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How to cite this thesis

Surname, Initial(s). (2012). Title of the thesis or dissertation (Doctoral Thesis / Master’s Dissertation). Johannesburg: University of Johannesburg. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/102000/0002 (Accessed: 22 August 2017). Xhosa Views on Sexual Morality in the 1960s – A Comparative Study between the Christians and Non-Christian (Red) People

by

Siphoesihle Phindile Gumede

201236219

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts

in the

Department of Historical Studies

of the

Faculty of Humanities

at the

University of Johannesburg

Supervised by Prof. Natasha Erlank

Acknowledgements

This thesis is dedicated to my mother and sisters who have my biggest supporters in every way possible.

The writing of this thesis has been one of loss and growth. I undertook this journey beginning of 2017, two months later after losing my brother in law to a short illness. Shortly after his death, our family went through the biggest trial involving the rape of one of my nephews (my brother in law’s son). The case compounded with my job loss and the loss of my brother was all too much. After battling with deep sadness for months and the shame which lingered throughout the community concerning the case, I contemplated dropping out. What I believed to be God’s grace, I was met with increased support from my family: Nokukhanya, Futhi, Thuli and my beautiful mother, Lebohang Gumede – I love and appreciate all of you. To my friend Carmen, thank you for ensuring that I remained determined to complete the final phase of this thesis. I will forever be indebted to all those who were a part of my healing and growth. To my friend, Tafadzwa, your friendship is appreciated.

I would also like to thank the History department at the University of Johannesburg, especially Professor Groenevald for accepting my application to work as a tutor.

To Prof Natasha Erlank and Dr Nafisa Essop Sheik, I would also like to send my appreciation for your words of encouragement, increasing academic and emotional support.

3

Abstract

This thesis focuses on changing sexualities and moralities in Xhosa areas from the 1940s-1960s and seeks to venture into transcribed interviews collected and recorded by an African Percival (Percy) Qayiso. African interlocutors and research assistants like Percy Qayiso played an immeasurable role in pioneering scholarship on Black people through oral interviews and transcription. His contribution shaped the content of the data collected and contributed to the work by the Mayers in the Xhosa in Town project. When looking at the interviews in Qayiso’s manuscript, there is a common view amongst rural and urban communities - that young people are no longer sexually ‘chaste’ compared to the older generation. The argument here is that young people are more sexually active and no longer apply preventative measures to avoid unwelcome consequences, i.e. premarital pregnancy. In the rural areas, sex-play (ukumetsha), referred to as a more accepted form of sexual expression by older people for unmarried youths and is less accepted and regarded as ‘old fashioned’. Within the topic of sexual morality, topics like rape and pre-marital pregnancy are part of the study by default. There is also a notable increase of predatory masculine sexual identities and a more visible distinction of identities rural and urban attitudes towards the 1960s. The cessation of virginity testing is understood to be the cause of increased sexual ‘immorality’. The inaccessibility of support systems, family planning services, inadequate employment and lack of opportunities in the face of massive social changes. The coercive legislation that forced Black people into controlled compounds or locations led to spiralling problems of over-crowdedness and other social ills.

Consequently, measures to curb shame and dishonour, like fines and ostracism, became prominent in various Red (traditional) communities. The critical conventional sanctions which policed and maintained a measure of stability in the past were rejected. In this thesis, I also discuss how Black cultures and systems have been historically centred on the control of female sexuality, and how those systems were oppressive in its own right. Furthermore, the militarized system of apartheid worsened the position of Black women as sexual assaults on them increased. This thesis focusses on Xhosa views on the concept of sexual morality in the interviews gathered in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, within the town and rural divide model developed by Philip Mayer. The interviews are very important and are the highlight of this thesis as they reveal Qayiso’s methodology and the consciousness of the informants concerned. The aim is to show how individuals and communities conformed and constructed nuanced sexual identities and practices, which in turn varied over space and time. The nuances in identities revealed that individuals became more involved in the creation of moral codes in the face of dramatic changes and the harsh realities of apartheid. 4

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... 3

ABSTRACT ...... 4

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 7 Background/ Context ...... 16 Area of Study ...... 19 Methodology ...... 21 Conclusion ...... 22

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 24 Writing about Sex in some parts of Africa ...... 24 Sex in South African History ...... 29 Sex in Xhosa History ...... 33

CHAPTER 3: CHASTITY, PRE-MARITAL ABSTINENCE (UKUMETSHA), AND CONTRACEPTIVES ...... 38 Introduction ...... 38 Interviews about Pre-marital Pregnancy ...... 44 Ukumetsha versus Full Sexual Intercourse ...... 47 Vaginal Examinations ...... 51 Contraceptives ...... 53 Conclusion ...... 59

CHAPTER 4: THE ‘WRONG’ CONSEQUENCES OF SEX, SEX WITHOUT CONSENT (RAPE), INCEST AND ABORTION CASES ...... 61 Introduction ...... 61 The emergence of ‘wrong sex’ ...... 64 Rape views and cases ...... 70 Pregnancy Cases ...... 75 Incest interviews ...... 84 Abortion Cases ...... 86 Conclusion ...... 91

CHAPTER5: XHOSA MARRIAGES ...... 93 Introduction ...... 93 The Anthropology and history of Xhosa Marriages ...... 95 Xhosa Marriages ...... 100 Missionary activity and Xhosa Identity ...... 102 Red Xhosa/Customary Marriages ...... 104 School Marriages ...... 107 Extramarital relations ...... 108 Conclusion ...... 112

CONCLUSIONS ...... 113 5

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 118 Primary Sources ...... 118 Secondary Sources ...... 118

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Chapter 1: Introduction

This thesis is more concerned with the changing sexual relationships, norms and moralities in Xhosa areas from the 1940s-1960s and seeks to venture into transcribed interviews collected and recorded by a Black interlocutor. The sources used here were the work of two interlocutors, who were researchers for Philip and Iona Meyer. Qayiso and Mkhize worked in this project as research assistants, but Qayiso worked on it more than Mkhize. The sources at hand which comprise interviews of individuals about their views on morality (particularly sexual morality). It is unwarranted to claim that these interviews represent an entire population of the Eastern Cape in the 1950s and 1960s. What these sources show were individual thoughts, experiences, and claims which were recorded and transcribed as part of an anthropological study. The norms and sexual behaviours in the areas of the Eastern Cape had become very intricate for many Xhosa speaking people in urban and rural areas because of the visible changes from the old cultural norms.

In the mid-twentieth century, the Eastern Cape (as with other places in the country) was developing within the new modernising capitalist apartheid state. In the early 1950s, the pineapple farming industry experienced a boom which created new farm jobs.1 From such influences, especially in the country, there was immense poverty which exerted pressure on rural communities to succumb as some people look for work in the cities and farms. As we will see, the developments of the industrial labour market, which also attracted young women, were seen by some informants to be one of the causes of pre-marital pregnancy and immorality. The crux of the issue for some informants is that more and more people had adopted a modernised lifestyle and no longer lived according to what they describe as traditional. The most noted factors that informants argue for were the issues of sexual immorality which were thought to be on the increase. As in unrelated cases of Johannesburg, public health concerns about sexual practices and waywardness created further anxieties amongst city officials and the state from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. A ‘moral panic’ was incited by the evidence of increased cases of pre-marital or unwanted pregnancies from the 1940s onwards. Premarital pregnancy was deemed wrong because it meant the young girls delayed or jeopardised their chances or marriage. The most critical issue here was the idea of ‘wrong sex’ which led to the negative consequences of sex. However, the informants revealed a sense that premarital sex is conditionally not forbidden. The only thing wrong about it is if parties were unmarried, they have the ‘wrong’ kind of pre-marital sex (full sexual intercourse) and not metsha (ukumetsha, thigh sex). Sex can also be wrong if it is violent, incestuous or beyond

1 Mager,‘Youth Organizations’, 657. 7 established sanctions of fertility control. In this thesis, I will look at interviews of informants who give their views, experiences, and stories of the ‘wrong sex’, including the consequences thereof. The inaccessibility of support systems, family planning services, inadequate employment and lack of opportunities in the face of massive social changes had unprecedented outcomes. The coercive legislation that forced Black people into controlled compounds or locations led to spiralling problems of over-crowdedness and other social ills. Anne Mager refers to the problems of “broken marriages, the seduction of young girls, battered wives and run-away spouses were recorded in the Eastern Cape courts during the 1950s”.2 The ‘wrong’ consequences of sex and sexual assault cases show that women were left vulnerable to sexual assault crimes, and the consequences of the lack of support structures contributed to their bad reputation. In the location areas of King Williamstown, the changed nature of intimate relationships and practices were not accepted due to the new environment which was marked by increasing urban-like conditions and poverty. Thus, the changes created a broad range of problems, most of which needed government interventions through standardised legislation but that was not always the case. Instead, the legal system affected women and men in different ways since women were minors in the law; those who brought matters to court were men.3 Thus, women – especially in the locations – were left mostly unprotected from these crimes and contributing to that was their bad reputation.

The changes in the society as a result of modernisation and other factors caused the ‘abandonment' of traditional practices, created to the benefit of the males, created a vacuum in the lives of many Xhosa people. As I will demonstrate in the coming chapters, this vacuum resulted in individuals setting out their courses in the relationships and practices. It is because of this vacuum that premarital pregnancy was prevalent and also was argued immoral by some informants and uncommon to the older individuals. Premarital pregnancy reduced the chances of marriage for some young women. Some of the male informants also relate how easily accessible ‘full sex’ was for them from single females. Overall, there was a moral panic about premarital pregnancy because this resulted in women finding themselves outside the ‘umzi’ (the homestead). Women who moved to towns on their own were cut from the strict patriarchal control and subservience to the male authority, especially husbands and fathers. Mager mentions that “in the late 1940s, Keiskammahoek had more than half of the women between 18 and 45 with illegitimate children”.4 In East London 65 percent of the recorded Black births in 1946 were illegitimate. The causes of the ‘moral panic’/

2 Mager, A. 1996. ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’. Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, no. 28: 12– 24. 3 Bank, ‘Sexuality, Fertility’.12. 4 A. Mager, ‘Youth Organizations’, 662.

8 anxieties were deeper than the Black sexualities and norms but were instead embedded in deep patriarchal undertones, fears over miscegenation and et cetera.

White apartheid officials and Black patriarchal regimes anxieties over miscegenation what was considered as waywardness caused increased pressure to regulate sexual interaction from the beginning of the twentieth century (although these pressures were already evident in the nineteenth century).5 Anne Mager argues that [Black] people were repeatedly cast in stereotypical ‘othering’ by magistrates and judges.6 Consequently, state interventions in issues expressed in Black intimate relationships through customary laws did not eradicate traditional practices but created an amalgam of ideas on morality with both Christian/Modern and traditional influences. This, in turn, resulted in the breakdown of traditional sanctions and inadequate replacements from the old practices. This is evident from the Commission on Native Law and Custom (1878-1883), which collected information from Xhosa, Fingo and Thembu men on their practices.7 When examining the accounts by the informants, it is evident that there is a mixture of practices and ideas influenced by traditional Xhosa practices. Some of the informants, who have been identified as school, refer back to the loss metsha and other customary practices amongst the youth which, according to them negatively affected their lives.

The challenges to customary practices, evident from some of the informants in this thesis, were deemed unacceptable to Xhosa traditionalists and patriarchs because the systems which had governed traditional Xhosa speaking groups were increasingly abandoned. The capitalist state from the beginning of the twentieth century had not made necessary arrangements (mainly accommodation and social support) in the cities for a large number of migrants from the reserves. In both the reserves and the urban spaces, Xhosa livelihood was transforming due to the broader changes the South Black society had endured due to colonisation, apartheid, industrialisation, and segregation. Some traditional practices fell away, and their replacements were inadequate. Both Red and School were aware of the changes that have occurred in their societies, even though traditionalists deemed these consequences unacceptable. Some individuals articulated the influence of missionaries through Christianity, urban lifestyles and dress as ‘white ways’ - which were ‘radically different’ than African ways8. In Red interviews, ‘white ways’ were not accepted and were deemed as the cause of social and cultural problems. Increasingly, urbanisation, modernity,

5 N. Erlank, ‘Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912-1950’, Feminist Studies 29 (3) (2003), 693 6 Mager,‘Youth Organizations’, 656. 7 N. Erlank, ‘Gendering Commonality: African Men and the 1883 Commission on Native Law and Custom’, Journal of Southern African Studies 29 (4) (2003), 937–53. 8 Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 61. 9 and their effects were also identified factors that contribute to the problems. Mayer defines urbanisation as the quality of life lived in town, and not necessarily the length of stay”.9 Xhosa- speaking people permanently living in town had a mostly negative reputation amongst the traditional Xhosa because of how the town environment shaped their lives. The town Xhosa people were widely accused of having abandoned their traditional practices, which meant they were ‘immoral’. A clear distinction between Red and ‘White-ways’ is apparent as more people adopted new methods and abandoned old ones. Mayer argues that “black teachers, preachers [...] and other informal agents of Westernization” were essential.10 The impact of ‘white ways’, urbanisation and modernity resulted in divisions amongst Xhosa people. These divisions also meant that most traditional sanctions and values were lost or changed by Christianity and modernity, which created a knowledge vacuum.

At the start of the twentieth century, preoccupations around transforming Black customs shaped the identities of Xhosa speaking groups and their norms. Irrespective of the impact of colonial laws and wars, along with Christian teachings, industrialisation and land dispossession, most people in the rural areas maintained traditional sanctions on fertility control and sexual expression.11 By the 1930s, various people from different social and political positions including public health authorities, Christian missionaries, and Black and white men and women, became increasingly anxious about the ‘new social threat’. Concerns over the presence of Black women and male youth in towns and the panic around sexually transmitted diseases became evident in public discourse.12 With regards to the topic of Xhosa marriage relationships and the practices around it, there were differences which characterise the people belonging to either Red or School people. Missionary activities in South African had been fundamental to challenging traditional practices. This is because their missions countered Xhosa beliefs on intimate relationships and marriage, which often resulted in misunderstandings and friction.13 The demise of some practices amongst Xhosa groups should not be explained only as of the consequence of missionary activity but need to be traced back to the Xhosa wars against colonial expansion and the consequences of Nonqawuse's prophecy14. Missionaries played a significant role in shaping gendered identities amongst the Xhosa. Cock comments on the colonial system of the Cape and how the system was designed

9 Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 5. 10 Ibid,2. 11 C. Burns, ‘Sex Lessons from the Past?', Agenda 29 (1996), 81 12 Burns‘Sex Lessons from the Past’, 83. N. Erlank, ‘“Plain Clean Facts” and Initiation Schools: Christianity, Africans and “Sex Education” in South Africa, c.1910-1940’, Agenda62 (2004), 76. 13 Fast, H. 1993. ‘"In at One Ear and Out the Other": African Responses to the Wesleyan Message in Xhosaland 1825- 1835’. Journal of Religion in Africa 23: 147–74. 14 Peires, J. 1989. The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing of the 1856-7. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers. 10 around the concept of ‘black female domesticity grounded in Western definitions of gender roles and missionary institutions.15 This system was focussed in creating ‘service for white households’ and training girls as future Christian wives.16

Resistance by some Red people also meant that an almost entirely negative attitude with regards to School identities and values was common. Mayer argues that “Red people [saw] School people as ‘collaborators’ and themselves as national resisters”.17 This ‘collaboration’ by School people is interpreted in terms of their concession when it comes to European or Modern values and practices. From the beginning of the twentieth century, there was an increase in the number of impoverished migrant labourers moving from the country-side to unhealthy and crime-ridden cities in search of work.18 This ‘modern way’ did not mean that Blacks would be advantaged when and if they bought into contact and collaboration with twentieth-century systems and structures. Blacks who were in urban areas from the turn of the century were pushed into migrant labour involuntarily as the result of poverty in the rural areas, dispossession and subjugation from the Union government into mid- century. The Xhosa response in South Africa to the missionaries and the changes which were brought was not the only one that was visible in the whole southern Black region. However, the Xhosa responses were shaped by the political and economic context within which the Gospel was preached. Colonial expansion changed the way things worked in the Eastern Cape and various problems -including dispossession - challenged traditional structures such as lobola, polygamy, etc. The 1840s were a pivotal decade for relations between Xhosa and missionaries because it marked the change in missionary perception towards Xhosa identity from ‘Redemption for all' to ‘settler views from social Darwinism'.19 Their activities revealed that missionaries became increasingly interested in the “[...] reformation of Xhosa belief and ideology, [...] polygamy, lobola, initiation rites, sexual practices and the sexual division of labour”. Xhosa mores were seen as improper because they did not meet the standards of ‘proper’ beliefs and sexual practices (Christian and according to European gender norms). Some missionaries acknowledged the impossibility of Christianity changing Black behaviour because they held the notion that Black people were a different race from Europeans.20 Regardless of the differences in philosophy missionaries, together with state initiatives establishing customary law such as courts, challenged existing Black identities

15 J. Cock, ‘Domestic Service and education for domesticity: The incorporation of Xhosa women into Colonial society’ in C. Walker, Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town: David Philip, 1990), 76. 16 Ibid. 17 Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 31. 18 R. Elphick, The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Radical Politics of South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012),4. 19 N. Erlank, ‘Sexual Misconduct and Church Power on Scottish Mission Stations in Xhosaland, South Africa, in the 1840s’, Gender & History 15 (1) (2003), 78. 20 N. Erlank, ‘Missionary Views on Sexuality in Xhosaland in the 19th Century’, Le Fait Missionaire, 11 (2001), 40-41. 11 and practices, while also inadvertently and deliberately contributing to the formation of new ones.21 Furthermore, fears over miscegenation also influenced missionaries’ thoughts against non- whites. Wells argues that “[...] [missionaries were beginning to] crudely articulate what ought to be proper relations between European and African”.22 The racial ideologies of the 19th century began to shape missionary views on race and the concept of civilisation. The discussions held at the synod meeting of the LMS (London Missionary Society) reveal that missionaries increasingly believed that Black women, especially Khoi women, were “loose and sexually dangerous”.23 These discussions quickly spread the idea of the ‘immoral Black woman’ and the urgency to reform her. Thus, from the early years of colonial South Africa's missionary activity, especially in the areas around the Cape, were important mediums of Black socialisation and reformation for colonisers – the influence of missionaries dwindled after the advent of apartheid policies.24

When looking at the informants in Qayiso’s manuscript, there was a common view amongst rural and urban communities that young people were no longer sexually ‘chaste’ compared to the older generation. The argument here is that young people are more sexually active and no longer apply preventative measures to avoid unwelcome consequences, i.e. premarital pregnancy. In the rural areas, sex-play (ukumetsha) was a more acceptable form of sexual expression amongst unmarried youths. It is also a part of common Red principles that a girl’s value depreciates when participating in pre-marital sexual intercourse, resulting in loss of virginity. In urban areas like East London, the argument is similar to that of the rural people. The concern here was pregnancy, and not necessarily the loss of virginity because premarital pregnancy threatened the exchange of cattle in the event of marriage. There is also a common rejection of ‘traditional’ sanctions, primarily ukumetsha, in the urban areas. This ‘preventative’ measure is evidence that Black cultures have been historically open to sexual practices for both enjoyment and reproduction. Some young urban males mention that females in town (those whom they have encountered), freely choose their preference of full sexual enjoyment and regard ukumetsha as retrogressive.

Although most young people in both urban and rural areas agreed that premarital full sexual intercourse was anti-social, there was a common concern in both regions of pre-marital pregnancy and the shame associated with it. Within the topic of sexual morality, subjects like rape and pre-

21 Bank, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’,12. 22 J. Wells, ‘Curing the Public Evils: Contested Terrain of Male Missionary Sexuality in the early 19th Century LMS Missions at the Cape of Good Hope’, Le Fait Missionaire, 11 (2001), 64. 23 Ibid. 24 N. Erlank. 2001. ‘Missionary Views on Sexuality in Xhosaland in the 19th Century’. Le Fait Missionaire 11: 9–44. N. Erlank. 2003. ‘Gendering Commonality: African Men and the 1883 Commission on Native Law and Custom’. Journal of Southern African Studies 29 (4): 937–53. M. Chanock. 2001. The Making of South African Legal Culture 1902-1936: Fear, Favour and Prejudice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 12 marital pregnancy consequential. Hardened masculinity and rural and urban attitudes became more visibly distinct by the mid-1950s, and the link between sexual assaults and the violence in the locations narrowed.25 Consequently, measures to curb shame and dishonour became prominent in various Red communities through fines and ostracism. Qayiso found it important to note how the bonds of unity weakened, that is the political, social and cultural forms that held the Xhosa speaking groups together became increasingly dysfunctional. The important sanctions which policed and maintained a measure of stability began to break down. The control of female bodies and behaviours, Black intimate and marriage relationships are central to the study of morality. The traditional courts, for example, have been described as overt institutions which oppressed women. Thornberry argues that "[...] chiefly courts, [...] composed of older men tended to be unsympathetic towards women and children whom they perceived as disobedient".26 The militarised system of apartheid worsened the position of Black women as sexual assaults on them increased and the rise of matriarchs in the urban and township spaces. Both these consequences (and some others) reveal that the changes brought by oppressive apartheid policies exacerbated some of the problems which had long existed in traditional spaces.

