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Among the Baganda 3Rashid37.5.qxd 02/11/2006 16:14 Page 89 Eroticism, Sensuality and ‘Women’s Secrets’ Among the Baganda Sylvia Tamale* 1 Introduction (McFadden 2003; Pereira 2003). This study of Ssenga Sexuality is intricately linked to practically every aspect is set against the backdrop of the institution of of our lives: to pleasure, power, politics and patriarchy and the legacy of colonialism. In Uganda, procreation, but also to disease, violence, war, colonialist constructions of Africans as profligate and language, social roles, religion, kinship structures, hypersexual led to the intensified repression and identity, creativity ... The connection and collision surveillance of African women’s sexuality in between human sexuality, power and politics provide particular. Colonialists worked hand in hand with the inspiration for this article, which explores the African patriarchs to develop inflexible customary various ways the erotic facility is used, as both an laws that evolved into new structures and forms of oppressive and empowering resource. In her domination (Schmidt 1991; Mama 1996) and deployed compelling essay, subtitled The Erotic as Power, Audre various legal and policy strategies and discourses in Lorde (1984) argues for the construction of the erotic the areas of medical health and hygiene. Traditional as the basis of women’s resistance against oppression. customs were reconfigured to introduce new sexual For her, the concept entails much more than the mores, taboos and stigmas. Women’s sexuality was sexual act, connecting meaning and form, infusing the medicalised and reduced to reproduction (Vaughan body and the psyche. Before Lorde, Michel Foucault 1991; Musisi 2002). Through adopting Christianity, (1977, 1990) demonstrated how the human body is a Africans were encouraged to reject their previous central component in the operation of power. beliefs and values and to adopt the ‘civilised ways’ of the whites. A new script, steeped in the Victorian In a bid to gain a better understanding of African moralistic, antisexual and body shame edict, was women’s sexuality, this article focuses on one inscribed on the bodies of African women and with particular cultural/sexual initiation institution among it, an elaborate system of control. the Baganda people of Uganda, the Ssenga. Talk of ‘ensonga za Ssenga’ (Ssenga matters) signifies an Through all this and into the present, the boundaries institution that has endured through centuries as a of the institution of Ssenga have been redrawn to tradition of sexual initiation. At the helm is the suit the times (Kisekka 1973; Sengendo and Sekatawa paternal aunt (or surrogate versions thereof), whose 1999). Yet, as I go on to argue, while Ssenga role is to tutor young women in a range of sexual facilitates and reinforces patriarchal power, at the matters, including pre-menarche (i.e. before first same time it subverts and parodies patriarchy. Judith menstruation) practices, pre-marriage preparation, Butler’s (1990) theories of subversion and erotics and reproduction. In Uganda’s capital, Kampala, performativity help tease out the transgressional the phenomenon of commercial Ssenga services has features of the Ssenga institution. Butler’s emerged. Print and electronic media have adopted observation that gender is a daily, habitual, learned Ssenga columns and call-in programmes. Ssenga act – a performance – based on cultural norms of booklets are also for sale on Kampala’s streets. The femininity and masculinity draws attention to the institution is being transformed by ‘modernisation’ and ways in which we performatively produce and urbanisation, as well as capitalist economic practices reproduce gender and sexuality. Through a within the liberalised market economy. deconstruction of the arrangement of gender and sexuality as constituted by the institution of Ssenga, Sexuality is a key site on which women’s this article investigates constructs of Kiganda subordination is maintained and enforced in Africa sexuality, and of femininity and masculinity within IDS Bulletin Volume 37 Number 5 October 2006 © Institute of Development Studies 89 3Rashid37.5.qxd 02/11/2006 16:14 Page 90 them. How has the evolution of Ssenga affected the kunoba (separation) when her husband treated her (re)interpretation of entrenched norms concerning with excessive cruelty, including denying her sexual femininity, masculinity and subjectivity? And does it pleasure. Needless to say, sexuality featured in any way represent any liberating possibilities for prominently in Ssenga’s tutorials focusing on women? eroticism, sexual paraphernalia and aids, as well as aphrodisiacs in the form of herbal scents, erotic oils, 2 Ssenga past and present sexual beads (obutiti), etc. To my knowledge, no scholarly