December 25, 2011, a scorching summer’s day in Zwelitsha, a small township in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, is a day I’ll never forget; I was going to become a man.
After months of preparation – buying a cow to slaughter, blankets, traditional surgeon fees, overseer fees and building a reed hut – the day had finally arrived.
On this day, I woke up at the crack of dawn, my heart pounding heavily, nerves and fears of the unknown crept in. The elders came to fetch me at 5AM. I was stripped off my clothes, as I left everything behind, and covered in a white blanket with red stripes. We walked barefoot for about an hour to the mountain and my reed hut. This was home for the next three weeks.
Back home, my mother was as an emotional wreck. Who could blame her considering that almost all the news publications ran stories about the alarming death toll among initiates? Her son was going to spend three weeks in the rough bush after all. She prayed hard for a safe return.
I remember asking myself ‘what if I never return home?’. Having read so many stories about initiates dying, I thought it could happen to me. But it was all in the mind.
In isiXhosa we call it ulwaluko, a rite of passage to manhood. It’s a journey that is not easy.
It is done in two seasons, winter and summer, and it can be deadly. The first week is by no means easy, especially in summer, where initiates only eat half-boiled maize with no salt and no water. Dehydration is one of the reasons initiates die.
At the mountain, a surgeon, there for the removal of foreskins had a spear with sharp blades in hand. He tells me it won’t hurt if I cooperate.
“Sit down and open your legs apart,” he said, as a quick single cut from the spear removed my foreskin. I wasn’t allowed to make a sound, nor flinch, otherwise I’d be seen as a disgrace to the family.
As if this was not enough, more pain was in store.
Here, wounds are covered with a medicinal plant and bound with a leather thong around the waist. If I knew what I was getting myself into, I probably would have run.
The first seven days were hell; it was pain and hunger. I was so weak I could barely stand. I was given a stick and my body was smeared with wet clay and covered with a blanket. But the idea of being a man, kept me going.
The second week I began feeling better and getting used to life in the bush. I was even allowed to walk around and go to the river to get rid of boredom.
On the eve of my return home, friends came to visit.
In the morning, I had to run to the river to wash the clay off my body for the last time.
My brother covered my body in butter and blankets, leaving a hole for me to hold my stick. As my reed hut was set alight, I was not allowed to look back. I was told if I did I would have picked up all the bad luck.
Almost everyone was gathered at my house, as women ululated and beat corrugated iron with sticks. The celebrations carried on for two days.
After three weeks of pain, loneliness, and finally getting used to life in the bush, I was now a man. The seclusion and suffering taught me how to persevere in the face of hardship.