In this thesis, I look at views and stories from Red and School people in some of the location of the Eastern Cape. According to Leslie Bank, the Mayers argued that “the Red and School identities were long-standing rural resistance ideologies, which had their roots in Black dispossession, missionary activity and colonial exploitation in the nineteenth century Eastern Cape”.27 The Mayers coined the Red/School model as a blueprint of analysis of Xhosa identities. Although this model has received numerous criticisms by some scholars, in this thesis, I refer to the people and their personal views and opinions, not as an analysis of the groups. Under this model, the first category is the Red people Abantu Ababomvu/Amaqaba (those who smear themselves with red ochre). The Red people and their identities were embedded with derogatory labelling if not explained adequately. These people, as with all people, were not identical in manners and a belief, what characterised their identity was their insistence on their traditional way of life as a form of resistance. This includes rejecting any aspects of Western influence, including Christianity or any modernised aspect of life. Spiegel and Boonzaaier in Mc Allister argued that the “portraying of Blacks as ‘traditional' is one of how apartheid was rationalised".28 The portrayal of the insistence on the Red identity in scholarship is argued by scholars who challenged the trilogy as an apologetic notion to apartheid. The second

25 Bank, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power, 15. 26 Thornberry, Elizabeth. 2011. ‘Defining Crime through Punishment: Sexual Assault in the Eastern Cape, c.1835- 1900’. Journal of Southern African Studies 37 (3): 421. 27 L.Bank, ‘Home-made ethnography: Revisiting the “Xhosa in Town trilogy’ Kronos, 28 (2002), 174. 28 McAllister, PA. 1990. ‘Structure and Experience in the Making of Apartheid: The Role of Ritual in Resisting Domination in the Transkei in the 1970s’. University of Witwatersrand, History Workshop. Africana Library,3. 13 category was the School people Abantu Abesikolo/Amakhumsha (those who spoke English). Town people are a part of the last category as those who belonged to either the sub-category of ‘town dwellers’ with urban roots or fully urbanised roots. People belonging to the School group had Christian influences, enmeshed with traditional norms. In both the rural and urban areas, there were areas with a variety of people with these identities, or having elements of each. Thus, it was not plausible to assume that rural Xhosa were strictly Red and that town-based Xhosa people were School. The Red and School identities and divisions had notable differences in customs and ways of thinking. The most prominent factor which has contributed to this divide is religion. Leslie Bank argues that the trilogy produced "a series of home-made ethnographies that did not capture the richness, variety, complexity of urban culture in East London”.29 Some School people identified themselves as Christians. The Red and School identities were not set in stone but were fluid – with some Red people having Christian influences and possibly living in urban areas and some School people living in Red areas and still holding onto Red practices.

Identified as separate from the Red because of their values and lifestyles, School people were criticised for the ‘white-ways’ they adopted, notably: education, dress code, values and norms, and urban living. Locations burgeoned, bringing different living conditions and ties compared to pre- colonial rural Xhosa areas. Rapid and violent changes took place as colonial South Africa became a Union in 1910 and Xhosa people became increasingly challenged and “[...][faced] the more mundane possibility of eventual incorporation”.30 This ‘incorporation’ was primarily through the enrolling into converting and mission schools. Thus “mission education became an important bridge between the Xhosa world and European economy in the twentieth century”31. In this thesis, I still maintain the divide between the School and Red – although I do not insist on their separateness. Throughout the thesis, any reference on either School or Red is made to address the various sub-topics highlighted under the topic of Morality.

Furthermore, the areas in the Eastern Cape did not necessarily determine which kind of people lived there, whether urban or rural – there was a mixture of people belonging to either Red or School. The divide between the Red and School people was not a haphazard and ‘overnight' result of colonisation and missionisation; it was a consequence of long-standing politics of faith and politics32. The divide was merely a lens formulated by the trilogy authors and scholars, whom they

29 Bank, Home-Made ethnography, 148. 30 L. De Kock, Civilising Barbarians: Missionary Narrative and African Textual Response in Nineteenth-Century South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2001), 60-1. 31 Ibid, 61. 32 Peires, J. 1989. The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing of the 1856-7. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers. 14 were also a consequence of their time. The divide, however, was not that simple and not as easy as Red and School. In the mid- Twentieth century, this idea was rather difficult to maintain because the society had transformed as urbanisation had taken place, locations were also sites of a mixture of people living alongside each other. Furthermore, the atmosphere was different as single mothers ran most homes, and a decline of nuclear families was evident. The issues surrounding the Red/School divide reveal the implausibility of the theory as conservative and limited.

The Mayers reinterpreted most of Qayiso's findings, cutting out some of the narratives. In this thesis, I have found it important to note some of the silences on Xhosa views and stories that were not included in the project. Andrew Bank shows how the work by Monica Hunter was not possible without Black interlocutors and how the interlocutors helped to develop her linguistic knowledge in her earliest days in the field.33 Some of the topics in this study include black/Xhosa narratives on family life, sexual assaults, abortion, ‘illegitimacy’ and fertility control. The project with the Xhosa people in the Eastern Cape became an area of interest for Philip Mayer because of the Town/Rural/Red/School distinctions. Iona Mayer was involved in the analysis as part of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), an institute for research initiatives. Her involvement was part of the first compilation of the material for the Townsmen/Tribesmen project.34 As these sources contain a vast number of oral interviews from the 1940s into the 1960s, an examination of individual statements is important. Both Philip and Iona Mayer commissioned the study of morality. According to Vincent they argued that “Christian morality stigmatized traditional forms of restraint and shrouded sexual matters in shame and secrecy”.35 Furthermore, they also argued about the disjuncture between the stigma and the open discussions which were found “among traditional communities, where the influence of Christian morality was not yet felt”.36 However, when examining the sources, it is evident that the focus on the impact of Christian morality was minimal compared to the ripple effects of poverty, political and social violence and the inadequate resources in the locations and rural areas. The issues were much deeper than the impact of Christian morality on the Xhosa.

33 A.Bank. ‘The “Intimate Polities” of Fieldwork: Monica Hunter and her African Assistants, Pondoland and the Eastern Cape, 1931–1932’, Journal of Southern African Studies 34 (3) (2008), 571-572. 34 Spiegel, and McAllister, eds. Ibid., 23. 35 L.Vincent. ‘“Boys Will Be Boys”: Traditional Xhosa Male Circumcision, HIV and Sexual Socialisation in Contemporary South Africa’. Culture, Health & Sexuality 10 (5) (2008), 438. 36 Ibid. 15

Background/ Context

Percival Qayiso began writing up this research as part of his MA on changing Xhosa morality in 1962, but he was unable to complete it for unknown reasons. Qayiso's research on Xhosa morality was picked up from Mr F. Mkhize, whose work focussed on morality in the rural and urban populations of the Transkei and Ciskei. In a report by ISER about the project on Systems of Black morality is it mentioned that under Nuffield Fellowship projects at the University of Fort Hare, approximately three two-year fellowships were awarded to Black Researchers in 1954. From that time, the report states that there was difficulty finding "qualified Black researchers”, until in 1957 when Mkhize was first appointed to work on the moral attitudes between old and young, men and women, black and white, red and school, educated and uneducated in East London. Mkhize was appointed to work under Mayer for his Bachelor of Arts. The report also states that Mkhize had difficulties working in East London at the time and had to receive help from other research assistants. The work done on the project was said to be slow, and Mkhize could not meet his deadline, and in 1958 he applied for an extension of his two-year grant. However, Mkhize never finished his work as he took up a teaching post in Natal. In 1960, Qayiso was appointed and was expected to finish his work in early 1965. The report stated that in 1965 Mayer had moved to the UK and Qayiso remained under the guidance of Philip Mayer. He like Mkhize never finished his work on the morality project.

The kind of questionnaire Qayiso or Mkhize used for the interviews is not evident from the sources. As part of my analysis, I have noted the participants and the areas where they were their narrative was collected and have noted the details of the individuals interviewed, namely their gender, age, Red or School and church affiliation. Qayiso’s role in gathering the sources is very significant in this thesis because some of the interviewees related to him at a certain level. There were more School interviewees than Reds in almost all the topics in this thesis. There are more female School interviewees than male and Red interviewees (male or female) under topics such as rape, contraceptives and pre-marital pregnancies. Qayiso did not explain the silences in his manuscript about the changing Xhosa moralities; however, it is clear that the problem in these sources is methodological. A few of Qayiso’s sources have been used by Philip Mayer in his work on Xhosa people, but the bulk of interviews were unused. In this thesis, I will discuss a wide range of topics relating to Xhosa sexual practices, norms and intimate relationships by comparing both Red and School people.

16

The primary sources are from the Cory Library for Humanities Archive (Formally known as the Cory Library for Historical Research) in the Eastern Cape, Ms 16891. They consist of a series of interviews conducted by Percival Qayiso, a Black anthropology researcher based at the University of Fort Hare in 1963. Commissioned by Phillip and Iona Mayer, Qayiso researched on Xhosa morality and the breakdown of traditional sanctions as part of a larger Xhosa-In-Town project. The sources include interviews from men and women, young and old, from the Dushane people in the district of King Williams Town, a largely Red Xhosa area and Butterworth. Most interviews were conducted in the small locations of Khalana in King Williams Town and Grahamstown. Other areas include Tamara, Nonibe, Mabhongo, Shushu, and Nqotsi.

Further research was conducted in Nxaruni (St Luke’s), another predominantly Red area. The area of King Williams Town is located in the Western part of South Africa’s modern Eastern Cape Province. There are approximately seventy-six interviews in this collection, about sixty-eight of them are from King Williams Town, and the rest are from St Luke’s. A mixture of people, both Red and School, lived in the areas of King Williams Town, St Luke’s and Butterworth. This study will examine the recorded and transcribed interviews according to the group they belong to, not the area, and will also include the gender and age of the participants.

The sources comprise of notes and analyses by both Mkhize and Qayiso. Although he never completed his MA, he left behind a collection of interviews and a preliminary manuscript, which provide insight into perceptions of Xhosa sex morality. The transcribed interviews were from the 1940s into the 1960s, in most urban and rural spaces. The sources do not reveal any details on the date and some even the location where the interview took place. It is also not evident which of the sources where Mkhize’s efforts and which were Qayiso. Although Philip Mayer in the Xhosa in Town project has used some of the sources, these sources were useful to bring the study of morality under new scrutiny. Black ethnographers and research assistants have played a significant role in the collecting, recording and translating their findings, primarily for anthropologists. Black interlocutors played a significant role as research assistants; their work was often overlooked because researchers like the Mayers would reinterpret the collected work and use the translated sources produced into their scholarly work. Secondly, in the available scholarship, the voices of black subjects were overshadowed as a result of the reinterpretation by the leading scholars in scholarship. This is evident when examining the body of work produced by anthropologists and other scholars who have used the research by black interlocutors. It is inevitable that whenever a researcher plays the role of collecting and translating the work, they were actively involved in what is produced in scholarship. Thus, in this thesis, black interlocutor Percy Qayiso’s sources will be

17 acknowledged, as well as his findings in the study on morality amongst the Xhosa speaking people. Qayiso, was a Xhosa man with an education from the University Of Fort Hare, collected and analysed the sources from his informants. These sources are taken from his MA manuscript, which he never completed for unknown reasons. As a research assistant, Qayiso worked under the supervision of the Mayers, and his efforts and analyses revealed his voice as a researcher and scholar in his light. This thesis aims to add to the work of scholars who were trying to identify and fill the gaps in the scholarship of acknowledging black interlocutors firstly and also referring to their efforts. Secondly, in addressing the topic, in this thesis – there is an exploration of ideas about sexuality, sexual practices and sexual morality as captured in the interviews with the Xhosa speaking people in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s from part of what is today the Eastern Cape. Scholarship from the early nineteenth century referred to this area as Kaffraria. It then became known as British Kaffraria, and in the twentieth century, it was known as Ciskei. In this study, I will use contemporary titles and names, but historical names are to be acknowledged.

Percival (Percy) Qayiso was a teacher, and a research assistant for the Mayers worked tirelessly as part of the research on Townsmen/Tribesmen trilogy. Xhosa history and scholarship have been an area of interest for some scholars since the 1960s, with scholars such as D.H Reader, B.A Pauw, and Mayers (both Philip and Iona Mayer). What were common about these scholars was their anthropological background and also the use of similar styles of writing. The Mayers specifically did not collaborate in most of their past work, but both started venturing in the Xhosa in Town project from the early years of the 1960s into the 1970s. In this project, Philip Mayer was an active editor of a series of three monographs. The first volume of the monograph is by D.H Reader, volume two is by him (Mayer), and the third volume is by B.A Pauw37. This three-part series became what the Banks refer to as the Xhosa-In-Town trilogy. This series is the pioneering scholarship on Xhosa people, specifically in the Eastern Cape. What is also significant from work done by these scholars is the development of the Red/School model which has remained the blueprint of analysis for trilogy studies on the Xhosa. However, this model has been critiqued by scholars like Bernard Magubane, and also by scholars like the Banks. In his article, Bank argues that “the Mayers and their colleagues were criticized for theoretical conservatism, lack of historical perspective and the failure to situate their analysis of cultural change within the political economy of colonisation and racial capitalism adequately”.38 Furthermore, the leading researcher acted as dictators of the research assistants who could not freely conduct and complete their work. Research

37 Reader, D.H. 1961. The Black Man’s Portion. Vol. 1. 3 vols. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. , Mayer, P. 1971. Townsmen or Tribesmen. Second Edition. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, Pauw, B.A. 1963. The Second Generation. Vol. 3. 3 vols. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. 38 Bank, L. 2002. ‘Beyond Red and School: Gender, Tradition and Identity in the Rural Eastern Cape’. Journal of Southern African Studies 28 (3): 631–49. 18 assistants were somewhat coerced to follow the direction which the lead researcher pointed them to, thus blotting out any ‘irregularities’.

Qayiso is described as a researcher who had “a rare skill of being able to carry out interviewees at ease in the presence of a white researcher”.39 The work done by research assistants like Qayiso dominated the anthropological literature produced by white researchers. Schumaker, in her publications, has articulated the role of Black research assistants, arguing "that they were active collaborators in the ‘co-production of scientific knowledge' as well as individuals with their skills, ideas, and motivations".40 However, their ideas, motivations and their fingerprint in the scholarship has been overshadowed and completely covered by scholars like the Mayers. In this thesis, I examine the work by Qayiso under the same light, and not just as a data collector under the guidance of a white researcher. It is noted in the report by ISER in the manuscript, that Qayiso awaited Philip Mayer’s feedback after he had completed his work in 1966 and started on another project, but it does not appear that he received any feedback from Philip.41 The criticisms of the Xhosa-In-town project were also helpful as the gaps created new windows of research in various disciplines. Black interlocutors played a crucial role in the production of these sources although the contributions were not acknowledged.

Area of Study

The areas in question in the Eastern Cape of South Africa have a long history of contact and conflict with colonialists. In this thesis, the interviews conducted by Qayiso feature people from Grahamstown, Butterworth and King Williams Town. Thus, the areas in question were part of the larger area known as Ciskei in colonial discourse, an area west of the Kei River. From unification in 1910 until the mid-twentieth century these areas remained Mfengu largely- and Xhosa- populated in both the urban and rural areas. The Mfengu people’s identity is complicated because of their roots stemming from Zulu speaking Natal as a result of Infecane wars, positioning them as a lesser pure Xhosa group. Crais argues that the Mfengu, “fled the insecurity of Natal”, and as a result, their

39 A.D. Spiegel, and P.A McAllister, eds., Tradition and Transition in Southern Africa: Festschrift for Philip and Iona Mayer (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2001),21-24. 40 L. Schumaker, ‘A Tent with a View: Colonial Officers, Anthropologists, and the Making of the Field in Northern Rhodesia, 1937-1960’.Osiris, 11 (1996) 237–58. L. Schumaker, Africanizing Anthropology (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 1-21, 152-226. 41 ISER Third Annual Report Nov 1956 – Oct 1957, in Cory Ms 16891 ISER Archive, Percival Qayiso research on Xhosa Morality 19 identity was understood to be a “broad, flexible and situational category”. 42 As a result, the Mfengu group and their identity had been disregarded as pure Xhosa and cowardly even though they spoke the language. 43

From the beginning of the twentieth century, a large part of the Eastern Cape was characterised by heightened tensions around the land between Black and white inhabitants. Legislation which fuelled the dispossession of the Blacks was introduced, like the Private Locations Act of 1909 which “stipulated that only adult males registered as rent or labour tenants [could] receive licenses as lessees of the land, in exchange for rent for land”.44 Thus, there was a stark racial inequality, which pushed Blacks further into unskilled labour dependence on white employers for survival. Adult males were pushed into migrant labour, and many people lost their land. Furthermore, the Native Land Act of 1913 is argued to be the root cause of socio-economic injustice against the Blacks in South Africa. Modise and Mtshiselwa argued that the act “deprived the majority of Blacks of the right to productively own land for the economic wellbeing and sustainability”.45 The government insisted that the ‘reforms’, which took place from the 1940s onwards, were meant to transform Black family life through ‘land development’ programs which aimed to transform Blacks into “rural industrial and rural peasant communities” while also promoting the ideal of the nuclear family and ‘decent homes’.46 This ‘social engineering' was an excuse based on the view that the Black family had broken down and that there was an urgent need to transform the family under Christian notions and administrative regulations of social life.47 This ‘social engineering’ may have sounded like something that Black people needed to the government, and this very system restricted Blacks from the economic participation which allowed social and political immobility. The impact of the reorganisation of Black family life and segregationist policies had wider implications for kinship, gender, and generation.48 By the 1940s, new Black townships were established, and the rural reserves were gradually becoming more impoverished, while the new ‘social threat’ was perceived to be on the rise.49 This threat captured the minds of public health authorities, Christian missionaries, ministers, doctors, and employers of South African women and men, both Black and

42 C. Crais. ‘The Representation and Politics of Identity in South Africa: An Eastern Cape Example’. The International Journal of African Historical Studies 25 (1) (1992), 107-8. 43 Ibid. 44 A. Mager, Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan (Cape Town: David Philip, 1999), 1 45 Modise, L, and M Ndikho. 2013. ‘The Natives Land Act of 1913 Engineered the Poverty of Black South Africans: A Historico-Ecclesiastical Perspective'. In Cape Town, South Africa,2. 46 A. Mager, Ibid.48 47 Ibid.49 48 L.Bank, Home Spaces, Street Styles: Contesting Power and Identity in a South African City (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2011). De Kock, Civilising Barbarians. Erlank, ‘Gender and Masculinity’, 653–71. Mager, ‘Youth Organizations’, 653–67. K. Rice, ‘Ukuthwala in Rural South Africa: Abduction Marriage as a Site of Negotiation about Gender, Rights and Generational Authority Among the Xhosa’, Journal of Southern African Studies 40 (2) (2014), 382–99. 49 Burns, ‘Sex Lessons from the Past’, 82-83 20 white. The threat was the increase of premarital pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs).50 In the interviews, the agitation over premarital pregnancy is evident, especially from older adults. There is no reference to STI's in the informants' accounts. However, from the accounts, state-initiated contraceptives and their uses were hardly visible and sex education was something that was not common.

Methodology

In 1999, South Africa continued to face challenges with regards to gender development, social, economic and political fields.51 Women, more specifically Black women, were at the forefront of these challenges, especially with regards to domestic abuse and sexual violence. Some scholars have written about gender and sexuality alongside contemporary notions such as Armstrong52, Artz and Smythe53 The work by Black interlocutors still needs to be acknowledged, and their recognition should come not only as research assistants but as scholars whose findings and analyses contributed to scholarship like the Mayers. Qayiso has influenced how the interviewees responded to him and how much was revealed to him. This latter analysis is difficult to prove since the sources do not include the research questions used by Qayiso. What is evident from the sources is that Qayiso interviewed more men than women, most of whom were School and some Red. The exact number of women to men is not known and cannot be traced. Qayiso did not interview as many Red women, and in almost all cases Red women were spoken for by Red men

In this thesis, I have identified four topics which were at the crux of Qayiso’s work. In the second chapter, I discuss the literature addressing various topics on the topic of sex in Africa, South Africa and amongst the Xhosa people of the Eastern Cape. The scholarly work under this topic has been transformed from conservative writings to post-modernistic revisionists who considered the nuances in identities. In the third chapter, I have identified three topics which address the underlining issues revealed by the informants as important to note under the topic of morality: Chastity, Pre-marital Abstinence (Ukumetsha), and Contraceptives. When examining these topics, what is apparent is that the lives of Xhosa speaking people had transformed into complex cultures, beliefs and norms. Qayiso does not show most of this complexity because of the limitation of

50 Ibid. 51 C. Albertyn. et al.eds. 1999. Engendering the Political Agenda: A South African Case Study. South Africa: University of Witwatersrand, 2-3 52 Armstrong, Sue. 1994. ‘Rape in South Africa: An Invisible Part of Apartheid’s Legacy’. Focus on Gender 2 (2): 35– 39. 53 Artz, L, and D Smythe. 2008. Should We Consent? Rape Law Reform in South Africa. Cape Town: Juta. 21

Red/School model developed by the Xhosa in Town trilogy. In chapter four, I look at views on the ‘wrong' consequence of sex, sex without consent (rape), incest and abortion cases. Lastly, in chapter five, I examine the topic of marriage relationships.

This thesis applies a textual analysis from Qayiso’s manuscript on the topic of morality. However, these sources are limited and selective to understand broader questions on the topics identified above. In actuality, textual analysis as a resource for social research is limited and selective.54 The sources were collected in the Xhosa language and then translated by Qayiso. Initially, when I examined the sources, I accepted Qayiso analysis as a lens to examine the interview from his informants. However, as I looked closely, Qayiso's research methodology and scope of analysis became increasingly limited. Oral history methodology was used in the collection of these sources and is an interpretive activity of communication.55 Although the pioneers of the trilogy formulated the study, the informants revealed a lot more than Red and School morality views. It is more noticeable that it is no longer about the resistance of the Red speaking people and the immorality of the School, but about issues ranging from a lack of family planning, health care facilities, education and support from the state, the churches and family systems.

