all things were done in a very traditional manner. She looked great, dressed in a tradition gear of a new “makoti” – bride. There was a lot of Zulu dance, Zulu beer and meat to eat. It was fun to remind myself the rhythms of a Zulu dance, I am a bit out of shape and out of practice but it was fun nonetheless.

Now all I can hope for is that the happy weekend extends to a happy marriage for my sister. Same thing is happening next year with my older sister, Tholakele, the first born of the family. A dowry-lobolo has been negotiated. Hopefully my muscles would have fully recovered next time round and my Zulu dance steps would be in order.

A WOUNDEND PSYCHE OF MY COUNTRY

A European friend came to visit and work in South Africa for six months. He was based in Cape Town one of the most beautiful cities in the continent. While he had good experiences, he struggled with a lot of our country’s anomalies like crime and violence.

He lost his freedom to walk at night without the fear of being mugged. He found some people closed and unfriendly. He is an honest guy so he was open about his experiences. I like that because I cannot stand pretence - people who say things just to make me happy.

I was sad to hear about this side of South Africa. I was sad because when I visited his city – Madrid - many years ago I had a lot of fun. I always want people who visit my country to have a good experience. But my friend encountered endless problems with Home Affairs, the daily news confronted him with black African foreigners being attacked, some of his house mates were personally affected since they were from Malawi and other countries.

He also got to hear stories about Affirmative Action – normally related in simplistic terms like blacks are taking over white jobs – ( the nuanced version and research will tell you that the unemployment rate in this country came in at 30% for Africans, 20% for coloureds, and 4% for whites according to the last year’s Labour Force Survey.) A majority of those living under $1 a day are black Africans.

Anyways it got me thinking about how wounded we are still as a people. Archbishop Tutu tried the healing process using the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) but there was so much anger and guilt. The initiative just touched the surface. TRC faded out without really bringing much closure to the collective damaged psyche of my country.

We still have much to do. Big as our problems are, I am encouraged when I sit with people who have a commitment towards making our South Africa better. My friend, Cori, never seems to tire when it comes to initiatives of peace building in schools and holding dialogues to discuss truth, peaceful societies and teaching.

This weekend as we talked about our country, I felt encouraged and affirmed that there are people who want to make things work in this country. People who want to make it better so that when people like my European friend can visit and leave this country with positive experiences that outweigh the negative ones.

Healing starts with tiny deeds, like a hug and a friendly smile. It may sound softy, softy but I believe it simply starts with the right attitude and an honest desire to do better.