It’s Hard To Be  a Man In Africa

Away from a baying crowd of women with weaves, Hugh Masekela swaggers into a television studio on Fox Street in Johannesburg for a talk show. Earlier that day, he was on a talk radio station fielding questions on his disdain for synthetic hair and the popularity of weaves among African women. His remarks, and his refusal to pose with fans with synthetic hair, attracted the ire of women across South Africa.
“If he’s okay with weaved women paying money to come see his concerts then he should afford those fans the privilege of taking pictures with him,” SABC radio personality KG Moeketsi posted on Facebook.
“This thing is tired and unnecessary. We already deal with way too much misogyny, being belittled by men we love, and workplace discrimination, to not be afforded the right to wear our hair the way we want to. Mind you, I’ve never worn a weave in my life, but the right to choose your hairstyle has never been parallel to your taste in music.”
But Masekela is having none of it.
“It’s not about weaves,” says Masekela. “It’s not about weaves at all. You know, it’s about other people’s hair. Like some people wear synthetic, and some even use horsetail hair. But it’s not even about that.”
“Africans and Europeans have had a long historical issue about African hair. When we first encountered Europeans, they laughed at our hair because it was hard. And, historically we’ve been given an inferiority complex, not only about who we are but about our noses being flat, our lips being big, our asses being big, and things like that.”
“And of course we were defeated, you know, in trying to defend Africa. We were enslaved, then we were urbanized, then we were also ‘religionized’. So we’re very far from who we really are originally.”
“We are the only society that imitates other cultures. I mean we wear their clothes and everything. But the saddest part is how far we have come with trying to not look like ourselves.”
“Religion and urbanization have made Africans really believe that their own heritage is barbaric, savage, primitive, backwards, uncivilized and all those words. Psychologically, over the centuries we’ve been conditioned to think that our heritage is not good, that it’s inferior.”
The weave and what it represents is part of a much bigger picture, he says.
“Hair is one of the areas in which we’ve been put down,” he says. “But then we became exploited because apart from the issues of heritage we are the biggest hair market in the world. We spend tens of billions of dollars a year buying other people’s hair. And from a heritage and traditional perspective, that is sort of macabre.”
“So I don’t mind people wearing what they wanna wear, as long as I don’t have to take pictures with them. That’s all. It’s much more than me being an eccentric old man. There’s a whole history to it.”
“But it’s absurd when Africans fall over their feet to get their hands on blonde wigs. I mean I look at Umhlanga (the reed dance)… Half of those kids are wearing blonde wigs and weaves, and they don’t go with traditional clothes. You know, it’s the same as going skiing barefoot. It’s that absurd. But then they also put it on the children. A lot of them put it on their children. If you look at the little school children in this country, almost all of them have had their hair tampered with – their hair, in way or another, has been tampered with.
“If you saw the movie Hotel Rwanda, which was made here, you can see that they tried to wash all the kids’ hair so they look like Rwandans. And all the kids’ hair was ginger from refusing to be washed and it was still standing up by the time they were shooting. It passed over everybody’s head… people didn’t seem to notice.”
Bra Hugh, as the legendary trumpeter is affectionately known, is even disappointed by his own family.
“I was at a wedding just outside Polokwane in South Africa,” he says. “There were Venda relatives of mine and most of them were in traditional Tshivenda garb, but almost all the women were wearing weaves and wigs. One niece of mine had a red, black and yellow wig, a really shiny piece, and she had a matching one on her daughter who was three years old.”
“What that says to me is that, psychologically we have really been messed with. We are buying people’s hair but they are not buying any of our s***, except maybe a little art and craft… You know, it’s a sad joke.”
Back at the TV studio, Masekela moves on to sign autographs and I watch closely as my plus one asks Bra Hugh for a picture. Like many others in the room, my companion is sporting braids that are reinforced with synthetic hair. Masekela politely signs her book before posing with her for pictures.
Perhaps he didn’t feel like splitting hairs that day.