Conclusion

This thesis will address the issues related to morality in the Eastern Cape in the mid-Twentieth Century. With regards to methodological issues, Qayiso's role, identity, and personal style have had an impact on how the interviewees related to him and the ratio of men to women. The Town/Rural divide model developed by Philip Mayer influenced the Qayiso’s research style. The broader economic, cultural and social politics affecting the Xhosa people will be considered, giving a textual analysis which is much broader than that of the Mayers or the rest of the scholars whose work has defined the Xhosa scholarship. The topics selected in this thesis reveal different nuances in Xhosa identities and the nature of culture as an evolving facet of society. These topics include interviews with people, demonstrating what they thought about issues of morality and sexualities, including practices and attitudes which were deemed as acceptable and unacceptable. The informants' statements depicted the silent but overt consequences of disenfranchisement, violence (sexual, including political) through their personal experiences. These experiences noted in this thesis humanises the whole study of morality as real lives and stories had been recorded. This work

54 N, Fairclough. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge, 14-5. 55 V, J. Janesick. 2007. ‘Oral History as a Social Justice Project: Issues for the Qualitative Researcher’. The Qualitative Report 12` (1): 115.

22 is important and contributes to the growing bodies of work dedicated to restoring unacknowledged intellectuals, writers, thinkers and researchers to their rightful place in academic consciousness. Furthermore, this study ventures into another aim of exploring ideas about sexuality, sexual practice and the sexual morality as captured in the interviews with Xhosa speaking people in the 1940s, 50s, and 1960s from some parts of what is today the Eastern Cape.

23

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Writing about Sex in some parts of Africa

The first thing that needs to be acknowledged is that writing about sex in Africa is often part of a larger discourse which seeks to unravel different facets which make up the histories of families, relationships and sexualities. As we will see in this thesis, researchers have engaged with various issues and how affected these relationships were as a result of Western influence, globalisation and the modern capitalist state. It is difficult and close to impossible to represent Africa in one body of work because of the vastness of the continent of Africa and the inhomogeneous identity of the people in the different regions of the continent. However, in referring to ‘Africa', I do not intend on speaking for the whole continent, as this is an impossible task. Some scholars have commented on Africa as a whole, and in this case – I will quote their arguments. In this scholarship, it is evident that it is not enough work researched and written by Black scholars. Thus, there is a vacuum due to the way pioneering Western scholars have written about Black lives and intimate relationships. The most prominent scholars who pioneered scholarship are evidently from the twentieth century which promoted the kind of studies which were subjective and often promoted generalisations. Epprecht argues that sexuality studies in Africa are subjective and unreliable because the history of dissident or illicit sexualities reveals oppressive discourses hidden within the dominant culture of ‘common sense’.1 Scholarship on sex in Africa cannot be addressed in a universal language because most topics remain under-researched. Obono argues that the discourses of Black sexuality are diverse, and in their diversity “produce [...] a complex fabric of conformist and non-conformist attitudes and behaviour”.2 This view forms part of the contemporary notions dominating twenty-first-century writing on the topic. With these writers, we see a deeper understanding of what customs and practices mean within the topic of sexuality,

There are two significant trends in considering how writing about sex in Africa changed. Firstly, Epprecht3 argues that before the 1980s; writing about sex in Africa was focussed explicitly on heterosexual sexuality. Under this focus, it is notable how the pioneering scholars were mainly from anthropology and psychology; their approaches are influenced by the idea of ‘native’ and ‘tribal’ identities, which are condescending to Black customs. These writings in anthropology and psychology are very descriptive and analytical of the small and significant practices which define Black sexualities. The language used under this topic is laden with medical-psychiatric terminology,

1Epprecht, Hungochani,12. 2O. Obono, ed., A Tapestry of Human Sexuality in Africa(Auckland Park: Fanele, 2010), 2. 3Epprecht, ‘Sexuality, Africa, History’, 1258. 24 evident in scholarship addressing Black marriages, pre-marital sex, sexual assault and violence and sexual stereotypes.4 The second trend noted by Epprecht is one which developed after the advent of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This trend is described as having elements of post-colonial, as well as Foucauldian theory. Under this trend, scholars have challenged their predecessors by arguing that the visible ‘problems’ associated with Africa should not be isolated with the consequences of colonisation, racism, and male migrant labour as this would result in an incomplete account. Thus, both pre- and post-colonial trends are seen as important in determining both the effects of change and establishing possible solutions. This scholarship also focuses on the nuances around Black sexual identities and the differences across communities. At the forefront of these studies are works which seek to unravel past sexualities to understand current sexualities. This focus on Black sexualities does not present Blacks as passive receivers and victims of colonial and racial hegemony, but as active agents in the shaping of sexual and cultural identities in the face of modernity and globalisation.5

Scholars like Minkley, Burns, Amory and Mager articulate this significant analysis regarding the impact of European contact with Black people.6 Burns argues that rural communities continued to apply traditional sanctions on intimate relationships despite the impact of Christianity, industrialisation and land dispossession.7 These scholars also note the construction of gender identities and the impact of the changing context from the early decades of the twentieth century. As both urban and rural politics were patriarchal, the identity of Black women in both areas is subject to controversy following the public debates around ‘undesirable women’. The focus in these communities is not about sanctioning sexual expression, but fertility. The prominent view of both the state and church was opposition to pre-marital sex, as stated in Christian ideology.

Scholarship since the demise of apartheid in South Africa is, on the whole, very different from scholarship before that time. Some continuity and influence from the early work can be traced but what makes the present scholarship different is that the focus is not only on Black men and women but this gendered focus in articulating the present problems through other styles of writing. The HIV/AIDS pandemic prompted contemporary scholarship that researched issues affecting

4S. Murray and W. Roscoe, eds., Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities (New York: Palgrave, 1998), 12. 5. Peterson, ‘Morality Plays: Marriage, Church Courts and Colonial Agency in Central Tanganyika', American Historical Review(2006). 6 G.Minkley, ‘I Shall Die Married to the Beer: Gender, family and space in the East London Locations’, Kronos: Journal of Cape History, 23 (1996), 135–57, Burns, ‘Sex Lessons from the Past’, 79–91, D. P. Amory, ‘“Homosexuality” in Africa: Issues and Debates’, African Issues 25,1 (1997), 5–10, Mager, ‘Youth Organizations’, 653–67. 7Burns, ‘Sex Lessons from the Past’, 79–91. 25 intimate relationships and health administration.8 Mark Hunter’s book is described as a study of the response to HIV/AIDS in South Africa.9The revisionists played a critical role especially in challenging scholars from Anthropology. This caused the scope of Black scholarship on sex to be revised and broadened. The most significant aspect of the latter trend is that in most cases, foreign researchers led the discourse to find solutions into devastating issues in the face of HIV/AIDS. Epprecht argues that the work by foreign researchers contained “critical gaps” in which they relied on “received and rational wisdom”.10 The work produced here resulted in new problems in the writing and representation of Black sexualities. According to Epprecht, the previous scholarship was characterised by the notion that homosexuality and bisexuality are non-existent in the Black context. This created a weakness in scholarship addressing Black sexualities because either the work charted the problems in Africa alongside the consequences of colonisation and other factors like racism. Hunter argues that some scholars juxtaposed the problems in Africa to heterosexual promiscuity, gender violence, and the lack of the kind of internalised moral restraint that supposedly spread HIV.11

There is silence, especially on the history and scholarship on homosexuality and bisexuality or sexual practices variant from the commonly understood to be accepted: heterosexuality.12 This debate about silence in scholarship has been deeply researched and written about by Murray and Roscoe, in their book, Boy-Wives and Female Husbands. The intriguing title points to the labelling concern that arises in discourses about dissident sexuality in Africa - it is commonly argued that homosexuality is un-African.13 There is a need to redress the writing of Black sexualities in a way that will question and challenge the “unspoken and unexamined assumptions”. Epprecht14 referred to race, masculinity, power, national identity, class and sex itself as reasons for ‘unspoken and unexamined assumptions’ on Black sexualities and practices. If scholars examine assumptions about this, they would be able to close the gap and eventually fill the silence. Filling this silence would require scholars to identify the nuances within these unspoken and unexamined assumptions. There is a wide range of other issues which unravel underneath these broad topics, and research shows how all, if not most, are interconnected. Under the study of sex, topics such as power and race (to name a few) are important factors which need to be considered in all scholarship. This new

8Glaser, ‘Managing the Sexuality of Urban Youth’, 301. 9M. Hunter, Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). 10 M. Epprecht, Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008),1-2. 11Hunter,Love in the Time of AIDS,2. 12S. Murray, and W. Roscoe, eds.,Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities(New York: Palgrave, 1998). 13Epprecht, Heterosexual Africa, 102. 14Epprecht, Hungochani, 10. 26 scope of analysis moves from the broad, macro style of writing to micro, focussed writing. Jeffrey Weeks referred to the twentieth century, specifically from the 1980s, as the age of uncertainty.15 Weeks defines and breaks down the concept of sexuality by mentioning that it is a ‘fictional unity’ of disparate bodily and mental processes of both identities (historically constituted) and gender (social imperative), rather merely a biological given [...].16 This definition does not only deviate from the pioneering scholarship on Black sexuality which distinguished between Black and white sexuality along condescending and racist undertones but is also revolutionary in noting that it is a ‘fictional unity’, especially between genders. Thus, it is impossible to only speak of Xhosa sexuality, as if there was only one kind across individuals of different ages, socioeconomic status and ethnicity.

Thus, the third shift in scholarships is from the 1990s into the 2000s, as more scholars from various disciplines have begun to write about Black sexualities in more specific themes, topics, regions and geographic areas. Aggleton refers to sexuality and the issues of gender in his article found in the conference proceeding book. Firstly, he argued that “sexuality is intrinsically linked to physical acts, yet simultaneously conceived in discourse – words and language”.17 On the other hand, the book by Burrill, Roberts and Thornberry, Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa18 is one of the few recent works to engage the reader with a specific but complex view of violence in some parts of Africa. This work focuses on ‘domestic violence’, the history, causes and nature of this abuse within the domestic framework. Again, under this topic, various other topics are addressed, including sexual abuse. It is argued in the book that “given the importance of ideas of family and kinship in many Black political systems, it is not surprising that families themselves have often been the site of violent coercion”.19 Thus, writing of this kind is more common in the twentieth century because scholarly writing has transcended the broad and silenced history into the more nuanced and analytical style propagated by revisionists including feminists, and also social and gender scholarship. These trends are also notable with regards to the presence of other disciplines in writing about Black sexualities. Scholars like Amina Mama, Anna Steyn Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone have contributed immensely to the literature about Black family life, while including other topics under their study.20 This allowed a holistic approach to

15J. Weeks. Invented Moralities: Sexual Values in An Age of Uncertainty(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995) 16Ibid., 48. 17 V, Reddy,et al, eds. 2009. From Social Silence to Social Science: Same-Sex Sexuality, HIV & AIDS and Gender in South Africa: Conference Proceedings. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 3. 18Burrill, Domestic Violence and the Law. 19Ibid., 1. 20 M. Russell, ‘Do Africans live in nuclear family households? An appraisal of Steyn's work on urban family structure in South Africa’ South African Sociological Review, 6(2) (1994), 56-67, M.J. Alexander and C. Mohanty, eds. ‘Sheroes and Villains: Conceptualising Colonial and Contemporary Violence Against Women in Africa’ in Feminist 27 thrive. Steyn used a qualitative method to analyse the type of family structure in South Africa from the 1980s and thus concluded that certain family structures were more common amongst certain population groups. The lack of detailed analyses supporting the quantitative data opened up criticism from varied scholars. As a result, more scholars sought to merge the two – both quantitative and qualitative - in the study of Black family life in South Africa. Quantitative data remains significant, especially in studies which involved a vast area like South Africa, in determining the extent to which a phenomenon has had an impact. Topics like rape, domestic abuse, and teenage or illegitimate pregnancy are standard features in the study of Black sexualities and family life. Thus, writing about Africa, particularly topics connected to sex, is no longer exclusively reserved for scholars of anthropology and psychology.

Writing about intimate relationships, norms and sexual practices in contemporary scholarship now includes violence in the family and violent sex (rape). This matter in Black sexuality has been articulated in depth by Thornberry, in the 2000s and is notably absent in other research. In her writing, Thornberry sought to focus on these issues by defining and identifying the discrepancies which existed in the law that governed and punished this offence.21 Thus, limitations in scholarship addressing Black sexualities in the twentieth century increasingly addressed. The emerging literature parallels a growing recognition of the need to address the violent roots of history in South Africa to deal with the scourge of ‘femicide’ (the killing of women by their male partners and by strangers). This phenomenon has been revealed in the media and has caused a public outcry. Underneath these outcries is a concern about the rising level of sexual violence cases affecting South African society. Writing about Black sexualities using moralistic tones is slowly falling away and is being replaced by a more historical approach. Murray and Roscoe argue that “in addition to the ethnographic literature, a variety of primary source materials can be used to reconstruct historical roles and practices”.22 Topics like rape, domestic abuse and Xhosa sexualities are at the forefront of this study. There is a lot of sociological and political work on sexual violence,

Genealogies, Colonial Legacies and Domestic Futures (London: Routledge, 1998), S. Marks and R. Rathbone,‘The History of the Family in Africa’,Journal of African History 24 (2), 1983, 145–61. 21 E.Thornberry, ‘Defining Crime through Punishment: Sexual Assault in the Eastern Cape, c.1835-1900’,Journal of Southern African Studies 37 (3)(2011), 415–30. E. Thornberry, ‘Virginity Testing, History, and the Nostalgia for Custom in Contemporary South Africa’,African Studies Review 58 (03) (2015), 129-48. E.Thornberry, ‘Rape, Race, and Respectability in a South African Port City’,Journal of Urban History, 42 (5)(2016). E. Thornberry, Colonizing Consent:Rape and Governance in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, 1820-1927 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 22Murray and Roscoe, Boy-Wives and Female Husbands, 17. 28 scholars like van der Spuy and Fransch wrote on this topic, with van der Spuy covering the colonial (Cape slavery) period and Fransch covering the twentieth century.23

Sex in South African History

Writing about South Africa has evolved over the years. Specifically, from the beginning of the twentieth century, scholars were more concerned with re-articulating South African scholarship as a result of the silences born in colonisation and apartheid. Erlank mentioned that it is important to note the historical shifts in the literature because many of the current writings are still rooted in the history of colonisation and its racial politics.24Thus, it was common that the pioneering scholarship from the beginning of the century commonly wrote in the Thompsonian social history-inspired style of writing from the 1970s and 1980s.25 Most scholars from that period wrote in the same style, including the famous anthropologists in Southern Africa. Mayer’s published work titled Townsmen or Tribesmen is an anthropological study on Xhosa people and urbanisation. Although Mayer’s work pioneered Xhosa scholarship and opened space for revisionist scholars analysing the town/rural divide – there are controversial debates around the portrayal of gender and sexualities in his work. What is important to note in contemporary scholarship is that most scholars who wrote in the twentieth century and before then were dependent on Black research assistants to collect, record and translate the ethnographic interviews. What is also significant is that these scholars contributed to the study of Xhosa people, primarily in the Eastern Cape, were influenced by British social anthropology, pioneered by Radcliffe-Brown. This tradition of writing is argued to stem from the theory of functionalism, coined by Emile Durkheim, a structuralist sociologist. The key aspect of this type of Anthropology was to “concentrate upon the relationship between the individual and the group – upon the process by which communal values are internalised by individualised and generated by the group”.26Their reliance on Black interlocutors was indeed a milestone for Black scholarship because data was collected by Blacks who understood the languages concerned. Varied scholars have criticised this style of writing, and as a result, researchers and writers ranging from feminist to social historians have become involved. But most significantly, this style has influenced other scholars who came after Radcliffe-Brown in their studies on Black anthropology. There is a measure of functionalist social anthropology within the work of later anthropologists like the Mayers and Monica Hunter. These early scholars, primarily from anthropology, played a significant

23P. van der Spuy, ‘A Collection of Discrete Essays with the Common Theme of Gender and Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope with a Focus on the 1820s’ (MA Thesis, UCT, 1993). C.Fransch, ‘“... Wood, Carved by the Knife of Circumstance ...”: Cape Rapists and Rape in South Africa, c. 1910-1980’ (PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit, 2016). 24N. Erlank, ‘Sexuality in South Africa and South African Academic Writing’,South African Review of Sociology, 1 (38) (2008), 158. 25R. Elphick, The Shaping of the South African Society, 1652-1840(Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 1989). 26A. Kuper, ed.,The Social Anthropology of Radcliffe-Brown(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), 3. 29 role in identifying key elements of Black culture and noting the changes as it evolved. The Mayers wrote during the 1970s and backlash, and criticism has arisen around their approach to writing about Blacks in South Africa.27 Despite the negative commentary, these scholars have contributed immensely to the detailed ethnography which is essential for developing scholarship.

Within the scholarship on sexualities in South Africa, there is a specialisation on the racial boundary of Black and white. Scholarship on Black sexualities has, for a long time, sought to make sense of Blacks sexualities but did so along with Western concept s of Black sex – without entirely separating the two. What is significant is that the urbanisation of Black women in the early years of the twentieth century met with varied negative responses. The first well-known and recognised work on Black urbanisation was by Hellman in 1948. It was an anthropological perspective noting the legislation of forced removals in response to the growing slums in the early twentieth century. Hellman revealed, “the importance of women’s contribution to urban survival through brewing for consumption and to supplement wages”.28 This view is contrary to the state’s representation and the reaction to the presence of Black women in the city that were discriminatory, harsh and condescending to them.

The early years of the twentieth century saw the beginning of the notions of ‘the immoral’ Black female and the dangerous Black man. Writers like Eales and Bonner have made an immense contribution to studies on the urbanisation of Black women and the emerging Black working class.29 Both scholars, researching the same period, capture the state’s response to the urbanisation of Black women. Scholars writing in this fashion also articulated how Black women were subjects and objects of the capitalist system that was not open to them. The growth of the trade of illicit liquor and sex to subsist vindicated the white employer's assumptions that Black women were immoral.30 Scholars like Gaitskell added to the knowledge of the consequences of Black female urbanisation by noting the response of missionaries and the state in curbing the ‘immorality’ of both Black men and women, but more of Black women.31

27B. Magubane, ‘The Xhosa In Town, Revisited Urban Social Anthropology: A Failure of Method and Theory’, American Anthropologist, New Series, 75 (5) (1973), 1701–15.L. Bank, ‘Beyond Red and School: Gender, Tradition and Identity in the Rural Eastern Cape’,Journal of Southern African Studies 28 (3) (2002), 631–49. 28W. Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 128. 29 K. Eales, ‘Patriarchs, Passes and Privilege: Johannesburg’s African Middle Classes and the Question of Night Passes for African Women, 1920 - 1931.’ Working Paper, February 14, 1987’ http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/7776, accessed 31 January 2019, P. Bonner,“’Desirable or Undesirable Sotho Women? Liquor, Prostitution and the Migration of Sotho Women to the Rand, 1920-1945”, Working Paper, May 1988, http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/8433, accessed 31 January 2019. 30K.Eales, “‘Jezebels’, Good Girls and Mine Married Quarters: Johannesburg, 1912.” Working Paper, October 1988. http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/8673, accessed 31 January 2019, 1. 31 D.Gaitskell, ‘Wailing for Purity’: Prayer Unions, African Mothers and Adolescent Daughters, 1912–1940’ in S. Marks and R. Rathbone (eds) Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Culture 30

Amongst the twentieth century topics of Xhosa scholarship, the question of how Blacks received the message from missionaries is groundbreaking.32 Fast shows how Black resistance to the message of the missionaries and the problems it created. In the book, she also notes the response of Xhosa people to the missionaries. Erlank33 argues that missionaries in the Eastern Cape viewed their efforts to reform Black behaviour as part of their Christian beliefs, but that they inadvertently contributed to identity formation amongst the Xhosa. On a wider scale, debates around the impact of missionary efforts to reform Black identities reveal the social damage in Black communities, as well as the abandonment of some practices. Delius and Glaser argue that most Christian converts did not privately accept the elements of Christian teaching that required them to compromise their cultural practices.34 Epprecht argues that Blacks changed colonial anxieties to refashion sexual mores in accordance to their preference.35 This argument interestingly highlights how agency is visible even under cohesive pressure. However, it is not correct to assume that some of the changes brought by acculturation were not disastrous to Black identities and cultures.

