Co-existence in amaXhosa philosophy

Implicitly complex, today the resolution of conflict around circumcision practices seems to contradict Gluckman’s (1946) argument for cultural cohesion. Even Gasa’s assertion that the amaXhosa seek to co-exist with other ethnicities has different implications to what this meant at the end of apartheid in 1994. Democracy then threw open the racial, socio-cultural, gendered, and sexual boundaries previously confined within racial and geographical divides. As globalisation impinged on cultural boundaries, confrontation with a multifaceted diversity became part of daily life. Van Vuuren and De Jongh (1999), but also Kepe (2010), maintain this has corrupted a well-functioning practice in which extended families previously came together to perform the ritual event. As South Africa has emerged into a global milieu, so circumcision has become a cultural commodity open to negotiation, transaction, and public (health) debate. The film ‘Inxeba: The Wound’ marked its global digital debut as engendering became non-tangible, a cultural artefact. Thus, uncertainty about the nature and incidents of harm, leads Gqola (2007) to remonstrate that the media frames ‘fragmentation’ in ‘botched circumcisions’ for public comment. Against this, Kepe (2010), another autochthonous author, maintains that few local authors confront the fact that Xhosa men find circumcision has physically and psychologically disabled them. While freedom of speech, sanctioned by the constitution, promotes a human rights debate that exposes harm, the same mandate protects the right to culture and diversity. A conundrum arises in this, because apartheid policy subordinated and then conflated culture with race, consequently promoting cultural coherence amongst the amaXhosa; today this seems politically questionnable. But this debate on fragmentation and harm neglects commentary that describes how the rite of passage incorporates resilience and agency amongst the amaXhosa for them to foster a co-existence with diversity (Parsons, 1993; Ntombana, 2011).

Gluckman’s (1956) thesis on cultural cohesion and circumcision sits, moreover, well beyond a southern African diaspora. Strangely, in this interrogation of gendered conflict in circumcision practices within the amaXhosa, contention diminishes with geographical distance from the point where thecustom has the most local, political significance; instead, a Xhosa man in this instance or neonate’s right to bodily integrity has greater clarity and seemingly carries more authenticity in places such as Denmark or Germany, in the European Union. Here, unexamined notions of patriarchal domination infer on African women’s rights and gender equality. These undervalue Strathern’s (1972) proposition that patriarchy provides women with socio-political and legal protection but also Gasa’s claim that orthodox circumcision institutes, “a defining custom for pure circumcision". This plays down that patriarchal principles juxtapose gendered relations, man with woman, within a complex interweaving of matriarchal and patriarchal responsibilities and roles. In this, a staged process in familial rites of passage extends a working through of protection. African ‘womanist’ authors Arndt (2000) and Ogunyemi (1985) argue for a balancing of reciprocity relations, in which women join in engendering discourses but absent themselves, to pragmatically support the ritual.

In this context, understanding autochthonous engendering, gender orientation, relatedness and equity has become increasingly challenging. Gasa (2003), and the Comaroffs (1987) argue that gender is a complex negotiated phenomenon enacted through practices such as circumcision. The Comaroffs (2002) suggest that people create identity and community in producing, “new forms of consciousness, of expressing discontent with modernity and dealing with its deformities” (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1987, 274). Gasa, in comparison, has a more fundamentalist approach to engendering and identity amongst her people. She proposes a deeply embedded sense of origin and identity for the amaXhosa arguing that this once underscored their negotiation of competitive discourses, discontent, and an engagement with diversity. As a Xhosa woman she argues: ‘‘The essential thing for Xhosa is to co-exist with others and live and let live... political hierarchy is as it is because of this belief". The difference in these discourses lies in the distinctions each makes. Comaroff & Comaroff (1987) frame new forms of awareness in the politics of ‘‘global consciousness”, evoking Benhabib’s (2002) concept of the eclectic in the cosmopolitan. This is a world beset with the convenience of the superficial, opportunism and allure in ‘‘ethnicity inc”, and a globalising sense of freedom from convention and constraint (Benhabib, 2002; Comaroff & Comaroff, 2009). Gasa, in comparison, keeps to what is familiar, an African womanism, felt gendered relationships within an amaXhosa hierarchy, and distinctions that name differences within and diversity without and deportment on how this should be engaged (Ogunyemi, 1985). For Gasa, a discourse on gender is more a question of embodied felt relations; the shaping of a person’s identity over their lifetime, lived out as praxis in this socio-cultural milieu. While Comaroff and Comaroff interpret discontent and contestation into new forms of consciousness, Gasa stays in the local and, within that context tackles discomfort, feelings of being unsafe and a resounding lack of functionality and familiarity with current praxis.

