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I Crave Freedom From The Confines Of Our Family’s Male Tradition
I Crave Freedom from that she would bewitch the men to make them leave their wives and children. the Confines of Our “How else can you explain that joke of a marriage with that old man in her house?” people would ask among themselves. “That poor man. She bewitched him Family’s Male Tradition and made him leave his wife and kids.” “But then again, did anyone put a gun on that stupid man’s head to leave his wife and kids?” my aunt would say. Her clarifications did not satisfy, and I As I walk Route 67, I wonder wondered where the rumors came from. When my father hit my mother or if women ever will be granted came home drunk and swore at everyone, the consolation from my aunt would be, “Don’t think that your father is the first a chair at the man’s table one to abuse and cheat on his wife. Our father, your grandfather, was the same — even the ones before him were the same. It’s a Thembu-man thing.” And if you
By Ziphozakhe Hlobo you would walk past every day, and dared ask my aunts and my female cousins
After learning why my father was shot sometimes walking its streets on a Friday why they are not married, they would eight times many years ago in his home night felt like knocking on death’s door. say, “Look at these men in this family. village of Engcobo in the Eastern Cape, I As we walked with him, Father would What if we get the same kind of men?” shake my head. I should have known better. tell the “shooting” story to ease our From what I have gathered while
I was too young when he died to realize fears, implying that he was a largereavesdropping on adult conversations, what truly happened, but I think about than-life man and that Mother, my two my grandfather was quite a catch — his death every time I walk down Route sisters, my brother and I should not flamboyant, light-skinned and good with 67 and see the “Conversational Piece.” be alarmed by the consistent sounds his tongue around women. When he came
I think about the shooting and of cries and gunshots at night. back from the mine after running out of how women in my family have “Why did you get shot?” my little money, MamCwerha would have to care for been abused for generations. sister would inquire, and Mother him and use up all the money she had made
What is that woman would laugh and say he was resisting being a domestic worker in Port Elizabeth. standing there doing? men who wanted to rob him. “But the wonder of it all is that when
Is she cleaning and cooking for One night while MamCwerha fell ill with men? Is she dressed that way because she is a housewife waiting patiently behind that chair to serve her husband after he comes back from work? “I am no longer afraid of being shot because I survived a deadly shooting,” Father often boasted when he recounted the brutal shooting that nearly left him dead. Narrating this story, he would turn to Mother to confirm details that he was not certain about, and she would nod if he had said something accurate or shake her head if he had not. Even though the story became we were sleeping in my aunt’s little house in the same area, we heard sounds of windows being broken. “You’ve ruined my house! You’ve ruined my house!” exclaimed a voice that sounded familiar. For as long as I had visited Cape Town, she had always been called Mam’ehouse (mother ‘‘ …these men had already been ruined by their mothers and there was nothing that lung cancer during the 1980s, your grandfather did not lift a hand to help her. He was all over the village giving his women all of his money, some of MamCwerha’s money and vegetables from her garden,” my female cousins often said. “Even your father, MamCwerha’s favorite son, did not help,” Father’s “comic narration” to break tension in awkward situations, during of the house), and she was known for her loud they could do to a cousin told me. “It was us women who the shooting there was little to laugh about because Father said he really voice and evil ways. Suddenly we heard change them. nursed MamCwerha.” MamCwerha, my thought he was going to die. the sound of police grandmother, is
I heard this story, and plenty of others, cars and boys shouting, still remembered during my visits to Khayelitsha, Cape “We will be back, you witch! You witch!” in the village as one of the fiercest and Town’s dangerous township where my Mam’ehouse was known as a witch and zero-tolerant wives Thembu men have mother lived. The township often felt like a promiscuous, an ungodly woman who slept seen. When my grandfather, George prison because of the number of criminals with other women’s husbands. It was said Zaphalala Hlobo, started cheating on
her with other women in the village, she started sleeping in her own room. He often would go to Johannesburg to work in the mines and would not come back or write to MamCwerha for many years.
I never met MamCwerha because she died during the late 1980s, leaving my grandfather a sad lonely man who had given all his money to women in the village. By then he was too old to work in the mines so Mother decided that he would come and stay with us. Many years later, he went to bed one night and did not wake up.
His death seemed to affect everyone in the village. People came in droves to support the family.
“But why would he be loved so much, and why was MamCwerha resented so much?” I would ask. “He is a man,” my aunts would answer.
They answered like they had been defeated by the power of men in the family, like they had given up making sense of the situation, like patriarchy was a normal part of our lives. It was as though they had accepted the burden of caring, feeding, clothing and unconditionally loving these men — even if their love was not returned.
“George was our father, and your father is our brother,” they would say at the end of every feminist conversation.
If you spoke to my mother and the other women who were married to the men in my family, they would tell you that these men had already been ruined by their mothers and there was nothing that they could do to change them.
“This is how it has always been.”
They worked and cared for their children and husbands without uttering a complaint. They were loyal to their husbands’ families and would never leave, or they would have disgraced their own families and would be called umabuy’ekwendeni (the one who has left her marriage and returned home).
“Your mother took care of your father like he was her child, just as MamCwerha took care of your grandfather,” my aunts often would tell me, and they would continue to say how they would never do that for a man.
“But it’s not entirely your mother’s fault he is like that. MamCwerha and the rest of us — his sisters —are to blame as well. If he had been a woman, we never would have tolerated him or your grandfather for that matter. In this family, men are the ones who are favored.”
But why did they stay and put up with this vicious cycle of abuse? What was it inside MamCwerha’s heart that made her love the boys more than the girls? What was it inside my mother’s mind that made her stay with my father?
“Your father was ruined by your mother because she spoilt him,” one neighbor in Khayelitsha told me. “Now he is unable to take responsibility because she continued what his mother started and always covered for him.”
After fighting with my father, one angry relative told me why Father had been shot many years ago in his home village.
“He was busy sleeping with that man’s wife while his own wife was at work making ends meet. Then his poor good wife had to come back and pay for his hospital bills.”
That poor good wife was my mother, who had told us that Father was shot because he was resisting a robbery.
How did she do it? How is it that she could stand there next to him, smiling and patting his back in full support of what he was saying?
As I finish my walk down Route 67, I wonder if women will ever be granted a chair at the men’s table. Will they ever be considered worthy of respect?
I crave freedom from the confines of our family’s male tradition, but if that freedom is not attainable, I will become a feminist and never be with a man.
And I will build my own home.