Moffet produced a sterling piece of research which investigates how the advent of apartheid policies, compounded with the rearrangement of family life and other forms of political restructuring, saw the alarming rise of sexual violence against women and children.36 This article is important because it changes the scope within which the topic of morality is examined. It removes the burden placed on colonisation and missionary intervention in Black lives as the only explanation for the problems in the twentieth century. Some scholars in the twenty-first century began to explore how Blacks imagined and forged new identities along with modern, masculinised, militarised and urban notions.37 Urbanisation became a powerful force that enabled the construction of new identities, especially amongst the youth. Concerns over Black youth sexual practices in the face of urbanisation, loss of cattle in the reserves and land dispossession are at the background of

and Consciousness1870-1930 (New York: Longman, 1982), 338–57. D. Gaitskell, ‘Christian Compounds for Girls: Church Hostels for African Women in Johannesburg, 1907–1970’, Journal of Southern African Studies 6 (1) (1979), 44–69. D. Gaitskell, ‘Housewives, Maids or Mothers: Some Contradictions of Domesticity for Christian Women in Johannesburg, 1903–39’,The Journal of African History 24 (2) (1983), 241–56. D. Gaitskell, ‘Race, Gender and Imperialism: A Century of Black Girls’ Education in South Africa’, African studies seminar paper, University of the Witwatersrand, African Studies Institute, 1988. D. Gaitskell, ‘Gender, Power and Voice in South African Anglicanism: The Society of Women Missionaries’ Journal, 1913-1955.’ South African Historical Journal 61 (2) (2009), 254–77. 32 Fast, ‘In at One Ear and out the Other’, 147–74. 33Erlank, ‘Gendering Commonality’, 940. 34 P. Delius and C. Glaser. ‘Sex, Disease and Stigma in South Africa: Historical Perspectives’,African Journal of AIDS Research 4 (1) (2005), 30. 35Epprecht, ‘Sexuality, Africa, History’, 1258–1272. 36H. Moffet, “’These Women, They Force Us to Rape Them’: Rape as Narratives of Social Control in Post-Apartheid South Africa’,Journal of Southern African Studies 32 (1) (2006), 129–44. 37Erlank, ‘“Plain Clean Facts”, 76–83. A. Mager,‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’,Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 28 (1996), 12–24. Mager,‘Youth Organizations’, 653–67.G. Reid and L. Walker, ‘Sex Then and Now: Exploring South Africa’s Sexual Histories’,South African Historical Journal, no. 50 (2004), 77–83. 31 modern scholarship. As a result, scholars like Burns38 have taken the initiative to note the disconnection between Christian doctrine and Black people. These studies mentioned above tended to overlook or underestimate the extent to which Black women feature in the story about Black sexualities. Shefer and Foster provide a ground-breaking article which considers silences with regards to female representation in scholarship.39 Some studies which have influenced the bulk of this study are largely still conservative because they do not reveal hidden facets including homosexuality and heterosexuality. It is argued that through the articulation of issues like rape, battery, incest – it is evident how women are depicted as objects of pleasure rather than subjects who ought to have pleasure.40 Thus, there is a shift in the way in which sexualities in Africa is articulated, from a colonial and masculinised perspective to a feminist articulation. Bozzoli argues that “[…] there have been Marxists in South Africa […] who have attempted to provide a material explanation for female oppression”.41 Bozzoli mentioned that these Marxist “have tended to place their primary emphasis on the relationship between that oppression, and the capitalist mode of production, […] to show the functionality of female oppression for the capitalist system”. This argument is central to the understanding of women’s position in society and the lens which scholars from the late 1960s into the 1970s were using. Thus, Bozzoli argues that the oppression of women is ‘functional’ to the stability of capitalism concerning “[…] low female wages, […] division in the working class, nuclear family", all of which "serves to lower the cost of reproduction of labour- power".42Black women were not in the same social, political and economic level as white women in the mid-twentieth century. Scholars like Tamale give insight to Black women and their sexuality.43 It is important to highlight this because historically Black women have always been spoken for, initially by the Black patriarchs and overtime by white women behind the umbrella of feminism. This study, although reliant on the pioneering scholarship which has silenced Black women’s voices, aims to break this silence.

Various scholars have moved away from the top-down approach of writing (the effects of colonisation or white oppression only), to writing in a way that captures the nuances in the discourses of Black sexualities. Scholars like Thornberry, who note the intricacies of sexualities in the South African context, have emerged in the twenty-first century. Thornberry discusses rape and

38Burns, ‘Sex Lessons from the Past?’, 79–91. 39 T. Shefer and D. Foster, ‘Discourses on Women’s Heterosexuality and Desire in a South African Local Context’,Culture, Health & Sexuality 3 (4) (2001), 375–90. 40S. Tamale, ed.,African Sexualities: A Reader (Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2011). 41B.Bozzoli, ‘Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies’,Journal of Southern African Studies,9(2) (1983), 141. 42Ibid. 43 Although Tamale has included narratives mostly from Zimbabwe, most of the articles in the reader are significant in challenging the existing scholars in South Africa, in particular. 32 governance in the Eastern Cape, from 1820 to 1927.44 The validity of wrong-doing which would lead to the punishment of the perpetrator (in cases like rape) became increasingly determined by the behaviour that most women were expected to maintain according to Xhosa standards. As a result, to some men, the rape or sexual assault of a woman was seen as something that she had caused. Increasingly, scholars writing from the 1970s onwards who have represented Black women as victims of gender, class and race discrimination are responsible for echoing such concerns. Although this has been a positive advance in scholarship, there is still a lot of work to be done.

The work Women of Phokeng. Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900-1983 by Bozzoli and Mmantho Nkotsoe has challenged preconceived notions of knowledge creation and analysis.45 This is a ground-breaking scholarship which has challenged all historiographical methods relating to Black women in South Africa. Bozzoli rejected the feminist perspective which presents gender as a determining variable.46 The contributions and participation of Mmantho Nkotsoe are what challenged the whole perspective of their study. Nkotsoe is said to be Tswana herself, from a surrounding area near Phokeng and a Black woman, and had access to the lives of the women under study.47 What is significant in this work is that the nature of interactions determined the interpretation of the work creation of meanings.48 The style and consequences of Bozzoli and Nkotsoe's work became more significant than the content of the study. Nkotsoe as a research assistant and contributor, influenced how the women of Phokeng related to her because of her identity as a Tswana woman. Nkotsoe in the study is acknowledged as an intellectual, writer and researcher – and not a mere shadow of Bozzoli.

Sex in Xhosa History

In South African history the Xhosa are understood to be the first group after the Khoisan to be affected by colonial expansion. Relationships and intimacy amongst the Xhosa are more complicated than understood, even before the influence and impact of Christianity by missionaries and the power struggles in the colonial context and further. Before I begin the discussion about scholars who wrote on the Xhosa, it is imperative to acknowledge scholars who focussed on the history of the Xhosa people. In his book, The Dead Will Arise, Peires details the most spoken and

44Thornberry, ‘Colonizing Consent’. 45Belinda Bozzoli and M. Nkotsoe, Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900-1983 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1991). 46D. Wylie, ‘Women Migrants’ in B. Bozzoli and M. Nkotsoe (eds.)The Journal of African History 34 (1) (1993), 173. 47D. Chetty, ‘Review of Women of Phokeneg: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migrancy in South Africa 1900-1983, by B Bozzoli and M Nkotsoe’. History Workshop, no. 36 (1993), 250–52. .250-251. 48Ibid. 33 written about factor in Xhosa history, the cattle-killing, which set off dramatic changes and created Xhosa dependence on colonial government. The cattle-killing in Eastern Cape is understood to be the ‘National suicide of the Xhosa’ which made the Xhosa vulnerable to colonial control under Sir George Grey.49

There is an extensive historical and anthropological literature on the consequences of European contact with Xhosa people, including missionary views on Black customs and practices. What also is important to note in this study is that the trilogy scholars were dependent on Black research assistants to collect, record and translate the work that was collected. Mayer’s published work titled Townsmen or Tribesmen is an anthropological study on Xhosa people and urbanisation. Although Mayer’s work pioneered Xhosa scholarship and opened space for revisionist scholars analysing the town/rural divide, there are controversial debates around the representation of gender and sexuality. In his article, Bank argues that “the Mayers and their colleagues were criticised for theoretical conservatism, lack of historical perspective and the failure to situate their analysis of cultural change within the political economy of colonisation and racial capitalism.50 The criticisms of the Xhosa-In-town project were helpful as the gaps created new windows of research in various disciplines. The pioneering Xhosa scholarship is still useful in breaking down Xhosa culture and in understanding how the culture was articulated, which then influenced the law and other spheres of colonial and apartheid South Africa.

Amongst the twentieth century topics of Xhosa scholarship, the question, articulated by Fast, of how Blacks received the message from missionaries, is groundbreaking. She reveals Black resistance to the missionaries and the problems it created and notes the response of Xhosa people to the missionaries.51 She argues that the reactions to the missionaries were shaped by the political and economic context in which the gospel was preached. In both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, scholars have begun to ask different questions relating to Black culture and livelihood. The most prevalent scholars articulated how the significant changes in society affected society and how people responded to the change. Scholars like Arnfred, Bank, Bonner, Bradford and Delius and Glaser (and others) closely examined topics around Black sexuality, especially in urban spaces.52

49J. Peires. The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-7 (Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 1989), 12. 50 Bank, ‘Beyond Red and School’, 647. 51 Fast, ‘In at One Ear and out the Other’, 147–74. 52S. Arnfred, 2005. Re-thinking Sexualities in Africa (Sweden: NordiskaAfrikainstitutet). Bank, Home Spaces, Street Styles. P. Bonner, ‘Desirable or Undesirable Sotho Women’. H.Bradford, ‘Women, Gender and Colonialism: Rethinking the History of the British Cape Colony and Its Frontier Zones, c. 1806-70’, The Journal of African History 37 (3) (1996), 351–70. Delius and Glaser, ‘Sex, Disease and Stigma in South Africa’, 29–36. P. Delius and C. Glaser, ‘The Myths of Polygamy: A History of Extra-Marital and Multi-Partnership Sex in South Africa’,South African Historical Journal, no. 50 (2004), 84–114. 34

What contributed to the growing interest of Black sexualities in the twentieth century in the scholarship reflects the negative perceptions around them. Beinart mentioned that “hostility to miscegenation distilled unspoken racial reflexes”.53 These attitudes reflected ‘Social Darwinist fears’ with regards to safeguarding white racial purity and maintaining political and economic dominance.54 Views like these have been prevalent amongst the white liberals, churches and Black males, revealing anxieties over evolving traditional norms. With the advent of the twenty-first century, more scholars began to investigate aspects of Black sexualities and filtered the racist and condescending studies that neglected the fundamental issues. Cock argues that early in colonial South Africa, Xhosa women’s relationship to the system became characterised by coercion and oppressive control. These factors marked the “early relationships between White and Black women, which continued into the 1990s”.55 The growth in the interest in Black sexual practices was paralleled by the international health movements from the late twentieth century into the twenty- first century, which was exacerbated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

A few scholars have focussed their writing on Xhosa people and the politics around identities and sexual practices. Erlank, Rice, Burns, Etim, Mager, Minkley, Crais, Reid and Walker and Thornberry have articulated various topics on the Xhosa, including intimacy and practices56. Unlike the pioneers of Xhosa history, these scholars take a close look at the concept of identity formation and the conditions which foster it. In these studies, disciplines such as sociology, law, anthropology and others are merged to give detailed analyses of the area in focus. In a conference proceedings book edited by Vasu Reddy, Theo Sandfort and Latitia Rispel – topics such as same- sex sexuality are also articulated and same-sex relations.57

Some scholars in the twenty-first century began to explore how Blacks forged new identities which drew on masculinised, militarised and urban notions.58 Urbanisation became a powerful force that enabled the construction of new identities, especially amongst the youth. Concerns over Black

53W. Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 147. 54Ibid. 55 J. Cock, ‘Domestic Service and education for domesticity: The incorporation of Xhosa women into Colonial society’ in Walker, Women and Gender, 76. 56Erlank, ‘Gendering Commonality’, 937–53. Erlank, ‘Missionary Views’, 9–44. Erlank, ‘Gender and Masculinity’, 653–71. ,Erlank, ‘Sexual Misconduct’, 69–84. Erlank, ‘Gender and Masculinity’, 76–83. Rice, ‘Ukuthwala in Rural South Africa’, 382–99. Burns, ‘Sex Lessons from the Past’, 79–91. J. Etim (ed.), Introduction to Gender Studies in Eastern Cape and Southern Africa(Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2016). Mager, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’,12–24. Mager,‘Youth Organizations’, 653–67. Mager, Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan. Minkley, ‘I Shall Die Married to the Beer’, 135–57. Crais, C, ‘The Representation and Politics of Identity’. Reid and Walker, ‘Sex Then and Now,77–83. G. Reid and L. Walker, ‘Sex and Secrecy: A Focus on African Sexualities’, Culture, Health & Sexuality 7 (3) (2005), 185–94. Thornberry, ‘Defining Crime through Punishment’, 415–30. Thornberry, ‘Virginity Testing’, 129–48. Thornberry, ‘Rape, Race, and Respectability’. Thornberry, Colonizing Consent. 57 V, Reddy,et al, ‘From Social Silence’. 58Erlank, ‘Gender and Masculinity’,653–71. 35 youth sexualities in the face of urbanisation, loss of cattle in the reserves and land dispossession are at the background of modern scholarship. As a result, scholars like Burns have taken the initiative to note the disconnection between Christian doctrine and Black people.59 This is important because mission stations, colonisation and the oppressive capitalist state in the twentieth century were understood to be the root cause of dramatic socio-economic, political and cultural changes.

Literature examining sexualities in South Africa has included violent or forced sex. Notably, violent or forced sex or sex without consent (as referred to in other research) should not be represented as a consequence of modernity or colonisation. This would mean that before the modern state and colonisation, there were no issues associated with sexual assault. Authors like Thornberry bring the discussion around this topic into perspective and not that the very legislation around curbing the ‘wrong sex’ was also aimed at demarcating Black and white sex. It is important to note that issues around Black sexualities expressed in the available scholarship are not a new phenomenon. Often, sexualities are Africa addressed the impact of colonial contact and conquest and juxtaposed alongside the consequences of thereof. This focus is relevant to trace the changes to Black sexualities in response to colonisation and its aftermath. It is not the intention of this thesis to articulate sexualities for the whole of Africa (as some scholars have done in their respective fields). Elizabeth Thornberry is the leading scholar from which I base my arguments to support this portion of my thesis. Her work is significant, not just stating the historical definition of sex without consent, particularly in the Eastern Cape, but also investigating how narratives of the theme transcended into the twentieth century from pre-colonial, colonial and apartheid South Africa. The reference to the earlier consideration of conceptions and attitudes on sexualities is important to note to identify how the past and present different and the extent to which change has occurred. This argument is central to this thesis because it highlights the fact that even in cases such as rape, Black on Black rape was considered to be less important because of the embedded racist connotations associated with ‘Africanness’. It has been mentioned in other research that the traditions of Blacks in South Africa were viewed as crude and uncivilised, while European- (Victorian) inspired respectability was upheld. 60

Writing about sex has proven to be one of the most controversial elements of scholarly writing. The writing of the unspeakable allows for the opening of conversations around issues which affect the continent while tracing the roots of the problems and seeking solutions

59 Burns, ‘Sex Lessons from the Past’, 79–91. 60Thornberry, ‘Rape, Race, and Respectability,866-867. 36

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37

Chapter 3: Chastity, Pre-marital Abstinence (Ukumetsha), and Contraceptives

Introduction

There is a comprehensive and detailed written and internalised history before and after the impact of the missionary activities and colonial and imperial systems. The missionaries found that in the nineteenth century, Christianity had failed to supply a meaningful replacement for traditional forms of leisure. By the 1920s, missionaries aimed to eliminate the ‘sexual explicitness’ found in Black dancing and initiation and to promote activities like Scouts and Guides.1 This cultural hegemony shows how “[…] the intervention of the missionaries and liberal whites in recreation and social welfare for Blacks in the 1920s and the 1930s helped to cloak state initiatives in the areas for social control in the glib language of conciliation and moral imperative”.2 From the beginning of the century, missionaries were instrumental in the government’s reforms and racist legislature aimed at maintaining the dominant culture of white supremacy. 3 The most common factor which resulted in the change to traditional Xhosa livelihood apart from missionary activity is migrant labour especially in the years of the mineral revolution in the late nineteenth century and further into the twentieth century. Migrant labour in South Africa has had tremendous effects on how the rural and urban areas were organised and had influenced the changes that were seen in Xhosa livelihood, including the effects of dispossession from the land. Marc Epprecht makes an example of how the conditions described affected subaltern people in Durban. He argues that the “instability of Black sexuality in the face of the new urban environment was evident”.4 Migrant labour in South Africa had a ripple effect, changing the South African landscape, not only where labour was concerned, but also within the socio-economic environment. Glaser refers to how the “mass female migration in the 1920s brought a new intensity to the discussion as sexual practices and norms became a prominent feature of the debates on urban planning, public health, social services and juvenile delinquency”.5 It is not in doubt that the presence of Black people (both men and women) exacerbated racist perceptions of Blacks by some whites (a common feature in South African history). This is also visible when analysing state efforts to control and limit the presence of Blacks in urban spaces through the legislature and constant policing.

1Gaitskell, ‘Wailing for Purity’, 346. 2A. Cobley, The Rules of the Game: Struggles in Black Recreation and Social Welfare Policy in South Africa (London: Greenwood Press, 1997), 12 3Erlank, ‘Gender and Masculinity’, 663. 4Epprecht, Hungochani,57. 5Glaser, ‘Managing the Sexuality of Urban Youth’,302. 38

Colonial interference and the ripple effects which followed meant that in the areas like the Eastern Cape, there is evidence of overcrowding in locations; rural dispossession and the urbanisation of young women. These were central topics in the history of Black sexualities and livelihood. Minkley argues that “by mid- 1950s, more young women/girls from about 17 years old began to move into town and locations”. 6 All these factors were responsible for the changing social and interpersonal dynamics that are evident in Xhosa interviews on topics on intimate relationships. What is evident from these interviews is that there is a sense that the new sexual practices were anti- social and deviated from traditional norms. As argued in Chapter 4 the very system established by Black patriarchs and later re-established by customary law was challenged as more women moved away from systems which restricted them. From colonisation into apartheid, Xhosa people underwent a tremendous change in their livelihood. It is important to note how the trace of colonial power still affected Xhosa people specifically in the mid-twentieth century. It is important to acknowledge that the School group was born from work done by missionaries. Thus, when writing about adolescent sexualities for the Xhosa, it is important to note that it “was recognised by Blacks in ways which were completely at odds with European sexuality”.7

Compounded with the aftermath of colonisation (which is understood to be the birth of the repressive apartheid system), Christianity and the system it influenced was very significant in giving rise to new identities and relations amongst Blacks. What is evident from Qayiso’s observations and interviews has also been noted by Glaser in noting the irony of Christianity amongst the Blacks in both rural and urban spaces. Glaser argued that “the incidence of pre-marital pregnancy was substantially higher among Christian converts in the early twentieth century than among the traditionalists.8 From the 1930s the same is notable amongst the School people only that during that time it became clear that “Christianity needed to provide more systematic sexual and moral guidance to its youth”.9 Missionaries aimed to ‘moralise’ Black people, especially girls, through recreation and an emphasis on purity to divert them from an undesirable preoccupation with sex.10 These moralistic undertones in the scholarship on sexualities still do not capture the essence of Black sexualities by looking at how the people under study understood and defined their sexualities in the twentieth century. Sexuality as a concept is defined as a “set of sensibilities and social practices that link to issues of identity, and tie into broader social relationships”.11

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6Minkley, ‘I Shall Die Married to the Beer’, 144. 7Erlank, ‘Missionary Views’,13. 8Glaser, ‘Managing the Sexuality of Urban Youth’,313. 9Ibid. 10Ibid. 11 V, Reddy, From Social Silence to Social Science’,3. 39

There has been a wide debate amongst scholars about the representation of Black sexualities. Reid and Walker argue ‘that the study of sexuality in Africa has been shaped by European discourse, laden with a ‘false discourse’ – revealing more about the observer than the observed”12. Studies on sexualities should look in detail at the complexities surrounding practices and internalised conceptions and beliefs within them. With regards to the Black landscape, quite a dense methodology is available and colonial power is at the forefront and the backbone of these writings. The Black ‘experts’ who participated in the 1883 Commission on Native Law and Custom were evidence that “custom allocated control over women’s sexuality to her family”.13 These men reasserted that “pre-colonial customs heavily punished pre-marital sex”.14 Thus, it is evident from these arguments that the commission did not just enable the forging of customary law but it also “helped Xhosa speakers from different ethnic groups to forge new identities through claims to shared past”.15 This new created shared past legitimised what was thought to be proper Xhosa behaviour and practices. What this point validates is that culture is by nature a created fabric of society which changes over time and space. Thornberry reveals how “the content of custom changed under colonial rule, often increasing the power that men exercised over women and children”16.

Colonial Eastern Cape looked differently to the twentieth century, apartheid Eastern Cape, culturally, socially and politically speaking. Topics on morality are an example of how different society in the mid-twentieth century. For example, the preventative measures against conception in traditional custom, particularly in the Xhosa were evidence that Black cultures have been historically open to sexual practices for both enjoyment (pre-marital and in marriage) and reproduction. But, the 1950s and 60s saw the slow but increasing use of modern prevention methods among the Xhosa. For traditional Red Xhosa, prevention meant that virginity maintained. This norm changed amongst some Xhosa, mainly in the School group because prevention meant avoiding pregnancy and not necessarily maintaining virginity. Some young urban males in Qayiso’s interviews mention that females in town (those whom they have encountered), freely choose their preference of full sexual enjoyment and regard ukumetsha as retrogressive. The interviews do not reveal whether was there was access to any form of sex education available to them with regards to the changing moralities, especially in the urban areas. The interviews do not show whether or not were there access/adoption to modern contraceptives available to them. Delius and Glaser argue that “the power of adolescent sexuality was recognised with Black societies and techniques such as

12Reid and Walker, ‘Sex and Secrecy’, 186. 13Thornberry, Colonizing Consent, 76. 14Ibid. 15Erlank, ‘Gendering Commonality’, 937–53 in Thornberry, Colonizing Consent, 79. 16Thornberry, ‘Virginity Testing’,133. 40 limited intercourse existed to allow its expression while minimising its socially destructive dimensions”.17While scholarship represented Black sexualities alongside negative connotations, it is important to acknowledge how the individuals understood and interpreted their own lives. The human bias is that the imagined common past is somehow ‘better’ than the past present. Thus, quite a few scholars refer to the concept of ‘nostalgia’ – a deep sense of longing of the past. The concept of nostalgia has been widely debated in Black scholarship and its use, some arguing that this concept “bolsters patriarchal goals and desires while perpetuating the servitude of women”.18 It is evident from some of the informants that nostalgia is a constant feature of how the past is remembered. Some older informants romanticised the past and diminished the extent to which Blacks in the locations and rural spaces were in bad living conditions. As we will see in this chapter, the youth were considered to be reckless and ignorant to traditional Xhosa practices.