Contention over circumcision practices arises in Gasa’s (2003) writing and, despite her insistence on a once-pure custom, she describes “crisis”. Arguing

Women’s advocacy 191 for a “broken masculinity, (that was) broken by apartheid history’’ her inference is that so, too, is womanhood. Images of the broken resonate with apartheid’s subjugation of the dispositional stances of “black” people; in Gasa’s intellectual position, this stands for a disrupted, dysfunctional ritual. She challenges the pragmatic and in so doing the symbolic realm in rites of passage, authentically matched to Van Gennep’s (1960) description. Her claim for brokenness as an autochthon is emotive and deeply felt because, habitually and intuitively, she holds to an authentic practice. Gasa thus marks the tensions inherent in the re-invention of custom; people want what they believe is comfortable and known, not the new and unknown. Thus, brokenness becomes heard as confusion in what Gasa says and these Xhosa women’s testimonies. Reciprocity relations hold injuries to be as much the resposibility of Xhosa men, as they are of Xhosa women. This questions women’s authority and their supported independence. Such challenge and its resolution poses difficult choices for women; if they take up a feminist cause for their rights to be heard they risk diminishing the authority and status integral to amaXhosa womanhood. Thus, where they have substantial recognition and a voice amongst men, like Lindelo’s mother, Xhosa women stand alone and are more vulnerable. In this light, one older Xhosa woman in the workshop conceded: “Circumcision was cultural, men could be specific and were free to talk about circumcision with women being excluded”. It was also of interest that women were more articulate when they were discussing rights-based issues, but faltered when expressing their feelings on cultural issues, the taboo, and men’s rights. This shows how feminist dialogue intrudes as scripted voice over, while advocates for an African ‘womanism’ argue that an articulation of feminine positions, shows as relatedness, feelings, and emotions (Arndt, 2000; Ogunyemi, 1985). In contemporary society, feminism has silenced men’s rights; it has become politically incorrect to voice these concerns. Xhosa women, though, wanted to discuss men’s rights and to protect them. They were not afraid to do so because their sons were male, going for circumcision and they were anxious not to disempower them or, indeed, themselves (Silberschmidt, 2005).

While new forms of consciousness might bring new opportunities, the reinvention of enculturated, engendering processes for personhood and identity, brings challenge. Shifting categories for gendered orientation often rely exploratively on scientific advances in cosmetic surgery, in the construction of penises and in therapeutic discourses. Just as with circumcision, these endeavour to re-shape gendered dispositions. As with penile transplantation, these extend known concepts in engendering practices and intrude into social consciousness and gendered orientation just as wo/manhood, as an historically ‘known’ phenomenon, becomes riddled with confusion. Thus, meaning, when linked into the biomedical sciences, translates back into Western European discourses on gendered categories. Qualities for amaXhosa personhood then delink from orthodoxy and become ‘unknowable’. A reliable ritual once hedged in strict taboo seems unmanageable because it is so changeable. As messiness becomes instantiated in circumcision so, I would argue, asocio-cultural deconstruction of gender relatedness amongst the amaXhosa unravels relatedness. Writing about this challenging moral discourse and deep sense of dislocation Gasa states: “What is now contested is an issue of bestowing dignity in every relationship you have, and this is the bigger picture”. This evokes, but calls into question, African mores for a worldview that once embraced concepts of uBuntu - dignity for and in being human and an acceptance that this manifests in diverse ways and tolerance is therefore paramount.

