Circumscribing isiXhosa-speaking womanhood

As metaphor, the breaking of a pot as a symbol for a dead initiate, is emblematic of a gender-based reciprocity engagement that works to bring youth into adulthood. An amaXhosa patriarchy might dramatically organise the ceremony, allocating official roles and responsibilities to structure enduring relations amongst adult men, but it is women who industriously prepare to safeguard youth, mentor girls and children, secure the home and celebrate an event that has been planned since the birth of their son. From the moment of his inception into Bourdieu’s (1984) habitus, his home has nurtured his growth into manhood.

Confrontation in reciprocity relations

Consequent upon this is a cultural expectation for women to play their part in all negotiations prior to circumcision. This includes a series of rituals that must precede the circumcision event, and which happen over the course of a boy’s lifetime. Family negotiations which include mothers, uncles and aunts, happen at each ritual stage. These decide if the boy’s behaviour and character concur with amaXhosa gendered expectations. An African sense of womanism and maternal authority pervades to ensure the son’s circumcision happens in a supportive, intimate family (Arndt, 2000; Ogunyemi, 1985). This is an ideal but, as Nonganza’s poem illustrates, women eagerly take part in family debates where they defend and guide their sons. Xhosa women proved, moreover, to be keenly aware about their expectations for boys and how these differed from girls in respect of maturity, sexual desire, character and intelligence. At 16 years old, discussions focus on whether the son should go for circumcision or if he is too immature, deviant, or mentally vulnerable. These continue until the family reaches a consensus. Family debate extends into their Xhosa community. Thereby, as women prepare for the twice-yearly event, they come to an agreement that across a sub-section of their society, their sons, brothers, and cousins will become men.

This seasonal practice means that the same cultural conversations about engendering occur across isiXhosa-speaking communities. Conversations, in which women assert themselves, become competitive. Family members join in, as do clans and communities and they judge each other, arguing about what should be done ‘traditionally’. As mundane bantering, angry looks, or consensual gestures this sets up a familial event that in its repetition is intrinsic to the creation of an amaXhosa gendered cultural world. It is phenomenal in that an inclusive practice draws into its sphere, the authority positions and voices of adult women and men with the submissive stances of youth, children and ‘others’ in the body social. As a customary practice, it has remained exactly as Maggs (1986) described in migrating African autochthons’ initiation schools to circumcise youth to adulthood.

By this means and governed by an orthodox practice, gendered communicative strategies between men and women happen as multi-layered dialogues in quiet, non-verbal, gestural, and emotive challenge but also, noisy, vociferous aggression. It is, however, the public display around conflict and confrontation that emphasises the cultural significance of circumcision practices. For instance, women loudly complain about men’s negligence because they want other amaXhosa to acknowledge their contribution. Conversely, they can deliberately hold back confrontation, ‘silence’ and nonaction can become extraordinarily powerful. The unsaid showed women’s authority because silence gave a warning that women would prohibit further negotiations, thereby protecting their sons and the ritual. As a communal presence and in a united acquiescence they inculcated feelings of resolve but also anxiety in men. This showed that women were not subservient, but rather decisive in how they worked to safeguard youth and a family and community celebration. Women’s conduct happens as habituated, cogent action and is situated in an autochthonous sense of moral worth.

Mother’s withdraw for men’s withdrawal

So, women begin to engage in an intricate reciprocity exchange so that, in a parallel process, the mother withdraws from the son, as the men withdraw from the women’s domain. My argument is that, as this happens, so the values and behaviour that inscribe womanhood are engendered in the domain of the home. Bourdieu’s (1984) description of the habitus, conceptually anchors the Xhosa home as a spatial domain which has served the son’s purpose but transforms to foster an engendering of women. Designed to contrast with the circumcision ground, the home becomes geographically distinctive in its situation and, for the youth, is translated into disposition and memory. Many isiXhosa-speaking people told me, " You never lose what your mother brings to you”: this includes the home and, in extension, relatedness to the mother’s clan. The quotation suggests that in the act of circumcision, a generational and gendered distinction is instantiated to engender young women. This prepares them for their sexual and reproductive roles, marriage, childbirth, and absorption into their family. Engendering through reciprocity relations happens because this principle underscores paternal and maternal patrilineages in language and naming and in the allocation of inheritance.

If reciprocity lies at the heart of gender negotiations then arguably, women originate the exchange in giving birth and nurturing a cycle of bringing boys into youth-hood, and their sons to manhood (Van Vuuren & De Jongh, 1999). The rite of passage in circumcision thereby instigates and defines an elaborate ritualised gendered exchange where menstruating and post-menopausal women withdraw from the event, whilst young pre-menstrual girls prepare their brother’s dried mealy-meal at home and deliver it to the boundary of the circumcision ground (Pauw, 1973; Mavundla et al., 2009). Thus, ritualised procedures set up new gender-defined boundaries, segregating premenstrual girls from the sexuality of fertile women. Menstruating women, this culture believes, contaminate initiation, and have a harmful effect on healing and transformational processes. The seclusion period is to avoid such ritual impurities (Mavundla et al., 2009; Kepe, 2010). This argument suggests that the rite of passage demarcates gender-defined spaces inside, and well beyond, the circumcision ground. What is most womanly exists in the domain of the home and what is manly is denoted by the physical boundaries surrounding the circumcision ground. It is, however, the emotive and metaphysical qualities in each gendered domain, e.g. sensuality, seduction, hallucinations that during circumcision means these are hedged with ritual taboo (Vivian, 2011). As contaminating substances, these are associated with bewitchment (Niehaus, 2013).