Chastity before marriage was a principle of the rules which governed sexual expression before marriage. With some Red people, this principle meant that unmarried people should not have engaged in full sexual intercourse because that would mean the loss of virginity. The whole system of marriage was designed to work under circumstances where there is an exchange of cattle for 'quality'. By quality, I mean that Red Xhosa believed that a girl's worth diminishes if she should lose her virginity, and a result she may not marry. Erlank argued that “several witnesses told the 1883 Commission on Native Laws and Customs that the family of the women who had been seduced would receive a smaller amount of bridewealth payment when she got married”.19 Thus, a practice of ukumetsha was prescribed to safeguard virginity. Qayiso briefly mentioned that the School identity had been filtered by Christianity and urban cultural patterns, infused together with Xhosa cultural meanings and some practices. Therefore, it is likely that School people had eclectic characteristics which varied between individuals, geographical areas and generations. Although most young people in both urban and rural areas agreed that full sexual intercourse is anti-social for unmarried people, there was a common concern in both areas around pre-marital pregnancy and the shame associated with it.

Mager argues that “lobola and customary law were not able to stem the tide of social change and there continued to be a disjuncture between rituals which engendered women’s lives and social reality which itself contributed to the crisis in interpersonal relations and shaped sexuality in the 1950s”.20 It is supposed that the cessation of virginity testing was the cause of increased sexual

17Delius and Glaser, ‘The Myths of Polygamy’, 87. 18Ibid. 19Natasha Erlank, “Gendering Commonality: African Men and the 1883 Commission on Native Law and Custom,” Journal of Southern African Studies 29, no. 4 (2003): 937–53. 20Mager, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’, 16. 41 immorality. It would not make sense if that were the only reason behind increased sexual immorality. Looking at the factors which affected people in town and rural areas collectively could do the topics on intimate relationships and sexual practices. Measures to curb shame and dishonour became prominent in various Red communities through fines and ostracism. These steps to curbing immorality were a reaction to behaviour which was deemed anti-social. Chastity, in the Red sense, has not meant abstinence from sexual expression but that this expression had to be within culturally accepted behaviour, which is ukumetsha. Ukumetsha was a form of expression between young, unmarried individuals who engage in external intercourse. This practice has been accepted because it meant that virginity was preserved and the shame of pre-marital pregnancy was avoided. For Red people, chastity before marriage manifested in ukumetsha because full intercourse was not allowed.

There were usually predominantly two, heterosexual ways of lovemaking amongst the Xhosa. I say ‘usually’ because the scholarship refers to these practices. Same-sex relationships are not fully explored in the pioneering scholarships on Xhosa people. It would not be correct to assume that silence means absence both in the published scholarship or the primary data collected. The heterosexual sex was acceptable between married couples and older unmarried or widowed individuals whose chances of marriage were understood to be null and void. The second way was between unmarried youths, and it was often described in many narratives as ‘playing’ and often couples had to keep their relationship as a secret from their parents but usually open to their peers. Relations between unmarried youths were not the same as the Christian notion of courtship, because the couples may eventually not marry one another because of the idea that they were ‘playing’, and marriage is an arrangement set up by mainly the fathers of the individuals concerned. The Red had a much more open concept of lovemaking because of the ukumetsha practice for unmarried couples. This openness must be observed in greater detail because there were a lot of intricate factors which govern Red people. One significant aspect of sexual practices is the issue of Umbulo (incest).

There was also a common view amongst rural and urban communities, that young people were no longer sexually ‘chaste’ compared to the older generation. The argument here is that young people were more sexually active and no longer apply preventative measures to avoid unwelcomed consequences, i.e. premarital pregnancy. In the rural areas, sex-play (Ukumetsha), referred to as a more acceptable form of sexual expression amongst unmarried youths. This view was commonly held by most Red Xhosa adults than youth in Qayiso’s interviews. Moodie argues that sexual activity reinforces people’s understanding of themselves and each other in terms of gender and

42 power.21 Male Xhosa even in metsha accounts were revealed to be the dominant partners in sexual relationships. Females were encouraged to appear as less interested or experienced because that would tarnish their reputation. What is also clear from these interviews is that forced ukumetsha upon young women is not articulated in the same negative connotation as forced intercourse because ukumetsha was ‘playing’ and ‘not real’. When analysing the sources, it is evident that forced ukumetsha may not leave physical scars, but the forced metsha may leave emotional scarring, which was exacerbated by male dominance upon female bodies. This is seen in young women’s fear of their metsha partners and their appearance as victims.

It is evident from Qayiso’s interviews that the youth, even in Red locations, had changed perceptions about sexual practices. Although young people may have known what is acceptable or not, there is a disjuncture between actual practice and preconceived knowledge. Young men were seen to be more assertive in sexual relations, and traditional practices like ukumetsha have gradually lost significance especially amongst the School population. Could it be that the use of contraception was more accessible and accepted by School members more than the Red group? Unfortunately, Qayiso’s interviews were more inclined to the School groups and there were more young School people in these interviews than the Reds. It was a common Red principle that a girl’s value depreciates when she participates in pre-marital sexual intercourse, which results in a loss of virginity. In the urban areas like East London, the argument is similar to that of the rural people, but there was a common rejection of ‘traditional’ sanctions, primarily ukumetsha. The concern here was the avoidance of pre-marital pregnancy, and not necessarily the loss of virginity. This concern may be the result of the absence of virginity testing rituals amongst the School people. Thus, virginity loss could be kept a secret, as long as there was no pregnancy. The word ‘intombi’ became a much more general term to refer to young ladies, not because they were ‘untouched’ (the hymen intact) but because there was no child[ren]. The “new economic realism contributed to the tendency to study Black women within an ‘urban proletariat’, as prostitutes, domestic servants and factory workers (particularly in the urban centres of East and Southern Africa) and were also considered illegal, immoral or both”.22 The tendency in scholarship is limited and also stereotypical of racist and sexist views on Black women because women were more than their gendered roles and occupations.

Certain behaviours were understood to characterise the School and Red groups. Philip Mayer argues that “both sections saw the tendency to secrecy which characterises School love

21T. Dunbar Moodie, ‘Migrancy and Male Sexuality on the South African Gold Mines’,Journal of Southern African Studies 14 (1988), 247. 22M. Hay, ‘Queens, Prostitutes and Peasants: Historical Perspectives on African Women, 1971-1986’,Canadian Journal of African Studies 22 (3) (1998), 431–47. 43 affairs as one of the distinguishing features of the whole School culture”.23 The secrecy aspect was not just concerning chastity but to other general behaviours which made School people vulnerable to Red distrust. That School group could live individualised lives and could establish themselves outside societal control and sanctions contributed to the mistrust of the School by the Red. In the interviews conducted in Butterworth Qayiso notes the following views on cases of pre-marital pregnancy: (i) “[...] among church people the rate of pre-marital pregnancy is higher than among non-church people. Church people practice sexual intercourse secretly [...]”, (ii) “[...] There were also more cases of pre-marital pregnancy amongst School people for the same reason above”.24 Notably, chastity between Red and School may have different meanings, principles and values ascribed to it may be different. Some young people abandoned traditional prevention practices like ukumetsha, and individual behaviours thrived.

Interviews about Pre-marital Pregnancy

The interviews in Qayiso’s manuscript were significant because individual voices become more significant than the interviewer. There is an element of agency, even in the interviews below, as people recounted their experiences and choices which led to the undesired consequences of pre- marital pregnancy. It is evident from the interviews about pre-marital pregnancies that the pregnancy was not understood to be negative, as long as marriage resulted, most importantly included the exchange of cattle. Under this topic, Qayiso does not include interviews of Red girls and boys and how this affected them. It is argued that School people in the twentieth century had a higher proportion of girls who have illegitimate babies.25 The interviews below include some of the voices of School girls and their perception of pre-marital relationships. For one young woman, Virginia Ngoqo, maintaining her virginity was very important. She was sixteen when interviewed, a member of the Methodist church, and still at School. It is also mentioned in her short profile that her School level was Form 1 and that she was still in school:

I have a boyfriend who is still a ‘boy’. He is not much older than myself. He might be only two years my senior. I would not fall in love with a person who was very much my senior. [...] My boyfriend is doing Standard IV and I have only been in love with himfor3 years, that is, since I ever fell in love with a man. We ‘sleep’ outside the home and never sleep inside. I fear to do so as I heard that young people

23Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 39. 24Qayiso, Butterworth, F13, 3. 25Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 38. 44

should sleep in the veld and not inside the home. Our affair is secret to the old people, but the young people know about it. I fear that it should not be known by old people that I am love with so and so. I might not be punished but I would feel ashamed that my father knows about that (my love affair). When ‘sleeping’, we only have intercourse between the thighs. I am being careful that I should not become pregnant. I am not yet a married woman. I am still a girl. I am the person who would be refusing though he would be wanting [sic] (to have sexual relations). He often requests that I agree but I refuse. I would rather run away if he forces me to do it. My parents would be so disappointed if anything should happen to me. Ukumetsha is old fashioned but we (those who still metsha) are following the laws that we hear spoken of by our parents. We do not mind whether we are being scorned. Let them (those who indulge in full sexual intercourse) do their own things (or what they like). Full sexual intercourse is bad behaviour. They are behaving themselves badly. They do something that is not wanted, and since they are behaving themselves badly they are AMANKAZANA. A girl ought to approach a young man by the thighs (sex intercourse between the thighs) because she is not yet a married woman. She is not yet been LOTYOLWA (paid Lobola for). 26

Nomawushe here was referring to two things, firstly that pre-marital relationships amongst her peers were known and secondly, the importance of practising pre-marital sex expression, (playing by the thighs) as mentioned. It is argued that “European commentators considered ukumetsha as an unnatural connection and an example of Xhosa sexual depravity”.27 “Xhosa communities understood it to be a limitation on the sexual forms of play that unmarried young women were expected to engage in”.28 Thus, Nomawushe’s account revealed the limitation part with regards to the metsha practice and that it (ukumetsha) was designed to safeguard her.

A School woman (Ms Simelane, 36 years old, Fingo) gave her views about ukumetsha and inadvertently revealed her internalised beliefs. In her short profile, Qayiso mentioned that she was “on trial”. She was placed on trial, and awaited baptism into the church at the time, and was not considered a full member. Her marital status is not specified in the interview. It is important to note that she is a School, Christian woman whose views show deep Xhosa traditionalism:

26Nomawushe Ngoqo, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’. 27Thornberry, ‘Virginity Testing’, 135. 28Ibid. 45

I would say that a girl who indulges in full sexual relations Iziphethekakubi (is behaving herself badly) she is bad, because she regards herself as a girl, and others look upon her as a girl, and accord to her the status of a girl, whereas she does not deserve it. A girl ought to “sleep” Isintombi (girl style), That is umdlalo (game). You said you were playing. The young man, also, ought to have Intloni (a sense of shame) like the girl and avoid violating her virginity.29

This account revealed two things: firstly, the complexities around the identities and secondly, how they were constructed. What was common amongst School people who were known to have a Christian identity is that a very few individuals in that group ascribed to a full Christian identity that rejects anything to do with traditional practices. Some individuals were able to decide what direction they want to follow and actively create their values. This factor amongst Xhosa people belonging to both Red and School groups also points to the “difficulties in communicating Christian teachings experienced by missionaries because of the differing Western and Black conceptions of divinity”.30Thus, although some School people held identities as Christians, it cannot be assumed that their Christian identity was the same. The differences were seen in the meanings and interpretations which vary across individuals. For others in Qayiso’s interviews, going to church is what defined them as Christians. The definitions and interpretations of practices, values and norms differed significantly between individuals.

Qayiso interviewed an older Red peasant man by the name of Bobani, a 67-year-old of the Cira clan. In this interview, Bobani stated that:

“There is no lovemaking between people of the same isiduko (clan name). I may not phimisa (make love to) any girl who belongs to Amacira, my own clan. It is from these people that I expect to get help wherever I am”.31This opinion highlights a significant point on relations amongst Xhosa speaking groups. This view by Bobani also highlights the openness of sex for Xhosa men, whether married or unmarried. Qayiso comments that “people who commit imbulo are both said to have done into engcolileyo (something dirty). They are both given considerations, but the one who is greatly blamed is the man because it is maintained that women [sic] never take initiative in making love”.32

29Simelane, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 15 30Fast, ‘In at One Ear and out the Other’, 150. 31Bobani, King Williamstown: Imidushane: F11, 4. 32Ibid. 46

This point on the passiveness of women is very problematic because it insists on women subjects of male dominance and unable to make decisions. The position which women held, both in the rural and urban spaces, did not just affect how scholars have written about women but such perceptions lived in the consciousness of the people. Thus, it is not surprising that the Red Xhosa man like Bobani would assume a legitimate role as a male figure able to be the enabler of sexual politics. The same dynamics were visible in other sexual interactions like ukumetsha and rape (discussed in Chapter 3). Male dominance was assumed and projected, and female subservience was imagined and accepted. It is also noteworthy to mention that Red people in Qayiso’s accounts were less descriptive when talking about matters on intimate relationships and School people were considerably more open.

Ukumetsha versus Full Sexual Intercourse

Mager mentioned in one of her articles that while “fathers might be aware of boys having metsha relationships with their daughters; women were responsible for girls’ bodies and their sexuality”.33 This responsibility meant that mothers and older women were expected to teach and pay close attention to young women and their bodies. Qayiso argued that socially recognised precautions were accepted to avoid defloration, including vaginal examinations. This practice was gradually abandoned, and senior women were increasingly deprived of the opportunity to maintain strict maintenance on girls’ bodies.34 Increasingly women, both married and unmarried, especially in the townships and rural as, faced numerous challenges which made their reputation vulnerable to societal critique.

The practice of ukumetsha was central in socialising young girl into sexual relations and their bodies. Mager writes about the early years of girls’ puberty being important because through “[...] legitimately acquired sexuality through sex play with amakhwenkwe amadala (senior boys), they learned about sex.35 The practice was also for male release rather than female enjoyment.36This practice was more prominent amongst the Red people, even into the twentieth century. Qayiso did not interview many young people who practised ukumetsha. The reason behind this may be explained by the fact that he (Qayiso) had hoped that he would reveal the consequences to the breakdown of family structures in the Xhosa. Most of the interviewees maintain that the

33Mager, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’, 16. 34Qayiso, Chapter 3 “The Internalisation of the Red moral code”, 69, 35Mager, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’, 13. 36Ibid., 15. 47 practice is important, but some Red people mention that the changed society in the Red reserves has had consequences for Xhosa ideals. One of the men interviewed by Qayiso referred to the practice and the general attitudes surrounding it S. Vintshima, a 28-year-old married Fingo man, gave some insightful views on ukumetsha. Qayiso also revealed that he was a teacher by profession and holds an N.P.H.II (professional certificate). Vintshima was an affiliate of the Bantu Presbyterian Church. Vintshima mentioned:

“I don’t think in these days we can still waste time on ukumetsha. That is outdated as [sic] long as a girl is kept safe from pregnancy. In fact, I don’t see anything wrong in pre-marital full sexual relations, but I won’t say that the young people ought to sleep this way. I can only say that the way they do it is their own choice. Those who like to practice ukumetsha might do so and those who would like to have full sexual relations might do so. I do not see anything wrong with any of these methods. Both of them right [...]”. 37

Another factor which was significant in ukumetsha is that the unmarried couple was free to do this; however it is the girl’s responsibility that she deterred and resisted full sexual intercourse even though the young men may expect it. This point is fundamental because blind spots around the ukumetsha practice are inevitable. Firstly, the practice itself may persuade both outsiders and insiders to think that the practice is consensual. Secondly, the dynamics around it may suggest that it was widely accepted because traditional Xhosa socially accepted it as a chaste behaviour like abstinence. Young girls in pre-marital relationships in the mid-twentieth century came under increasing pressure through the influence and power of young men. Most informants argued that there were more cases of pre-marital pregnancy because unmarried couples and individuals no longer apply or practice ukumetsha. The most common explanation for this claim is that virginity testing had ceased in Eastern Cape, and ukumetsha, which was a protective and preventative measure against virginity loss, gradually diminished in its significance. Instead, contraceptives and other practices deemed as preventative measures against pregnancy became prominent. Below are accounts from both unmarried young men and women in Butterworth – their experiences and perceptions of ukumetsha, reveal their beliefs and projecting their reality. Mayer argued that Red and School groups were divided to the extent of having distinct and separate realities and values.38One of the things that were apparent in Qayiso’s accounts is how participants, whether

37Vintshima, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 40. 38Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 21. 48

School or Red, may be divided by social status, but when one analyses their internalised beliefs, one may beg to differ.

Qayiso also included an interview of an 18-year-old Presbyterian school leaver Nomtshato on her experience and views on the practice of ukumetsha and ideas about chastity. It is also interesting that her name means ‘marriage’, which is also synonymous with ‘wedding’. She mentioned:

I do not sleep Isifazi. I metsha with my boyfriend and never asked me to allow that he might have full sexual relations. I feel like that is a bad behaviour to sleep Isifazi while you are still a girl. I would feel very much ashamed and disgraced if I should have a child. If a young man violates my virginity I would feel very much ashamed and worried by the loss of my ubuntombi and the possibility of a pregnancy. Normal girls ought to ‘sleep by the thighs’ (to have sexual relations between the thighs) with their boyfriends. This is good sexual behaviour because it was created to be so.

Another interviewee refers to her beliefs and experiences:

Norma Hlongwane, Tribe: Xhosa, 19 years old, Education: Std. V(still attending school), Church: Methodist, Marital status: Unmarried (girl).

Norma said: “even if I could give birth to a child whilst I am still a girl I would no zincama (despair upon myself). I would try to behave better so that I might get married eventually. I have a boyfriend who is still a boy. He is now 22 years old. We do see one another secretly at night at night when we want to ‘sleep’. We only metsha because I do not want to ‘sleep’ isifazi (style of married woman). He never asked me for full sexual intercourse. I like the way we do it, and if I should have full sexual relations I would feel as if I have committed isono (a sin) because we were born to find that this was the way (ukumetsha) it is done and the [sic] is no other. 39

Ukumetsha is a practice which School people had varying perceptions. What is interesting about the School group is that none of the interviewees found the practice immoral or unacceptable according to Christian teachings. Most School people interviewed were residents of the townships of Eastern

39Norma Hlongwane, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 15. 49

Cape and were far from the confined spaces of traditionalism and remoteness. Thus, traditional practices which drew from Xhosa identities became threatened by the immense growth of townships. Minkley argues that “the process shaped the movement of women in the years leading up to the 1950s – the so-called widows, deserted and unmarried mothers, by the binding image of ‘responsibility for all misfortunes of the neighbourhood’, as well as ‘suspicion’, ‘unhappiness’ and ‘isolation’ from rural and economic relations.”40 With regards to this matter of women having to leave for towns, Vitshima expresses the following:

“Today it is very common to find the once a girl experiences a “fall” she now thinks that she is an old person and sleeps ‘sifazi’ with men. The consequence is that more children are born. She no longer cares for marriage except she (sic) is just having men and enjoying herself with their company. Instead of remaining at home with her parents, she would want to leave to towns, to be employed by Europeans. Our forefathers never allowed an unmarried woman to go and seek work in town. It was a despised practice that was said to lower the prestige of the homestead and would lessen the chances of marriage because her home would be looked upon as a poor one if even girls should work”.41

What was apparent in the School relations with regards to ukumetsha is that power and dominance was the hands of the young men. Qayiso revealed accounts by women who attest that ukumetsha made them vulnerable to forced intercourse. In these accounts, young women like Baba explain that her lover used threats and force to have intercourse with her:

Baba, girl, 25 years old (School) Education: Std. IV, Church: Bantu Presbyterian Church (not a full member), Tribe: Fingo, Occupation: Peasant girl (home responsibility), Marital status: Unmarried mother with two children (firstborn is five years and second-born is three years old.):

I never wanted to sleep Isifazi (like a married woman) with my boyfriend, but he Nyazelad (forced) me to sleep isifazi. When I refused telling him that I did not want to become pregnant he threatened to hit me. He held me tight and overpowered me by his superior strength. I agreed to have full sexual relations with him on later occasions because of fear. I feared that he might hit me as he had threatened to do so on the first occasion.

