Neotraditional smokescreen

The “maiden bursary” offered by the Uthukela District Municipality affirms two points.

First, it shows why the principle of constitutionalism is necessary in a society with many co-existing cultures.

We can debate and change the content of that constitution over time but a constitution is necessary as final arbiter lest we give way to extreme cultural relativism that can legitimate abhorrent practices.

Second, the maiden bursary demonstrated a major ideological faultline of the postcolonial state. Not “neocolonialism”, but “neotraditionalism”.

By neotraditionalism I mean the tendency of postcolonial political orders to legitimate and express power through a toxic mixture of conservative politics, culturalist rhetoric and masculinised political practice.

In our big analyses of why postcolonial states fail, we tend to focus on the macro and structural aspects. These analyses explain the economic dimensions of our postcolonial problems. But we have to see how the macro-economic 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 the big problems like HIV/Aids, poverty and unwieldy local government collide with deep social beliefs 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 address pressing contemporary social questions is not inherently wrong; culture is a rich intellectual resource.

But there are many times when what is repackaged as culture is really a political ploy intended to entrench controlling ideologies. Take for example the number of public attacks against African women for wearing miniskirts, deemed immodest and “unAfrican” by conservatives, even though most sub-Saharan traditional African attire exposes women’s body parts.

Another is the way in which people insist that African women must take their husband’s surnames upon marriage even though this practice arrived with missionaries and Christian marriage.

I was left bemused once when I debated a royal 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 refer 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” etc.

Neotraditionalists are not interested in culture to liberate Africans – they use it 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. Ingcugce were a female regiment under King Cetshwayo kaMpande. In the context of socio-political upheavals as the colony encroached, Ingcugce was instructed to marry men in a senior regiment. Some young women found this unacceptable, and decided to run off with their own lovers. As with any ancient régime, those who defied this kingly edict were tracked down and some executed.

Neotraditionalists do not promote these histories of African women defying African men, especially not where it relates to sexual liberty, whatever form it took. Neotraditionalists 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 the “maiden bursary” advocates will yield to reason. The most effective method will be to take legal action against the municipality in the Equality Court.