Authors such as De Klerk (2000) and Lee (2005) evoke the inevitability of change in their descriptions of amaXhosa adaptability and creativity in home improvements and funeral arrangements. Gasa’s writing addresses the same issues in respect of women’s creativity around circumcision; however, her voice has the affective quality of an autochthon. She conveys a deep sense of uncertainty in respect of felt crisis. Her description sits evocatively alongside the messiness described by Livingston in how the human body when distorted by disability, disrupts social relations around human rights advocacy but here circumcision and psychotic disorder (Livingston, 2008, 289). In this, her discomfort describes modernism and its propensity to stage the competitive, creative discourses which have become integral to a South African ‘rainbow nation’. This transparently interleaves the local with the global in debate, and my book gleans interest in a Danish academy because, comparatively, the circumcision of neonates for religious reasons has become a human rights issue. Here advocacy questions the right to religious and cultural diversity but also bodily and mindful belonging in a secular Danish state.

In this contested, international world, a Xhosa circumciser’s description of circumcision takes on a different hue. He said; “If a boy goes and he was too young then the treatment was harsh. Then boys become anaemic, septic, then the penis falls off or must be amputated (they knew of five amputations) or he needs skin grafts”. Incorporating aspects of modernism into circumcision, he integrated surgical procedures with wounding and sepsis. “It was usual to look out for boys because if there was psychological trauma”, he offered, “then there was¹ no future for the boy and girls will run away”. In this local context, his description marks him as a cultural expert who was aware of and dealt with the dangers; but if positioned in an international arena his discourse engages with a human rights platform. In this the telescopic lens becomes turned around; the circumciser, instead of considering circumcision practices, becomes the focus of observation. In Gasa’s worldview, however, the focus is the initiate; very pragmatically, on leaving his mother and entering the circumcision ground, he must watch each step into manhood, knowing he is under his father and officials’ guardianship, and they are bound by traditional law and orthodoxy.

Empathically, Gasa knows belonging through circumcision and therefore, the weight of shame borne by youth who suffer psychotic breakdowns triggered by circumcision events. If the practices or its absence, thwarts a youth’s propensity to come into manhood, this has profound personal repercussions

Women's advocacy 193 which reverberate across this culture. Herein lies the meaning of crisis; it represents a nullifying of a youth’s libido, that has been nutured within a habitus historically embued with culturally inscribed symbols. Nullifying symbols means that what they signify and, indeed, signifiers lose meaning and coherence; an initiate’s death is a non-death or psychotic metaphor stands only for a disordered mind. However, as is evident in Lindelo’s case, the consequences of his embodied disintegration has relevance for his mother. As heard in the workshop, isolated from extended family, marginal and unnamed, mothers shouldered responsibilty for adolescent children who were mentally unwell. As they did so, culturally they lost status and became forgotten and in this lies the reason women fought so hard in the workshop to retain the protection of their patriarchy. They knew too, that without support for their sons, their impetus to transform into women who look back on having reared children would be frustrated. Agency in women is thus a two-sided coin; on one side exists her ability to release her son with love and support so that he can gain agency and authority and, on the other, a quality or resilient ability which reflects her own womanly sense of agency. Circumcision is revealed here as a reciprocal negotiation of symbol and signifies the uncircumcised penis represents the youth and its circumcision the reverse, but so too does motherhood and fatherhood as the cut releases them to live out their lives, establish self-worth and personal growth. Circumcision is therefore pivotal for the youth, but also the status of the mother and father. For the mother it is equally symbolically laden in how she reveals and presents herself within her family and community.