40Minkley, ‘I Shall Die Married to the Beer’, 143 41Vitshima, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 41. 50

This account revealed evidence of rape and how young women in the hands of their lovers became coerced into full intercourse. Anne Mager argued that “harsher economic and social times had helped to construct hardened masculinity”.42 Some young men gave accounts of forcing young girls to engage in full intercourse with them. I will expand further on such accounts in Chapter 4. On the other extreme, the ukumetsha practice had become increasingly unpopular, especially amongst town young men. Qayiso mentioned that “School town brought-up young men only know and practice full sexual intercourse, some withdrawing before emission, others not”. This view is supported by the accounts he gathered; hardly any of the School men he interviewed practised ukumetsha. One of the participants in Qayiso’s interviews mentioned that “here in town, [he] never bothered about the country practice because [he] thought the girls would think of [him] a ‘Red- blanket’ man” a derogatory term insinuating a backward person.43

Vaginal Examinations

Vaginal examinations amongst the Xhosa have a long history. This practice was once vital to the policing of young, unmarried girls. Qayiso mentioned that “since vaginal examinations [were] abandoned as a Xhosa practice of securing virginity until marriage, the word ‘intombi’ (virgo intact) [had] become to mean any unmarried woman who [had] not fallen pregnant or given birth illegitimately”.44 Mager argues that “the greatest threat to adolescent femininity was a male violation”.45 In metsha relationships, older women would routinely examine girls’ vaginas.46 Although virginity examinations became less prominent by the late 1950s, the practice was still maintained in more private spaces as mothers examined their daughters and other women in the family, depending on the closeness to the young girl concerned and the knowledge of traditional practices of parents.

Below are two accounts from women who had personal exposure to the practice of the examination:

A School woman": Mrs Mamtanoe, 33years old, Methodist church, middle-class, married, used to be a Manyano girl. Speaking on strict mother:

42Mager, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’, 15. 43Qayiso, 20. 44Ibid. 45Mager, Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan, 136. 46Ibid. 51

When I attained my puberty stage, my mother called me after my first period and told me "look now, you are now an INTOMBI and when that blood comes out of you it shows you that you can be pregnant if you allow a man to put his "thing" into yours. You must never allow him to do so. That is what causes girls to become pregnant. Accept no requests on that matter. [...] When my cousin Sophia got pregnant, my mother was called to come and verify whether the suspicions were true. [...] When my mother came home, she was very unhappy and cross. She called me into her room and gave me hard words thus: 'You girls! Why do you sleep with your boyfriends as you do? Why do you allow these men to impregnate you? Before I could answer a single one of these questions, she had informed me to lie down on my back so that she could examine my private parts.

Thornberry argued that “virginity testing did play an important role in adjudicating cases of non-consensual sex”.47 The adjudication process allowed mothers to determine sexual assault on their daughters. Amongst the School, virginity testing was not as common and welcomed by some Xhosa families. The changing moralities and practices meant that there were notable disruptions in some of the Xhosa areas and families. Chastity and virginity preservations were thought to be a difficult task. Virginity testing was limited because it “could not assist in confirming the rape accusation of anyone not socially categorised as a virgin”.48 The interview below revealed such:

Manjiyela: School woman, Married (51years old).

Those who examine girls who are about to get married never speak the truth. They always say, yiyoyiyo (it is, it is) though they have seen that she is no longer a virgin. But I suspected that what the women had said was not true. They were trying to please the parents. When Manjmara once said of Mamthembu's girl who was about to get married, this one (meaning the girl) is no longer an intombi (virgin). She has been yuzula (to have a nice time with men). The mother of the girl was so upset that she cried for the whole day because of what Manjmara had said. These days every girl who was examined by the 'mothers'comes out a virgin. No woman is bold enough to say the truth.49

47Thornberry, ‘Virginity Testing, 137. 48Ibid., 138. 49Qayiso, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 41. 52

In these interviews on vagina examinations, School women shared their experience. What is visible from the accounts is that mothers were actively involved in the policing of their daughter’s virginity and chastity. These women - although belonging to the School group - revealed how their lives have intersected with traditional practices, such as virginity testing and ukumetsha.

Nonthombile Ntshabeni, (45 years old, School, Methodist) a mother of four daughters in Butterworth, gives her views about vagina examination:

I can’t do it alone in my homestead when the people no longer do it. Moreover, she is not used it (her youngest unmarried daughter), unless you make her used to it from an early age, but even then, you might not be successful because her in the morning, you do not know what will happen in the afternoon.50

Nonthombile revealed how the abandonment of practices like virginity testing had left her discouraged to continue with the method.

It was apparent that Xhosa sexualities had significantly changed and there is also visible aggressive behaviour where young men threaten women and girls. What these cases also revealed that the twentieth century opened up choices for not just fertility control. Catherine Burns in her article mentioned the politics around contraceptives and their use. She mentioned that the 1940s, into the 1960s – clinics in Black townships became available with much reluctance and confusion on the part of most Blacks.51

Contraceptives

In a study where the topic of morality is not divorced from sexual morality, fertility control is also very significant. From the second chapter, I have discussed the other forms of sexual expression which had long existed amongst the Xhosa - even before the introduction of Western methods and ideas and philosophies. Ukumetsha was understood to be the ‘forbearer’ of fertility control to avoid conception, but most importantly in order to avoid virginity loss. Both practices like ukumetsha and virginity testing were increasingly seen as ‘old fashioned’ and Red. One of the main reasons behind this view is that, from the beginning, missionaries had discouraged practices like ukumetsha and other practices which were central to maintaining chastity. Since traditional methods were abandoned, there was an increase in individuals who engaged in full sexual

50Qayiso, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 17. 51Burns, ‘Sex Lessons from the Past’, 83. 53 intercourse and others who relied on contraceptives (pills and other methods), including coitus interruptus. Qayiso did not include a wide variety of interviews on this topic, especially of women who had attested to using ‘Western’ contraceptives or those who opted for coitus interruptus. In Qayiso’s interviews, it is men who reveal that they practised ‘coitus interruptus’ to avoid setting the woman pregnant. And in a few cases, some women allege that the younger women ‘eat’ pills. In this part of the thesis, narratives on birth control were considered as well as the ‘hidden’ voices behind them. Black women, on the other hand, were not afforded the same and, this was evident in the lack of available support for unwed mothers (prenatal and antenatal). In the sources, the School and Red women interviewed did not reveal to Qayiso any information on the use of medical contraceptives. What is not clear is whether or not did Black women, in the 1950-1960s used medical contraceptives or had access to them. Burgard argues that from the 1960s, ‘whites had been actively encouraged to have large families, with incentives to have children built into taxation and social welfare policies’52. Such differences between White and Black women were connected to the growing notions of increasing the White population group in the twentieth century against the expanding Black groups. In South Africa, the scholarship revealed that the context was dominated by the promotion of whiteness and racial purity.53Klausen argued that “modern contraceptives were unknown to all except highly Westernised women”.54 This gap and was already visible from the late 1940s into the 1950s.

This topic also comes with a bias, especially in studies on Black sexualities, because of contraceptives, or fertility control, considered in conjunction with Western forms of contraception or fertility control. The available scholarship also focusses on Black sexualities with regards to Eurocentric perceptions and the common view of Black immorality. Even before colonisation and the new age of modern technology, Blacks already had systems in place which acted as fertility control. One of them is ukumetsha practice. Klausen argues that “before colonisation, Black women used herbal abortifacients to regulate their fertility”.55 These methods remained common amongst some Black groups in South African even after Union in the twentieth century. The relevance of this is significant because often in literature, there is a reference to modern methods and substances of contraceptives, and the traditional practices which long existed are overlooked in some scholarly work. Burns argues that (in the Xhosa groups especially) the different forms of fertility control ranged from different methods of lovemaking, different patterns of marriage and courtship and

52S. Burgard, ‘Factors Associated with Contraceptive Use in Late- and Post-Apartheid South Africa’,Studies in Family Planning 35 (2) (2004), 92. 53S.M. Klausen, Race, Maternity and the Politics of Birth Control in South Africa, 1910-39 (London: Palgrave, 2004). 54Klausen, Abortion under Apartheid, 29. 55Klausen, Abortion under Apartheid, 14. 54 physical methods such as sustained breast feeding and child spacing’.56This point adds to the earlier point about Black methods of fertility control in pre-colonial and post-colonial days. For most urbanised Xhosa, traditional methods of fertility control had been lost or filtered by religion and modernity. Klausen argues that “children began growing up in a knowledge vacuum and as a result they engaged less often in safe sexual play and more often in unprotected sexual intercourse”.57 This phenomenon coincided with the growing need for abortion and contraceptives for most urban Black women from the 1920s into the 1950s. Klausen mentioned that from the 1960s, the use of contraceptives for Black women grew as availability increased in Southern Africa.58 The experiences and the voices behind the changes in human fertility in South African are also important to note. There is little known about the conditions in Red areas during the times discussed above, except that the rural areas were facing challenges of dispossession and poverty.

The interview below is the only rural narrative on active contraception recorded in Qayiso’s manuscript. It notes the experience of a middle-aged man (age not recorded) on sexual practices. Qayiso notes in his manuscript that “Mr Madikizela, ex Teko student, now working as a builder in Butterworth [told him] that he has five girlfriends and which [sic] the whole [sic]five of them, he indulges in full sexual relations:

‘For the first day she might refuse but she will later agree that we should have full sexual relations. I never ‘withdraw’ and none of my girlfriends ever tell me to do so. Only once, did one of my girlfriends say: ‘I am afraid I might become pregnant for the rate we see each other by night is too frequent’. To this replied, ‘If you were meant to get pregnant, you should have been pregnant long ago’. Before having sexual relations we drink large amounts of water. This is to dilute the semen virile so that it might not be effective. I have been using this method and I have never set a girl pregnant. So, I believe that it works.59

Other narratives on the forms of contraceptives include Qangule’s account:

‘This was a lady teacher from Ngqamakhwe. She had been in love with my friend but when the latter left for Cape Town I took over. When we slept together for the first time, she pretended she never had full sexual intercourse before and begged me

56Ibid., 82. 57Ibid., 29. 58Ibid, 36. 59Madikizela ‘Butterworth: Ndabakazi’, 18. 55

not to ‘discharge’ inside. I promised I would not do so. We slept and we had full sexual intercourse. I kept my word and did not discharge inside.60

Qangule continues that he practised the same method with the second country girl with whom he had full sexual relations out of fear of her parents.

Another account revealed by Qayiso is one by Tena, a 36-year-old School man, an ex- teacher who then worked as a clerk to the Inspector of Schools. Qayiso describes him as a ‘member of the elite with a high status’. Tena recounts:

‘When having sexual relations, I make sure that I protect her with the use of tablets, to avoid pregnancy. I should set her pregnant (sic) I would have to marry her immediately’. [...] I have other girls. I have no time to be protecting them. I know that they have other men. They know that I have my own girlfriend, and I am not therefore serious with them. I only ‘steal’. Even with my teenagers, I have no time to be protecting them. They have their (sic) teenage lovers who are not protecting them. Why should I protect them? If they should become pregnant and point the finger at me, I would remind them of their teenage lovers. It would be funny that I could set a teenager pregnant – a girl of a status that is far below mine. Even people would hardly believe that. If she should become pregnant, why worry if I can escape responsibility. She allowed me to make the child – I do not feel sorry for her therefore (sic).61

Interviews like Tena reveal many issues, especially the vulnerability of young girls who remain vulnerable. These narratives also revealed that ‘individual’ sexualities and decision making contributed to the rise of illegitimacy in the East Bank region. These narratives revealed how women ‘appeared sexually inexperienced’ as men appear as ‘teachers or guides’ for women in the sexual terrain, and women appear as props or supporting actors’.62 This argument is central because of the silence that exists with regards to women’s voices in the narratives, as men spoke for the women and become the lead ‘actors’. The extent to which definitions or concepts on the topic sexuality vary across cultures is often underestimated, as well as the extent to which beliefs and

60Qangule. ‘Butterworth: Ndabakazi’, 3. 61Tena. ‘Grahamstown’, 50. 62Sheferand Foster, ‘Discourses on Women’s Heterosexuality’,379. 56 environment aided a shift in the moral significance of sexuality.63 Thus, what is common when analysing School people - especially those living in urban areas - is the difference in the way people behave but also how School people use more traditional values than Christian ones. Mayer notes that “School Christian sexual morality has not proceeded far enough to create any strong feelings of guilt among young people about pre-marital intercourse. Only pregnancies warrant strong feelings of guilt.”64

Qayiso interviewed a man who shares his experience with a woman in contraceptive use. An anonymous man, (ex-teacher) had full sexual relations with women. In this interview, this teacher details how, in 1961, he had an encounter with a woman when he did not use any contraception:

"She is a very decent woman because [he] had to propose love to her for weeks before she could say yes. [...] Before she accepted [his] proposal, she first rejected her boyfriend. [...] Sometimes she visited my room and sometimes [he] visited I visited her in her room. I found her already deflowered, but she insisted on protection. She would not allow me to discharge inside unless I brought some contraceptives. I used a pill [sic]for this purpose. But time went on, and we became more and more friendly, I no longer brought the pills but would protect her by withdrawing before discharging. She was particularly cautious about this and would even push me off if I delayed and the [sic] remonstrate with me for my carelessness".65

Sexual assault and in sexual relationship cases were key sites for evaluating attitudes around sex because of the topics which emerged from them. Thornberry argues that a woman could claim plausible respectability in a sexual assault case if she had a desirable status according to class and previous sexual experience. These factors made it possible for her to be believed, but also affected her if the odds were against her.66 This is also important because in most instances, male interviewees emphasised the reputation and class of the women they had sexual relations with alongside their to experience them. The word ‘decent’ was used to describe women with little to no

63J. Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society(London: Longman, 1989). 64Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 255. 65Anonymous Ext-Teacher, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’. 66Thornberry, ‘Rape, Race, and Respectability’, 867. 57 sexual experience. This term was also significant when analysing the number of denied pregnancies because women were accused of being less decent if they had sexual experience:

In both School and Red people, young girls (intombis) were expected to practice a form of restraint and not be initiators of lovemaking. If this was not the case, the young girl might be deemed as not chaste and therefore not a girl of a good character.67 The girl’s reputation may also affect her when the male lover denies that he is the father and justify this by saying that she has more than one lover or that she has already lost her virginity. Shefer and Foster and other scholars argue that men were understood to need sex more and have uncontrollable sexual desire because of testosterone.68 This perception is not only biased, but it also propagates the idea that men obtain sex forcefully. Increasingly, these arguments also insist on the notion that women lacked sexual rights.69 This notion is also visible in the interviews about extra-marital affairs, as men were at liberty to have multiple sexual partners and women were often restricted. Thus, women were argued to engage in sex only in relationships and were often depicted as less sexual.70 This analogy shows how, from their youth, people were socialised into gendered behaviours - even in metsha relationships. This can be noted here:

Name: P. Mashiyi, 30 years old, Male (y.man) [sic] School. Fingo. Unmarried, Education: Std VI, Church: Presbyterian.

All young men will always satisfy themselves by having full sexual relations with their girlfriends. The girl on the other hand must try to resist this because she will suffer a great deal if she should become pregnant. I still think that the right thing to do for a young man to do, when ‘sleeping’ with a girl is to respect her father’s cattle. He must practice ukumetsha with her. If he makes her Umfazi (sleeps with her as if she were a married woman) how does he know that she will not become pregnant? Even the application of certain methods to stop pregnancy fails. A girl then becomes an Inkazana. If a girl should be the one who allows me to have full sexual intercourse with her, I do not think that anything unbecoming would befall me. I would not feel unhappy or guilty of having done anything bad. If she freely allows me to have full sexual relations with her, it means that she has some means with which to avoid pregnancy. If I forced a girl who does not want it, I would feel unhappy and guilty – for the reason that I have hurt somebody’s feelings. I would

67Qayiso, Butterworth: F13, 2. 68Sheferand Foster, ‘Discourses on Women’s Heterosexuality’, 377 69N. Mankayi,‘Morality and Sexual Rights: Constructions of Masculinity, Femininity and Sexuality among a Group of South African Soldiers’,Culture, Health & Sexuality 10 (6) (2008), 626. 70Sheferand Foster, Ibid. 58

always be entertaining some anxiety lest I hear news that she is pregnant. It is rare here to find that a young man who is alleged, by the seduced girl, that he is responsible denying all knowledge of her condition. The reason is that the alleged seducer has nobody else to accuse. He is often short of evidence to support the rumour he heard. The men won’t stand any excuses but will press the young man hard until he admits his guilt.71

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have shown through the interviews that there was a common view amongst rural and urban communities that young people by the 1960s were no longer sexually ‘chaste’, compared to the older generation. The argument here is that young people are more sexually active and no longer applied preventative measures to avoid unwelcomed consequences, i.e. premarital pregnancy. In the rural areas, sex-play (ukumetsha), was a more acceptable form of sexual expression amongst unmarried youth. Most Red Xhosa commonly held this view and it revealed that some School people were disconnected from traditional practices. The growing pressures and changes in most urban environments and townships added to the dynamics of Xhosa intimate relationships. It was also a common Red principle that a girl’s value depreciated when she participated in pre-marital sexual intercourse resulting in the loss of virginity. In urban areas like East London, the argument was similar to that of the rural people - the concern here was pregnancy, but not necessarily the loss of virginity. Through the interviews, it is clear that most School people were ignorant of traditional methods amidst the burgeoning socio-political pressures in the fertility health care systems. As noted, these pressures favoured White women, while most Black women were left without sufficient support. The pressures noted were also connected to the differences in culture, and how different individuals reinterpreted norms. Qayiso did not include sufficient Red interviews on the topics in this chapter which has made it difficult to make comparisons between groups and to note how individuals reinterpreted cultural norms and adhere to various principles. There was also a common rejection of ‘traditional’ sanctions, primarily ukumetsha in the urban areas. This ‘preventative’ measure was evidence that cultures have been historically open to sexual practices for both enjoyment and reproduction. Some young urban males mention that females in town (those whom they have encountered), freely choose their preference of full sexual enjoyment and regard ukumetsha as retrogressive. The ukumetsha practice served as both fertility control and virginity protection for the Xhosa people who still practised it in the twentieth century. As noted in

71Qayiso, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 38. 59 some of the interviews, metsha relations were not always consensual. Some older School and Red individuals were in full support of it, but the practice was regarded with mixed feelings by the younger interviewees. Although deemed as retrogressive by younger people, the practice was not necessarily a suitable preference for all unmarried people. The pressures were also met with increasing violence in the male youth of the twentieth century. It is demonstrated in the interviews that most metsha relationships rendered females vulnerable to sexual violence. Qayiso has not included a wide variety of interviews on contraceptive use by Black women. There is no reference to women who had attested to using traditional Xhosa methods, ‘Western’ contraceptives or those who opted for coitus interruptus. It is the males who reveal their methods of contraception or lack thereof. This dynamic is evidence that Qayiso’s presence and identity as a researcher shaped the outcome of the research. The silencing of Blacks on the topic of contraceptives does not equate to the absence of contraceptive use by Black women. In Qayiso’s interviews, it is men who revealed that they practised ‘coitus interruptus’ to avoid getting the woman pregnant. In a few cases, some women alleged that the younger women ‘ate pills. It is clear from the interviews and from secondary reading that Black women in the early years of the twentieth century were not afforded the use of modern contraceptives. Lastly, the variations between men and women, and the silences of most Red voices reveal a methodological imbalance in Qayiso’s work.

60

Chapter 4: The ‘wrong’ consequences of sex, sex without consent (rape), incest and abortion cases

Introduction

As mentioned in the previous chapter, rural reserves became sites for the development of masculine identities as more young men became violent and assertive towards women. What exacerbated the problem of sexual violence and other social issues is “prior history of abuse, post- traumatic stress, and peer pressure, the breakdown of family and clan structures”1.All these problems linked with the subjugation of Black women under tight constraints cloaked themselves under the umbrella of tradition and law. Tamale argues that “neither gender oppression nor sexual taboos were invented by colonisation, and pre-colonial Black societies exhibited numerous examples of repressive and cohesive constructions of bodies and sexuality”.2 This argument is central to this chapter for one reason – that is bringing into awareness Xhosa systems, separate from Western influence.

It is clear from the previous chapters that studies on Xhosa people have revealed how factors like politics and economics had affected their general livelihood. Reid and Walker referred to how sexual behaviours and anxieties revealed wider social anxieties and tensions.3 These tensions and social anxieties put women in a problematic position with regards to the perceived immoral and waywardness of Xhosa women, especially those in towns from the beginning of the twentieth century. Their representation and depiction were seen in the law which governed their lives, both customary and colonial/customary law and later the impact of apartheid infused law. Under the Roman-Dutch Law, the definition of rape was as “unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent”.4 The passing years from the beginning of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century came with transformations in how both the colonial and traditional Xhosa dealt with sexual assault crimes5and influenced the factors which governed norms accepted norms and practices. In other words, the constant interference of the colonial (both state and missionaries) in Xhosa lives through policy and ideological coercion was very instrumental in shaping the thought and attitudes around sexualities.