It’s A Sad Joke And Bra Hugh Isn’t Laughing

The tradition of 40 years of arts brought an economic boost to the Eastern Cape, the poorest province of South Africa.
The National Arts Festival in Grahamstown saw its best ever ticket sales of more than $650,000. The local economy received nearly $31.6 million.
“The biggest growth this year came from sales on the main program, attributable largely to an expanded program aimed to commemorate the festival’s 40th birthday, and from attendance at a greatly increased number of free performances and activities aimed at the broader Grahamstown community,” says Tony Lankester, the festival’s CEO.
The two-week event in July saw artists from 40 countries stage over 2,500 performances.
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The festival created short-term jobs for local people. In 2011, Grahamstown was among the poorest places in South Africa, with an unemployment rate of more than 70%.
Lankester says organizers received nearly 1,500 job applications for the 470 posts at the festival. Most jobs were for technicians, cashiers, cleaners and theater ushers. A majority of those that were employed survive with casual jobs for the rest of the year.
“Other festivals around the world have strong volunteer pools. We have taken a position that we don’t want volunteers. It would be immoral in Grahamstown to ask people to work for free. This is their livelihood. This is the important part of our budget and what we do. That’s the direct employment and the biggest beneficiaries of an event like this are the hospitality industry, petrol stations and restaurants.”
Lankester says organizers feel pressure to create more jobs.
“Because we appear to be this massive rich entity, we punch above our weight in many respects. People expect us to do more,” he says.
In February, festival organizers launched a Creative City project that ran all year round, to stimulate grassroots art projects around Grahamstown.
“One can always argue we should do more, but as an NGO ourselves, there’s a limit to what we can achieve in just two weeks,” he says.
“Planning for 2015 is already underway with the proposals currently open. Between now and then, we have the inaugural Cape Town Fringe in September 25 to October 5, which will give us another opportunity to showcase some of the best performances South Africa has to offer,” says Lankester.
Anyone who saw the dance performance Cargo: Precious and Nile and the theater production Ubu and the Truth Commission will agree with this.
<h4>From Nasty Kingdom To The Welcome Mat</h4>
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The Grahamstown National Arts Festival has transformed itself from being a Rhodes University’s small Shakespeare festival to Africa’s largest, and arguably the world’s second largest, celebration of the arts.
“In the early stages of the festival, Grahamstown people resented outsiders, they were really nasty and they didn’t want their kingdom to be invaded. It didn’t matter what color you were. But the festival organizers said to artists, ‘even if you are banned in Cape Town, wherever, you can come to Grahamstown,’” says Adrienne Sichel, a veteran arts critic.
This year the 11-day festival had 225,538 attendees.
Nomhle Nkonyeni, a legendary Eastern Cape performing artist, was one of the first black actors to be invited to the festival in 1985. The festival honored her with the Standing Ovation award in 2013.
Nkonyeni has retired as a performer and returned home to Port Elizabeth to lend a hand in community theater.
“I am grateful for the growth of the Grahamstown festival. We are coming a long way. But we are still struggling as the community-based theater and the R20,000 government grant cannot take you anywhere. How do you stage a production on that?” she says.
Nkonyeni urged grassroots artists not to give up, citing her experience with director Athol Fugard in the 1960s. While she was humbled at being recognized last year, she is proud that her career started in community theater.
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Ladies And Gentlemen…  A $31-Million Festival