study has systematically analysed the Kiganda institution of In their bid to eliminate ‘harmful cultural practices’ Ssenga, therefore most of the historical material in and to Westernise the sexual morality of the natives, this subsection is largely based on oral history; tales missionaries and the colonial establishment had a told to me by Ssengas and popular belief. special interest in Baganda women. Nakanyike Musisi observes: Among the father’s many sisters one would be selected (based on exemplary behaviour) to play the Through their pedagogy and medicine, role of Ssenga. Her role was to ‘socialise’ her nieces missionaries like Cook managed to make sexuality, in the art of becoming ‘good’ wives who were particularly women’s, not only a religious concern subservient and ensured their husband’s sexual but a secular one as well, one that needed to be pleasure. Accorded the same respect as one’s father- regulated by the colonial state. To be more explicit, in-law and widely respected within the family, over sex became an area that required legislation that the years, status, power and respect for Ssenga grew would put individuals under colonial surveillance. among the Baganda. Ssenga could freely come and The medical and sociopolitical project of managing go in her brother’s home under the responsibility of births, children, and mothers’ lives required that instructing the children. She could even take the sexual morality itself be controlled by the state children to her own home for tutelage. She made rather than by clan and kinship groups. (Musisi sure that young girls became well versed with the 2002: 101) appropriate feminine behaviours and roles – details included proper ways a good girl should sit, walk, A massive moral purity campaign was launched by conduct herself, respect elders, cook, etc. The young the colonial administration in the early twentieth adolescent received her lessons of ‘visiting the bush’, century, threatening many of the values within the which as I go on to discuss, involved a procedure of Ssenga institution. Although Ssenga represented an stretching or elongating her labia minora before she ‘ideal’ establishment through which the British could experienced menarche. As soon as she started spread their Christian ethic of sexuality among the menstruating, the Ssenga would begin preparing the Baganda, there is no evidence to show that this was young girl for marriage. ever tried. This is probably due to the fact that colonialists dealt mostly with the elite male Baganda Under the ancient system, marriages were not chiefs, largely excluding women from governance. All prearranged but the Ssenga played a pivotal role in in all, the cultural institution of Ssenga remained negotiating her nieces’ marriages. The Ssenga fulfilled intact through the colonial era. her primary responsibility of grooming her nieces to become ‘good’ subservient wives or co-wives. A As in many other African cultures, marriage and the husband who was dissatisfied with his bride’s family (read procreation) were (and in many ways still behaviour, particularly ‘bedroom etiquette’, would are) viewed as the basis of society. In this sense, blame it on the laxity of her Ssenga and return the given the crucial role that Ssenga played in this bride to the Ssenga for ‘proper’ training. However, sphere, she ceased to be an individual; her role and Ssenga’s tutelage also included some empowering practice became an institution in and of itself within messages to the young girl. For instance, Ssenga Kiganda culture. In many ways Ssenga as an entity encouraged her niece to engage in some home established (and still influences) patterns of cottage economic ventures (e.g. weaving, pottery) in expectation for Baganda men and women, ordering order to avoid total dependence on her husband. the social processes of everyday life (cf. Lorber 1994). Ssenga also made it clear that a wife did not have to Hence, contrary to popular belief, the institution of tolerate an abusive spouse; that she had the right to Ssenga is not restricted to erotology, nor is it an 90 Tamale Eroticism, Sensuality and ‘Women’s Secrets’ Among the Baganda 3Rashid37.5.qxd 02/11/2006 16:14 Page 91 aphrodite cult of genre elaborated by Abdoulaye Today, the Ssenga institution is made up of both (1999); it extends into every area of Baganda ‘conservative’ elements that will not bend from women’s lives (cf. Tshikala 1999). Ssenga as an century-old practices and ‘progressive’ ones that go institution is fraught with contradictions and with the times. Age and education seem to be ambiguities: amid her main theme of subservience, influencing factors here, with younger, more are subtexts of defiance, manipulation and control by educated Ssengas leaning towards more liberal views women.
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