1Moffet, “’These Women, They Force Us to Rape Them’, 136. 2Tamale, African Sexualities, 215. 3Reid and Walker, ‘Sex and Secrecy’, 185–94. 4E. Thornberry, ‘Sex, violence, and family in South Africa's Eastern Cape’ in Burrill, Domestic Violence and the Law, 122. 5Thornberry, Defining Crime through Punishment, 415. 61

Customary law “generally denied women access to resources and decision-making, placing control over these in the hands of men”.6 It is evident in how norms and traditional rules safeguarded the whole system of kinship ties (which largely favoured men). Thornberry refers to the factor of punishment and how the “reliance on compensation payments harnessed kinship obligations to the maintenance of public order”.7 Changes and challenges to customary law and its methods of punishment resulted in the disruption of the ‘order’. These changes were the consequences of the impact of the ideologies of Christianity, industrialisation and urbanisation and the abandoning of some traditional Xhosa practices. The breakdown of kinship bonds amongst Xhosa people as a result of the ‘havoc or panic caused by rural decline, the absence of educated Black women and the less educated women migrating to the pineapple farms’ is an aspect to consider when articulating women’s sexuality in Southern Africa.8 There is a fair amount of scholarships which adequately addressed the effects of urbanisation, rural decline and dispossession, which then also manifested in the (micro) factors in the society like changing cultural patterns, negative effects on family and kin and the question of morality. Significantly, the available scholarships also inevitably led to discussions and analysis on topics like sexual violence, abortion and contraceptives. It is with these topics that the aspect of power is evident, as women into the twentieth century also increasingly became subject to oppression from Black patriarchs, apartheid nationalists and the Christian inspired the concept of respectability.

Gqola argues that “women’s bodies came to constitute the border between different groups of men enraged in struggles for power”.9 Thus, as women’s bodies continued to be politicised and problematised – there was clear evidence that women’s identity remained ascribed to their sexed bodies. Abortion in the white supremacy mid-twentieth-century South Africa was illegal except to save a women’s life.10 In Qayiso’s manuscript, it is evident that the growing pressures and changing moralities exerted pressure on Black women. Although abortion was not legal, Qayiso interviewed women who revealed that homoeopathic remedies for abortion were commonly ingested than assumed. Women ingested these remedies under desperate measures to safeguard their reputation and if they had no means to survive as single parents. It was deemed as ‘cruel’ and ‘immoral’ to commit abortion. It is evident from this that both customary and civil law did not protect women in cases of rape by giving them the exception in cases of sexual assault. This fundamentalist thinking

6C. Albertyn, et al., eds, Engendering the Political Agenda: A South African Case Study (Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand, 1999), 3. 7Thornberry, Ibid. 8Mager,‘Youth Organizations’, 657. 9P.Gqola, ‘How the Cult of Femininity” and Violent Masculinities Support Endemic Gender Based Violence in Contemporary South Africa’,African Identities 5 (1) (2007), 111–24. 10Klausen, Abortion under Apartheid, 1. 62 confined women in strict boundaries and caused disastrous effects and left them with no support system.

The very definition of rape, (sexual activity without consent) is arguably difficult to define because of the historical subjective and ‘essentially contested’ nature of it.11 Rape cannot be defined as sexual activity without consent because ‘simply shifts the burden to the idea of consent itself’. Thus, in the earlier years, from the colonial years into early apartheid – there was no such thing as marital rape because women were understood to have given consent because they were married to their husband. The issue of consent, as we later see in this thesis was evident when analysing interviews of women who mention that their boyfriends/lovers have raped them. School girls’ consent was questioned especially because of their identity was tied to their presence in the urban areas. The reputation of morally questionable Black women in the urban areas had survived into the 1950s and increasingly “respectability provided a key framework through which rape was interpreted and judged, especially in early courts”.12

Consequently, from the initial prevalence of missionaries in The Eastern Cape into the mid- twentieth century harsh conditions of apartheid, some aspects under the theme of sexuality became increasingly controversial. Thornberry argues that the Black ‘perils’ or “moral panics about interracial rape were a recurrent feature of South Africa’s public life during the early twentieth century”.13 Increasingly, these moral panics became used as justifications for segregation, pass laws and a “wide range of discriminatory legislation”.14Thus, revealing that the moral panics about miscegenation were mainly out of fear than the reality of the circumstances in The Eastern Cape. These transformations evident in the twentieth century resulted in the trivialising of Black sexualities, especially for women. Mager argues that there is an appearance of broken marriages, seduction of young girls, battered wives and runaway spouses in the Eastern Cape courts in the 1950s, including violence and neglect of children.15 The interviews (however limited) did not include Red interviews on controversial issues, like rape. In fact, in the interviews considered for this thesis, Red accounts were minimal (especially Red female interviews).Bank revealed significant data on the livelihood of the people in the East Bank around the period in the 1950s. It is argued by Bank that there is a notable rise in domestic violence in the areas of the East Bank and there is also a rise of house ran by matriarchs, which saw a decrease in the number of nuclear

11Thornberry, Colonizing Consent, 18 12Thornberry, ‘Rape, Race, and Respectability’, 867. 13Ibid, 864. 14Ibid. 15Mager, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’, 79. 63 families16 Mager refers to the ‘lapses in the liminal years’ – caused by delayed rites of passage from childhood to adulthood through marriage as a result of the ‘turbulent times’.17 These turbulent times affected the delay causing young men to marry much later than expected but instead “they loitered about the locations and made it difficult for mothers to keep control over the daughters”.18

Modern fertility control methods were already in place in the mid-twentieth century. What is arguable is the inaccessibility of such services to remote places like the rural areas and the necessary education. Xhosa people had already in their traditional practices established ways of controlling fertility (ukumetsha) and an organised system which governed relationships (especially marriages), youth groups which monitored young people and their behaviour. Thus, the sanctions which had existed provided the Xhosa with a functional system which met the necessary needs of the society and kept it ‘organised’. The functionality of pre-colonial Eastern Cape was largely dependent on the control of female sexualities and fertility. The emergence of colonisation posed changes to the existing system but did not sufficiently challenge the position of Xhosa women in society. The consequences of industrialisation and urbanisation resulted in a measure of the emancipation of Xhosa women from patriarchal control, although not uniformly. Although this freedom was necessary, Black women could not be completely free because patriarchy always sought to reserve them back into male subservience. Black women continued to suffer the most in the oppressive system of apartheid because they could hold significant positions in society. Evidently, “the colonial policy of population control at the time was the effort to maintain the ‘traditional’ family organisation on which the colonial power intended to base its domination”.19

The emergence of ‘wrong sex’

One of the notable things here is that women in the East Bank region began to gain their independence from the grips of traditional systems increasingly. It is evident when noting the ‘mass female urbanisation in the 1920s which brought a new intensity to the discussion as sexual practices became a prominent feature of debates on urban planning, public health, social services and juvenile delinquency’.20 It is evident from the problems associated with urbanisation, rural dispossession and harsh realities of apartheid that there was an appearance of high illegitimacy, young mothers out of wedlock.21 Consequently, there was an increase in the number of young unmarried mothers, who

16Bank, Home Spaces, Street Styles, 135. 17Mager, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’, 13. 18Ibid. 19Burrill, Domestic Violence and the Law,84. 20Glaser, ‘Managing the Sexuality of Urban Youth’, 302. 21S.Burman and P. van der Spuy,‘The Illegitimate and the Illegal in a South African City: The Effects of Apartheid on Births out of Wedlock’,Journal of Social History 29 (3) (1996), 627. 64 had to be in continued dependence on their mothers. Notably so, that over the twentieth century men’s roles as providers were increasingly diminishing.22

Although the focus is not specifically with regards to Xhosa women, the anxieties which were mentioned here have responded to the phenomenon which affected the whole country in the mid-twentieth century during a heightened state of apartheid policies. Compounded with the rigid and oppressive system of apartheid was the unequal access to contraceptive to Black women in South Africa from the early years of their availability in the twentieth century. Burman argues that ‘racial residential segregation also influenced the availability and quality of family planning services for non-whites [...]’.23 The inaccessibility of support systems (family planning services, employment and opportunities in the face of massive changes in the society resulted in a revolving cycle of perceived ‘waywardness and immorality’. Thus, the environment and conditions which saw the increase to the undesirable behaviour are fundamental for consideration. It is clear that the coercive legislation that forced Black people in controlled compounds or locations led to more spiralling issues of over-crowdedness and ‘immorality’.24

As a research assistant, Qayiso recorded the interviews which he found, but the ‘issue’ becomes that the Mayers did not represent the interviews adequately in their scholarship. As a result, there is a disconnection between what Qayiso found and what the Mayers presented. It is evident from analysing the informants’ interviews that topics of controversy highlighted the negative effects brought to society as a result of the massive changes. With regards to the Xhosa, the violence which is evident in the from the 1940s, 50s and 60s, compounded with the harsh realities of apartheid and the long history of migrant labour, urbanisations and over-crowdedness of townships – ‘controversial’ issues should have been very much apparent in the Mayers studies. Xhosa studies on sexualities become a site to examine how the dispossession manifested in the changing identities and ‘moralities’. By addressing these factors, we were also answering the question of the ‘breakdown of kinship ties’ (Discussed in Chapter 5). By addressing dispossession as a result of colonial interference and the changes brought by the industrial twentieth century, we are also acknowledging the fact that instability became the aftermath. Erlank mentioned that the changes brought as a result of Christianity including the abandonment of some practices were leading in the discussions by Black patriarchy. These ‘discussions’ reveal the extent to which male

22W. Izzard, ‘Migrants and Mothers: Case Studies from Botswana’,Journal of Southern African Studies, 11 (2) (1985), 258-80. S. Hassim, ‘Democracy’s Shadows: Sexual Rights and Gender Politics in the Rape Trial of Jacob Zuma’,African Studies 68 (1) (2009), 58–77. 23S. Burman, 2004. ‘Factors Associated with Contraceptive’, 91. 24 S. Parnell, ‘Race, Power and Urban Control: Johannesburg’s inner-city Slum-Yards, 1910–1923’Journal of Southern African Studies 29, 3 (2003), 615–37. 65 authority at the time became increasingly focussed on the control over women.25Rape cases and Incest in the Xhosa were both topics which highlight which influences or principles were evident from the interviews given by the victims, perpetrators and overseers (or outsiders). The breakdown of traditional ‘Schools’ which monitored and gave support to young men and women may be thought to be the cause of a new kind of behaviour which many traditionalists and School people speak with contempt. Increasingly in the twentieth-century people in both the rural areas and towns were disconnected from the whole/group.

Mayer does not sufficiently include rape and incest under in his writings on urbanisation and the Xhosa. Mayer, as an anthropologist, was writing in the language and gaze of his time. It is evident that when it comes to the issue of rape in colonial and apartheid South Africa on primarily Black women, there is an existing silence. Other taboos including the sucking taboo and ukumetsha are two aspects of Xhosa livelihood that are well articulated by Mayer and other scholars in writing about sexuality and morality amongst the Xhosa. Qayiso interviewed only a few young women who revealed their experience with rape, including their fears and the results of the assaults on their reputation in society. Both Qayiso and these women did not use the word ‘rape’ to describe the phenomenon. Some of the interviews to be noted in this chapter reveal that threats and fear characterised rape incidents as the male person would ‘nyazela’ (force) the female counterpart by ‘pressing her down’. This factor is important because it resembles the contemporary matter on unreported rape incidents which still resonates in present-day South Africa. Erlank argues that the “challenges and changes which resulted from the urbanisation of Black women at the beginning of the twentieth century reveal that male attempts to redress the patriarchal loss of control and threats to masculinity were justified through ‘scapegoating’ the sexual virtue”.26 The threats to masculinity referred to here were discussed in the earlier chapters, but it is through this lens that we see how Black women from the beginning have been suffering a great deal of loss, and this loss was officialised in legislation.

The introduction of Western law in colonial South Africa played a significant role in how legislation in South Africa became established into the height of apartheid years. What the formative years of law in colonial South Africa reveal is that the law was ‘male’. I argue this because throughout the history of the law, from colonial to apartheid policies, lawmakers have been men in of a higher socioeconomic status. Although the dominant gender during the formative years was largely male and white, Black patriarchs also played a significant role in how customary law came to be. Thornberry, with regards to this phenomenon, argues that in some cases “colonial and

25Erlank, ‘Gendering Commonality’, 942. 26Erlank, ‘Plain Clean Facts’,77. 66

Black elites found common ground in a shared interest in controlling women’s sexuality”.27 Thus, from this point, we discuss customary law concerning identities and assault cases. Customary law by definition is as “a set of rules governing the lives of indigenous people in South Africa, manipulated by previous governments and state-supported male elders into a system that distorted the original legal framework of Black cultures.28

Bennett argues that Natal was the first colony to recognise and apply customary law and to recognise it and enforce it a commission of inquiry was set up. Thus, in 1852, the Natal Native Commission was set up – the start of the coding of Black law through Western lawmakers.29 Other commissions followed, the second facilitated by the Cape in 1873 (The Basuto Laws and Customs) and lastly the commission for Transkeian territories in 1883.30 Erlank mentioned the Commission on Native Law, and Custom established in 1883 was established “as attempts to codify Black customary law and incorporated the testimony of several groups of Black men, mostly senior men and chiefs, as well as missionaries and government officials”.31 Colonial administrators sought to codify Black customs and sanctions in official law books because the “legal bureaucracy was an instrument of colonial governmentality”.32 Customary law in South Africa did not end with colonisation but also infiltrated into apartheid policies which governed Blacks through the Roman- Dutch Law. The effort of constructing a law which was suitable for Blacks was initially deemed as a temporary pursuit as colonisers had hoped to assimilate Blacks only after they had reached full acculturation. Customary law for Blacks also revealed, “how a hierarchically gendered customary social order came to be imagined, negotiated, and coproduced by settlers, colonial officials, and Black men, in their capacity as fathers, husbands, guardians, and chiefs”.33 As a result, women were left unrepresented and ostracised in a system that became legitimated as the law.

Bennett refers to the “policy of the so-called dual mandate”34 which meant that civil law“[...] was to be withheld from Blacks until they had achieved what the colonists considered to be the desirable level of cultural advancement”.35 Ultimately, what this created was a system which undermined and challenged traditional Black systems and helped to create a society which was unbalanced and unequal. Since apartheid began with the election of the National Party in 1948, the

27Thornberry, Colonizing Consent, 14. 28Albertyn, ‘Engendering the Political Agenda’, 83. 29T. W. Bennett, The Application of Customary Law in Southern Africa (Cape Town: Juta, 1985), 25 30Ibid. 31Erlank, ‘Gendering Commonality’, 941. 32Peterson, ‘Morality Plays’, 988. 33N. Essop Sheik, “African Marriage Regulation and the Remaking of Gendered Authority in Colonial Natal, 1843– 1875,” African Studies Review 57, 2 (September 2014), 75. 34Bennett, The Application of Customary Law in Southern Africa, 8. 35Ibid. 67 recognised law the stemmed from the Roman-Dutch Law. Customary law was reserved for Blacks, however, as it was believed ‘to be more suited to their stage of evolution’’.36 Not only was this view condescending but it also revealed the unequal nature of the law and its makers. Dividing cases according to the dual mandate proved to be even more difficult for British settlers as it was expected that cases should fall under either customary or criminal law. Sexual assault cases were the most difficult to assign to the “appropriate” court because administrators who wanted to use the demands for compensation for distinguishing between civil and criminal acts were often left in a predicament.37 Many victims in rape cases - and other cases of sexual assault - demanded compensation.38 Such difficulties in case allocation made the system questionable because ultimately cases where compensation was involved did not qualify as a criminal case. Therefore, if sexual assault cases were to be charged based on criminal law, the individual or family would have to “remove themselves and their claims for compensation from the legal arena”.39 This option was unworkable for Red Xhosa in the rural areas because for that to happen, they would have to remove themselves from kinship structures and oppose any intervention by them regarding the case.

It is important to note how rape was defined and handled according to the law in apartheid South Africa. In the interviews, it is evident that some victims experienced rape before the 1950s (which is the period the bulk of the interviews fall under). Rape or sex-without-consent was judged under customary law and was labelled as ‘seduction’ or ‘adultery’ by British administrators.40In the 1950s, the Sexual Offences act of 1957 was the first official law of sexual offences under apartheid. Before then, the definition under Roman-Dutch Law was applied. According to the 1957 Act, the definition of rape is ‘an act by a man who commits rape to a woman by force or threat, against her will and without her consent’.41 Rape in Qayiso’s interviews is not addressed as an offence against a woman but more as a question of morality. Again, the definition of rape by the act is indicative of the conservative nature of the government of the time. Thornberry argues that the study of sexual assault cases in the Eastern Cape is “particularly revealing [...] because of different understandings of non-consensual sex and its punishment.42 These differences were part of the reasons why the law by the colonists added to the breakdown of kinship bonds.

36M.Chanock, The Making of South African Legal Culture 1902-1936: Fear, Favour and Prejudice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 12. 37Burrill, Domestic Violence and the Law,127. 38Ibid. 39Ibid. 40Thornberry, ‘Defining Crime through Punishment’,416. 41L. du Toit, ‘The Contradictions of Consent in Rape Law’,South African Review of Sociology 39, 1 (2008),142. 42ThornberryIbid., 418. 68

The least-argued detail about ‘non-consensual sex’ is the emphasis of the often-violent nature the act has on the person affected. Du Toit refers to the “systemic, ideological misunderstanding or the nature of rape and a concomitant distortion of the harms resulting from rape”.43 One of the kinds of harm that is evident from the interviews is connected to the aspect of consent. Most of the women, most of the unmarried, mention that their lovers raped them. Thus, with regards to the issue of consent – the results of the rape (pregnancy) were overshadowed by the question of their morality. Since the main word for this thesis is morality, this chapter aims to draw from the discussion on law and social dynamics to show how rape and other ‘consequences of wrong sex’ are so revelaved:

An anonymous interview revealed by Qayiso mentioned:

“I never agreed that my lover (teacher) should have full sexual relations with me kwanyanzeleka (it was forced) ngokunyanzeliswanguye (through being forced by him). I did let him do it on the following occasion. He told me that nothing would happen to me. He would do it in consideration to my age44”.

It is important to note that for a long time, matters around controversial practices amongst the Xhosa were deemed as family or kin matters. This means that whenever a rape was reported, it was handled by the paternal family of the female victim. For this reason, Thornberry has mentioned that (not just with the Xhosa, but also a broad group of other Black ethnic bands) “pre-colonial Southern African societies emphasised reparation over retaliation”.45 This method was necessary for stability (since cattle were the main asset) and for the maintenance and expansion of kinship bonds. The reparation increasingly could not be applied effectively. In an interview which discusses punishment, Stololo mentioned:

I compare rape with witchcraft because such a person rapes a child, an old woman or a girl (sic). Even at King Williams Town the sentence for such an offence is heavy. Comparatively speaking, I would say that there are more rape cases today than during the olden days. Times have changed and people do what they like and anyhow. Times are bad. Such a person is taken to Sibonda's place where he is fined a number of cattle or goats depending upon the gravity of the case. For instance, Matshona who had raped a girl was fined 5 heads of cattle at the Inkundla of the

43du Toit. Ibid., 141. 44Qayiso, P ‘Anonymous’, 9. 45Thornberry,Ibid., 416. 69

present headman. He ran away and has never returned since. Payment was not affected. Europeans arrest and sentence such a person but Xhosa people fine him a number of cattle.46

The method of reparation was significant in circumstances where the exchange of cattle was prioritised, and sexual assault was deemed as stealing cows from the victim’s father or paternal family. Therefore, reparation ensured that relations be maintained. The method was futile when the perpetrator could run away into the city or other townships. In the late nineteenth century into the early years of the twentieth century, Thornberry notes that Black women, especially in rural areas, relied on Black ‘customary’ courts for retribution while most urban Black women increasingly did not.47 This distinction indicates that the majority of the Black women in the Eastern Cape had adopted a modernised way of life and the key element to their lives was the concept of respectability. Thus, as urbanised Black women used colonial courts for retribution against sexual assaults – “they narrated their experiences and responses in a manner which highlighted competing versions of respectability”.48When analysing the interviews by Qayiso on School girls and women who revealed their experience as victims of sexual assault, it is not revealed which system they opted for (whether colonial or customary courts). In the interviews, some girls recount how their boyfriends nyazela (forced) them to have full sexual intercourse, resulting in pregnancy. It is not mentioned in some of the whether the rapes were reported as a criminal case or to their families. What is also evident is the vulnerability of the young women in the hands of their lovers and the continued harm they have endured. Bank mentioned that “by the 1950s, men had lost control of women’s bodies and earnings and this created a great deal of anxiety for the state and African patriarchs”.49

Rape views and cases

As we have seen from the interviews on ukumetsha, sexual expression was central to unmarried young individuals, including early teenagers. What we have also seen is that ukumetsha was, in some cases, consensual and a private affair between lovers. Increasingly the practice positioned young women as vulnerable to aggressive behaviour from males. It is important to acknowledge that masculine identities in the mid-twentieth century were violent - with lethal battles and ‘boys’ chants turned into war cries - all of which manifested in apartheid’s rural and urban

46Stololo 47Thornberry, ‘Rape, Race, and Respectability’, 866. 48Ibid. 49Bank, Home Spaces, Street Styles, 240. 70 locations.50 The silence on intimate relationships and violent sexual practices that exists in the anthropology heralded by the Mayers is a red flag when examining the scholarship on sexuality in Africa. Within the Xhosa discourses, interviews are subjective in terms of how Xhosa women were portrayed, especially School women. The perceptions that male counterparts held about women were seen in their views on full intercourse and the ‘looseness’ of School women. The interviews revealed the patriarchy and misogyny still prevalent in the 1950s and 60s.