I am a well-educated, well-traveled, intelligent young woman. The kind of young woman who has Destiny’s Child’s ‘Independent Women’ as the soundtrack to her life. If or when I get married, I expect my suitor to pay the bride price or ‘roora’, as it is known in Shona, to my parents.
Now, the so-called Westerner may say this is anachronistic. Why would any truly independent woman subject herself to a practice that is affiliated with notions of the commodification of women? Where the woman’s ability to birth to male heirs determines her economic value to her new husband?
The Africanist in me would quickly dismiss the Westerner and respond that modern life (read: increasingly Eurocentric life) has distorted the real meaning of roora. In the same way that the wedding ring symbolizes unity between two people, the payment of roora is a symbol of unity between two families. It represents an acknow-ledgement of the role that parents have played in the upbringing of the woman. Most importantly for a 21st- century woman, roora injects a sense of accountability into a marriage, ensuring that the suitor is serious, and is ready to make the necessary emotional and financial commitment.
That would be my response to a Eurocentric critique of roora. However, recently I read that Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, who is by no means a champion of the West, weighed in on the practice. He effectively called for its end at the Global Power Women Network Africa conference, bemoaning the fact that such customs tend to subordinate women in marriages.
It is a sad legacy of colonialism that we so-called Africanists are protective of traditional practices that no longer serve our best interests. And having a sparring partner in the form of Mugabe, who is arguably a staunch Africanist, forces open a window for honest reflection on roora.
Except that now I cannot win the debate on roora on the Eurocentrism vs. Africanism ticket, I have to apply my mind to the conflicting effects it has on those involved. I need to eva-luate the practicalities of roora and whether we Africanists are willing to live with them.
To begin, the abuse of roora is perpetrated by fathers and families who see their daughters as cash cows (pun intended). A daughter is sometimes perceived as a means to enrich families through her ‘sale’ to another man and his family. Fathers who see their daughters as money-spinning projects charge hefty prices. These in turn are often seen as a license for the husband and in-laws to treat the woman as ‘purchased goods’, and in the worst cases, as indentured slaves.
A 1998 study found that men held conflicting views on the relationship between roora and domestic violence. Some men indicated that they were more likely to beat a woman for whom they had not paid roora, because they could get away with it. There was no recourse for such behavior. Others reported the more common refrain that it was acceptable to beat a woman for whom roora had been paid, because, as they reminded their wives: “ndakakutenga”, “I bought you”.
It is also important to understand the effect of roora on the psyche of women. The findings of a 1999 study by South Africa’s Medical Research Council help to explain the meanings women attach to roora.
The majority of women polled felt that it was culturally accepted that if a man pays the bride price, it means that he owns her. Other meanings attached to roora include: the subservience of women to their husbands, male ownership of women, notions of male sexual entitlement and an interpretation of beating as a sign of love.
The findings are a sad, but admittedly unsurprising, indictment of the practice. Nonetheless, it is misleading to argue that roora is a license for men to abuse their wives or to treat them as purchased goods. I know many men who never paid roora but still mistreat their wives. It would be equivalent to saying that there are no wife-beaters in places where roora is not common, such as the West.
The trouble with roora is that it is vulnerable to abuse. In other words, it is analogous to the argument that the trouble with Christianity is Christians, or that the trouble with Communism is Communists.
This does not absolve roora of its problems. We cannot ignore that there is something wrong when men and in-laws from both sides abuse women in the name of roora.
And as a woman, it becomes difficult to vote in favor of a system that could be harmful to me or other women.
However, that said, culture is not static; it evolves in order to remain relevant. Roora is adaptable and redeemable for the purposes of modern society. This has been proved in the way that the payment method has changed over the ages. In its genesis, as many young men would be envious to hear, a few field mice were acceptable roora.
This then moved on to cattle and then cash. So in the same way that roora has been adapted, let us eliminate the unfavorable tenets of the practice to keep it relevant to society today.
My proposition is that roora continues, with the following reforms:
Pre-marriage – Women’s importance in society should be reinforced. The principle of roora as a token of appreciation, a priceless debt, to parents who have raised a virtuous woman should be emphasized.
Girls from a young age, as well as women already married, need to be taught that they are not bought and hence owned in the relationship. This will lead to women refusing to accept the abuse they may face in marriage. Boys and men also need to be involved in this re-education, so that they too can appreciate the true value of women in their lives.
The negotiation – The key word is moderation. Roora should be a token of appreciation and not a price tag, as no person can be sold. I will go as far as to suggest a cap on the roora, that it never go above, say, the cash equivalent of a couple of head of cattle. This would end the myopic and short-sighted thinking where parents (and even some daughters) do not see that in overcharging their son-in-law, they are only taking away from their daughter’s future household.
Parents, your daughter and son-in-law are likely to be young professionals, only just beginning to have real financial independence. With what do you expect them to begin their future together, after you have charged him an entire year’s salary?
The cap, or at the very least the exercise of moderation, would help end the sentiment that women are the property of their fathers and subsequently their husbands and his family.
Post-marriage – We should institutionalize fair treatment of women as equals. Accountability should not end with the closing remarks of the negotiation; a man should be evaluated constantly, even after the marriage has been legitimized. In the same way that damages are paid for deflowering a woman, so too should there be damages for the mistreatment of wives.
With conditions such as these, roora as an institution is redeemable. Let us keep it as a symbol of the union between two families, a gesture of sincerity and good faith. The processes need to be reformed, to ensure that the institution of marriage is not a punitive exercise for prospective wives and husbands to ensure that the virtuous principles of the tradition remain intact.
So here, I will have to disagree with Mugabe and Westerners alike. I remain adamant that roora has its place in modern society, and I vote in favor of its reform.

Rethinking the Bride Price: Cash cows reformed

Ten years ago, weddings across Africa were planned at home—your aunties did the cooking; close relatives sewed the wedding dress and the simple church ceremony was followed by speeches, a meal and dancing.
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These days we have wedding planners, six course menus and everything from make-up artists and hairdressers to professional photographers. Even though most couples hold on to the traditional ceremony, the white wedding has taken center stage amid tiers of glamorous cakes, flowing champagne and designer gowns. Many of these weddings even have themes—Duduzile Zuma, the daughter of South African President Jacob Zuma, chose a Parisian theme.
Money appears to be no obstacle. The price tag ranges from $10,000 to $50,000 for the middle class; the super-rich spend millions. Nigerian billionaire Mike Adenuga is believed to have spent $2 million on his daughter`s wedding. The white wedding, replete with its extravagance and squabbles, has truly landed in Africa.
“I got married recently and did our traditional wedding ceremony with 300 guests at the countryside. It included dowry and all other required traditional rites, but we still came back to Nairobi to plan our contemporary wedding,” says James Masese, a local businessman.
He adds that his parents, who live up country didn’t really understand why there was a need to have an expensive white wedding in the city, but he wanted to have a fun, classy, party—it cost him $25,000 to entertain 200 guests.
Like the Maseses, many other couples living in cities feel strongly that the white wedding is a necessity, not only because they get official wedding certificates but there is a desire to make a statement. A big white statement that is! Being married according to European customs—wearing a white lace dress; exchanging vows and rings amid a sea of flowers; an enormous buffet; a tiered cake and dancing the night away—is fast becoming a way of keeping up with the Joneses.
The generational gap between parents and their children, when it comes to weddings, is slowly closing. Many parents, living in cities, will host the traditional ceremonies in their homes with outside caterers, marquees, decorated tables and flowers as they try to keep up with the times. They also help their children pay for their white weddings because expenses increase yearly; they want to ensure a great party and it gives them status amongst their friends to be able to do this.
“Brides and grooms seem to be splurging more on a lot of things that didn’t matter 10 years ago. The cakes are getting more dramatic, there’s a lot of attention to the wedding fashion and today couples want to have fun at their wedding,” says Funmilayo Victor-Okigbo, a top wedding consultant with The Wedding Company in Nigeria. “Gone are the days of sitting at the ‘high table’ looking miserable as they want to be where the action is. There’s a lot of attention to entertainment as most weddings end up being a music concert with two to four Nigerian artists performing live, depending on the budget. It’s no longer just enough to have a band perform,” she says.
Kanyi Ohawa, a wedding stationery designer based in Kenya agrees. Customized invitations done by her firm, All and Sundry Designs, set back clients $4-7 each.
“Ten years ago, invitations were on a single sheet of paper on embossed text in a plain envelope. Today, everyone wants a customized invitation card. A bride will come in and say this is my personality and my fiancé’s, can you come up with something that reflects us and stands out? Cards can have buttons, bows, beads, metals, bones, twigs and come in all shapes. The more unique [it is], the better it is! The wedding invitation is what sets the stage for the wedding day.”
These days, the lovebirds want all the bells and whistles to ensure an out-of-this-world celebration. Annual wedding exhibitions have become must-attend events, whether you are in Lagos, Kampala or Nairobi. The Wedding Expo—which was established 10 years ago and has two exhibitions in Johannesburg annually—is the biggest in South Africa, with 30,000 visitors and more than 300 exhibitors. Book stores are stacked with bridal magazines and wedding directories, which promise to help the couple find their perfect ‘supplier’ match. Many couples also enroll for dance classes so as to impress their guests on the night. Meanwhile, Kenya has been hit by wedding reality TV shows that air on Sundays.
“I have to be home every Sunday evening to watch both shows to see what other brides did for their wedding day and to make sure I do something better,” says Mercy Murungi, who is planning her December wedding. She admits that she has become wedding obsessed and her biggest fear is that her budget of $18,000 will not match her wants.
It is these kinds of pressures that are keeping brides on their toes in their efforts to outdo each other, regardless of budget.
“Some of the most costly weddings in Nigeria range from $500,000 to a couple of million dollars. It really depends on the family; how far they are willing to go and their social class. Nigerians love to look good as we’re very fashionable. A lot of money goes towards jewelry and clothes and then on drinks—we love our champagnes here!” says Victor-Okigbo.
Of course, this has meant booming business for the wedding industry. Suppliers of cakes, flowers, marquees and bridal gowns have been on the rise as they cash in on white wedding fever.
And then there’s the honeymoon.

Tag: Tradition

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

It’s Hard To Be a Man In Africa

It’s A Sad Joke And Bra Hugh Isn’t Laughing

Ladies And Gentlemen… A $31-Million Festival

Rethinking the Bride Price: Cash cows reformed

My Big, Fat, African Wedding!