The earliest noted case of rape is in Chapter 2 of Qayiso’s MA. A woman called Baba described how she was coerced into intercourse by her boyfriend, who then threatened to assault her physically if she did not agree.51 Another case is with J. Qangule, a young School man, 32 years of age, who described his sexual experiences with two School women, one Red woman and two country girls. In his account, only the Red girl did not succumb to his pressure to have full sexual intercourse. Qangule spoke about exerting pressure on girls and women who refused to engage with him. Did this indicate a view of some Xhosa men against women who were modest because they may not want to appear as loose and therefore safeguard their reputation? Or can the behaviour be seen as a masculine attitude that allows men to enjoy sex but looks down on women who have been deflowered? Either way, this interview is an example of rape and it also shows how a masculine identity became a force of dominance over women’s bodies increasingly. Bobani (an elderly Red man) gave a perspective on rape and how rape is handled. He mentioned:

“Ubudlwengu is an act of forcing a girl in the countryside to have sexual relations with her. [...] Normally a person who does this sort of thing more than once becomes to be regarded as Isidlwengu and women greatly fear such a person. [...] Some men have a raping quality in their blood. In other words, they are born like that. Customarily, the Isidlwengu must be banjwa (arrested). An Isidlwengu (one who rapes women) has no isimilo because all the people are talking about him. [...] According to the Xhosa custom an Isidlwengu is caught or arrested and taken into the inkundla (kin) if he does not pay the beast demanded by the home of the woman he raped. [...] After being raped, [the girl is] examined by senior women of the home and if she had escaped before the man had penetrated, they would say ‘wenze umdaaka yilalanga’ (he has just made a mark, he has not penetrated her). In all cases, whether the girl escaped or not, the beast was charged”. 52

50Mager, ‘Youth Organizations’, 654. 51Baba, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 41. 52Bobani, 2. 71

From this account, it is apparent that rape was generally unacceptable. The interview also highlights how, in Red societies, reparation/compensation was emphasised over retribution/justice.53 The interview notes that the rapist will be labelled as such and becomes a taboo in his own right. Customary law, as mentioned above, protected male counterparts - all in the name of reparation. If the case was a civil one, the involvement of the court system striped kinship members from the process and gives the power to the victim and their family – although no fine was to be received. In urban areas, there was no room for kin and senior women in a civil case which also means that there was a loss of a communal interdependence within the School people as a result of the ‘European ways’ (the court system).

In the townships of the Eastern Cape during the 1950s and 60s, the kin rule did not hold the same significance as mediators or lawmakers. This was because the townships became sites where unique cultures thrived. Thus, townships in the Eastern around that period boomed as melting pots where - especially young people - were looking for modern ways of livelihood. Increasingly the interviews on rape diverted the focus to the dynamics between men and women in the 1950s and 1960s. In order to understand the attitudes around the rape culture in the Eastern Cape it was important to note the conditions between genders which allowed such violent behaviour to flourish. The silences in the interviews were also significant. For example, there were no interviews with Red women. This silence of interviews does not mean the absence of behaviour. Qayiso noted that rural areas of Dushane or Grahamstown suffered significant changes in social dynamics. Scholars have also written about how the Eastern Cape was one of the earliest areas in the subcontinent where migrant labour produced changes that affected the livelihood of the indigenous people. The effects of poverty and over-crowdedness on the people in the reserves and townships were seen in the alarming rates of social ills.

The concern about the loss of virginity, maintaining female chastity, and controlling women’s bodies was all tied to Black patriarchy. The studies from the 1950s and 60s were so focussed on the effects of modernity and industrialisation that issues like gender-based violence and rape were somewhat invisible. Qayiso’s interviews shed light on those ‘invisible’ aspects - like rape. The instigator of ‘unpleasant’ change was understood to be to modernity and the results of the Christianisation of the Black people. Bank mentioned that “besides the influence of Christian teaching, highly regulated sexual education and practices of young people were difficult to reproduce in urban shantytowns, back yards, compounds and slums”.54 Consequently, it was visible from the interviews that most young people relied on their peers for advice and education on

53Thornberry, ‘Defining Crime through Punishment’, 416. 54Burns, ‘Sex Lessons from the Past?’, 88. 72 matters about sex. Another insight regarding this phenomenon was offered by Mager, who mentioned that from the 1950s, most youths were immersed in ‘turbulent’ times as most were faced with absent fathers and insecure futures.55

One of the most debated aspects of the Sexual Offences Act of 1957 was the definition of ‘will’ and ‘consent’. These aspects were essential to consider because they determine what action qualified as a sexual offence (rape). Du Toit argues that ‘rape law contains a performative paradox or contradiction, which works to the detriment of women’.56 Thus, ‘consent’ and ‘against her will’ act as conditions for the offence or action ‘by the man’ to be considered as rape. An account which revealed the essence to the argument that I am making was by Dlingili, a young peasant Red man of 39 years of age. In his account, it was revealed that he was a casual worker from Johannesburg. This account revealed how in most cases, arguments on rape were overshadowed by debates on modernity and industrialisation and the changes they brought. Dlingili mentioned:

“The reason why girls get pregnant so much these days is that they discontinued the practice of putting on inciyo. [...]Today’s girls put on bloomers (modern underwear/panties). They were too much of School. When sleeping with a man the girl has to take off the bloomers and she is virtually naked. Inciyo was not taken off, but the separate strips were held together and made to go through the thighs and then pulled hard at the back so that they rendered penetration impossible during ukumetsha. Even if the man attempted penetration, it would be very difficult and very painful because of the bruises that would be caused by the inciyo”.57

Women who stopped wearing inciyo seemed to be blamed for any sexual offence and this was deemed as ‘consent’. This again refers to the politics around sexualities - that it was the role of the women to ‘make sure’ that they were kept virtuous. Moffet argues that under apartheid the dominant group used methods of regulating Blacks and reminding them of their subordinate status [...] and today (post 1994); it is gender ranking that is maintained and women that were regulated.58 This argument is significant. I want to add that the regulation of women was not only seen post- apartheid but also in the stifling 1950s and 1960s, as patriarchal hold for some women was loose. The regulation of women through sexual violence is not a contemporary issue but has deep roots in the past. It was largely Black men depicted in the interviews as subjecting Black women, and that subjection was manifested sexually.

55Mager, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’, 13. 56du Toit, ‘The Contradictions of Consent’,142. 57‘Dlingili’, (11), 1. 58Moffet, ‘These Women, They Force Us to Rape Them’, 132. 73

The general perception of rape amongst both Red and School people was negative and described as unacceptable. Mncekeleli argues that:

Rape is bad but it is better than umbulo (incest). If you rape a woman you could be arrested and jailed, unlike when your wound does not get well, and your child does not suckle. The mere act of ‘sleeping’ with my sister is abhorrent and I feel very insulted even to think about it. Rape is only bad because you forced and ‘slept’ with a woman forcefully otherwise she is not your sister. Anyone who is an Isidlwengu (one who rapes) has no isimilo esihle (good morality).59

In this account, the speaker compared rape to incest and argues that incest was worse because it was sexual relations amongst siblings or a person of the same isiduko (kin), which was unacceptable. What was implied here was that rape was not a serious offence compared to incestuous sexual relations.

It is evident from the interviews and the analysis in the earlier chapters that Xhosa livelihood and wellbeing was linked with proper behaviour. Failure to behave well or to have good morality negatively affects other aspects of the individuals concerned. When looking at scholarship about Black sexualities, it evident those women’s identities have been under immense scrutiny (especially during urbanisation). It is evident not just from patriarchal systems in the traditional and religious domain but also concerning state policies and anxieties. Erlank argues that “[...] male attempts to redress the patriarchal loss of control and threats to masculinity were justified through scapegoating the sexual virtue and character of the young men and women who challenged male status.60 This is evident in the rape interviews, especially when looking at male attitudes towards their actions and violent behaviour.

Another account of rape (discussed in Chapter 2) by Baba. She mentioned:

“He held me tight and overpowered me by his superior strength” and “threatened to hit me”.61

It is evident from this account that chastity was seemingly the burden of women. The double standards regarding chastity contributed to the imbalance of a sexual relationship. The males were

59Mncekeleli’, 82. 60Erlank, ‘Plain Clean Facts’, 76. 61Baba, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 41 74 forceful but could also have an open sexual life, but females were expected to be chaste and gentle and submissive to the male figure.

Pregnancy Cases

Pre-marital pregnancy in traditional Xhosa society was seen as negative because of the loss of virginity and a good chance of marriage (as discussed in Chapter 5). Pre-marital pregnancy also spoiled the reputation of the girl, especially because it is her morality that was questioned in most cases. Qayiso’s manuscript includes interviews about pregnancy cases in about five families. These interviews show how these School families handled pre-marital pregnancy in a context where traditional sanctions had seemingly broken down, and other modern and religious alternatives were considered. These interviews were from the School group, and they highlighted the nature of School people and their affairs. It is important to note that the living circumstances of most School people were different as most of them adopted a town-based life which saw an abandonment of some rural practices and systems. Amongst the School, most families were not living in nuclear settings unlike the Red in rural areas and were also dependent on traditional systems for supervision and order. Qayiso recorded interviews on pre-marital pregnancies experienced by School people. As I have noted, Qayiso’s style of recording was not according to the standards of oral history. They also highlight that he was under mentorship which limited his analysis. Below are the interviews on pre- marital pregnancy amongst the School:

Mamnthane, a Red woman who was thirty-two years old, remarked:

There are cases of pregnancy among the umtshotsho group today (She mentioned three such cases in Khalana rural location of King Williams Town). This careless behaviour of the umtshotsho girls has come into being because of the pineapple labour. [...] Before the advent of this pineapple affair there were very few cases of pregnancy among the Mtshotsho group, but today many of them gets pregnant while on the farms and get married there without going to their homes. The three girls who are now pregnant in Khalana have been to pineapples farms where they were set pregnant.62

A School view of pre-marital pregnancy was noted by Vintshima, who mentioned that:

62Mamnthane, ‘Chapter 6’, 89. 75

“(Pre-marital pregnancy) is bad when it comes, though it is no longer a shock. Though I would not mind having sexual relations with a girl yet when it comes to question of her becoming pregnant, I become worried. I never feel that I have done anything wrong, if I indulge in full sexual intercourse with a girl but if she should become pregnant, I would feel that I have done something wrong. God and Izinyanya (ancestors) would not punish anyone for premarital parenthood. It has happened as a mistake. It was not intended to happen.”63

Another interview is about sexual conduct and pre-marital pregnancy. This interview sheds light on how pregnant girls were treated in some of the churches. This view was the only one who referred to the church’s reaction and means of punishment of pregnancy out of wedlock. Mamthembu, a 46-year-old School woman was also described as a “separated”, meaning that at the time that she was married but not formally divorced with her husband. The details on her church affiliation or occupation were not specified. Qayiso writes that Mamthembu informed him about the girl who was born in 1940 and ran away from school in East London where it was rumoured that she was staying with a man as masihlalisane (cohabiting):

‘This is very bad’ she told Qayiso, ‘no parent likes it. It is a disgrace to our home’. [...] These days the rate of premarital pregnancy has increased. In fact unmarried mothers are even allowed to return to school. I would say the cause of this is kukuziphatha kakubi kwalabantwana a (it is due to the bad behaviour of children. To a lesser extent the parents are also to be blamed for negligence (ukungaqeqeshi), their children. Under no circumstances should an unmarried girl have a child. [...] There is a form of punishment for girls who become pregnant before marriage. In church they are excluded from church clan where all the other girls sit. They are excluded from choir because they have sinned and even a visitor would see what they are. It is right that they should be punished. I think the izinyanya (ancestors) should be annoyed when a person begets a child before marriage. For instance, I khupha inkomo (drove out cattle that were my lobola) and got married to the man of my choice, who paid less lobola than that of my people. As a result, I did not pull well with the husband of my choice until we separated. 64

63Vintshima, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 40. 64Mamthembu, ‘Butterworth’, 6. 76

Skele, a young Red man who was 39 years old and of the AmaNywabe clan says on ukumithisa (to set a girl pregnant):

Both the girl and the young man in this have no isimilo. They have done what is not approved by people. Xhosa tradition is that no girl should allow herself to be pregnant by a young man before formal marriage. On the other hand, the young man must avoid setting girls pregnant. They must metsha and not indulge in internal intercourse.

Skele’s account is evidently on consensual intercourse between an unmarried man and woman. What is also evident in Skele’s statement is the insistence of the woman’s role to remain chaste by not ‘consenting’.

The cattle exchanged as a fine was paid to the paternal family, or father of the young women. This has been a norm amongst the Xhosa for a long time, especially the Red Xhosa and some School who maintained the practice. What was also evident in the manner in which the cases were handled - that the victims were not usually given any respect. Once the cattle were paid, the case was not to be readdressed. In the case where the pregnancy was evident, the child was to be raised by the family of the victim, unless the perpetrator marries the mother. When young people were in the townships, away from kin control -away from any adult supervision, (especially paternal) - there was evidence of increasing amounts of illegitimate children, raised by young mothers. There was a notion common amongst young men that pregnancy could be denied if the women allegedly had more than one lover. Mager mentioned that “girls were easily framed by men who sought to evade their responsibility”.65 This notion may the result of the loss of sanctions and changes in the society which saw townships and rural areas become increasingly poor. In some respects, where the young men had a better livelihood than young men in the townships, Qayiso found that the young men denied pregnancies because of the ‘immoral nature’ of the woman. It was evident that ‘rape was deemed as a ‘part of life’, particularly for the poor Black women, who experienced the triple oppression of race, class, and gender.66

The following interviews describe pre-marital cases and how they affected the families. Pre- marital pregnancy was considered anti-social amidst the social pressures in the areas of the Eastern Cape. Mager mentioned that legal action could be taken in the case of pre-marital pregnancy as the

65Mager, Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan, 138. 66S. Armstrong,‘Rape in South Africa: An Invisible Part of Apartheid’s Legacy’,Gender & Development 2, 2 (1994), 35. 77 boys were considered reluctant to admit to the seduction of the girls. Only male figures of the family were permitted to take the legal action by going to court.67 The Native Commissioners, from the beginning of the twentieth century, faced increasingly complex cases involving ‘seduction and pregnancy’.68 The following interviews from Qayiso’s manuscript reveal how pre-marital pregnancy was handled in School families and the seriousness ascribed to it.

Family 1:

Sometimes you are worried about the consequences that might befall you and the girl. For instance, if you were still both schooling you might lose the privileges of attending school. If the young man is not schooling but doing a responsible job if he has impregnated a girl of strict parents. For instance, on Teacher ‘X’ from the Emazizini part of the location lost his teaching post in 1945 when he seduced a girl of one of the strictest families in the Raglan Road. The parents took the matter straight to the Inspector of Schools and Mr ‘X’ was sacked. He only joined teaching after Bantu Education.

The teacher was thought guilty of seduction, not statutory rape in contemporary terms. No other details are supplied about the age of the girl involved. This case was a classic example of how School people became less dependent on the traditional systems of legal action but immersed themselves with the ‘European’ forms of court systems under the Native Commissioner. Since customary law was not applied in such a case, families could not resort to traditional methods of punishment or fines, such as the payment of the cattle, unless instructed by the court. In both Family 1 and Family 2, it is notable how the court systems, especially for School people, had replaced the roles which kin played in the traditional Xhosa world.

Family 2:

In 1960, a young man from Grahamstown seduced a School who is a minister of Religion (Methodist Church) in Grahamstown. The young man was 29 years old from a decent family. His home is in Victoria Street at the Mazizini section of the

67Mager, Ibid., 136. 68Ibid. 78

location. They live at tenants in a two-roomed house – dining table, bedroom and kitchen. He still has a mother who is employed as a domestic servant in town. I have never seen his father. At the time when the girl became pregnant, she was 21 years old and attending school at the Nyaluza Secondary School – Grahamstown. The young man denied that he was the cause of the girl’s pregnancy, after that the father took the matter before the magistrate. As a defence counsel, the young man engaged the services of one of the local European lawyers. The father, on the other hand, engaged the services of a Black lawyer from East London. The young man lost the case and was ordered by the court to pay damages.

The case below is unique because the ‘seduction and pregnancy’ took place in a church setting - the father of the girl was a minister of the church. To cover the shame associated with the pre-marital pregnancy, the young man decided to marry the girl:

Family 3:

This is another case where a decent young man from a decent home impregnated a decent girl from a decent family. The young man is staying with his brother at Zwelitsha (New Land). The young man passed J.C and is working at South African Broadcasting Cooperation. The brother with whom he is staying with is a principal of a big Primary School at Makana’s Kop location. The girl’s family is also a decent one. Her father is a minister of Religion of the Church (Order) of Ethiopia. At the time that the girl became pregnant, she had just completed her training as a nurse. As soon as the young man realised that the girl was pregnant he asked for her hand in marriage and married her immediately. When a ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ are born of decent parents they are bound to fear the consequences and as a way out might decide to get married, due to the pressure exerted by their parents.

Unlike Family 3, the family below forced the young man and women to marry. The legal route was understood to be ‘embarrassing’ for families who hope to keep the affairs secret. The legal route also had its disadvantages as it was difficult to obtain compensation after the birth of the

79 child. 69 Below is an example of a family whose decision was to force the young boy and girl to marry rather than take the matter to court:

Family 4:

This is a case involving young people who were forced by their parents to get married after the birth of their child. The young man has both parents still living. The father is a very strict man. He won’t allow his sons to sleep out when they were still schooling or bring women into the house even after they had left school. It is wrong to bring women into the house (to sleep with) into your father’s house. It depicts disrespect towards your parents.

It is evident from the interviews in this chapter that both Red and School people were concerned about pre-marital pregnancy and its negative effects on the girl’s reputation and that of her family. Mager argues that the “regulations and the boundaries defending the public practice of sex and its prevention of pregnancy were rapidly crumbling in the rural Ciskei and Transkei”.70 These changes were blamed on varied reasons, including the conservative and limiting philosophy of the church on premarital sex and prohibitions which did not provide young people with alternatives measures except restraint. Thus, marriage was seen to be the only resort to curb the shame of the pre-marital pregnancy. Another account on the interview of pre-marital pregnancy is one by Mpalisa. He mentioned:

[Pre-marital pregnancy] kubi (is bad) to the tradition of the AmaXhosa. An unmarried person may not have a child unless she has passed the stage of getting married. A girl must be married before she gets a child. Pregnancy is another inyala (scandal) that should never be allowed to happen. Pregnancy is far much better than incest because if my daughter should get pregnant, I would say ‘at least I shall eat something, my child would be hlawula (paid for) for damages’ which is five heads of cattle. This is not praiseworthy at all. A girl who becomes pregnant is blamed by her parents and those of her home. Even is the man eventually marries her, those of her home do not like the idea of her getting pregnant first. Setting a girl pregnant is very bad especially without a man’s plan to marry the girl after all. Sometimes it does happen that the young man wants to marry the girl, but still has no lobola or she is refusing. To make sure that he does not lose her, he often sets her pregnant and the

69Mager, Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan, 138. 70Mager,‘Youth Organizations’, 653–67. 80

approached by those of her home and he tells them sesikade same sindizakusithwala (this is my problem and I am going to see to it). A good example would be Tyiwa, who has sets Magojane girl pregnant. When he was approached, by the people from, the girl’s home, he said that he was going to marry the girl. In such a case I would say that setting a girl pregnant is bad. It is no bad isimo. But a case where the young man does not intend to marry the girl is bad. It is worse that the case of the girl because the father is not going to gain something whereas that of the young man is not going to lose cattle.71

It is argued by the Mayers that the Xhosa regarded the town as a sexually immoral place and that the country people control themselves better sexually. The variations between town and rural areas do not diminish the impact of colonisation and capitalism on the Black people. The variations are attributed to the ‘difference in etiquette and the degree of supervision and regulation.72 In the urban areas, the degree of supervision is said to be less than in the country areas. Below is a School woman who shared similar views about the difference between rural and urban youths:

N, Simelane (age 35) School, a married woman, mentioned:

“[...] pre-marital pregnancy is a reward for not behaving well. Umshate girls are better behaved that the educated girls. The cause of this is the Ititi (contraceptives) that are used by educated people. They get used to the full sexual relations hence their blood (bodies) shows. Yet the blood of a girl is different from that of a married woman. Now educated people treat girls as if they were married woman.”73

A School man, Mavenge (41 years old), described the unpleasant behaviour that he deems as unacceptable in his location in Grahamstown. He talked about the youth drinking alcohol, adopting ‘European ways’ and Ukuswipha (to sweep). This interview also articulates the town ‘immorality’, which was understood to be very different from rural morality:

“In Grahamstown they have Ukuswipha. This refers to the bad habit of taking a girl out a party, concert, and dance or from her home, and go to sleep with her without being in love with her. She might be having her boyfriend or boyfriends, but the one

71Mpalisa, Butterworth. 72 Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 253 73 Simelane, King Williamstown. 81

who ‘sweeps’ her is not her boyfriend. Girls also talk of Irashi (rash). This means to do things in a rush, i.e. to fall in love quickly or immediately. I would say it is something like this: Let us say it is a dance. You take a girl and dance with her and whilst you are dancing you tell her that you love her. She replies by saying ‘it is O.K’. I also love you. [...] The majority of girls who do these things are those who have come to town from the country. The Bonas (town born) of the town are less active in this sort of thing. Country girls are confused by the number of presentable young man they see when they come to town and therefore fall for all of them. I do not mean that this does not happen with those who were born and bred in town, but it is less so. Most of them who do it already have illegitimate children (amankazana). They have no more hope of getting a decent marriage and what they are after now is only to enjoy themselves by exchanging men. They realise that their value has been lowered by their pre-marital pregnancy. [...] I think many young men are justified in denying knowledge of certain girls’ pregnancies, as I told you, a girl might be having a number of boyfriends”.74

It is argued that pre-marital pregnancy amongst the town/School people was met with harsher responses than in Red/rural areas and families.75Unfortunately, this harshness was imposed on the girl, usually by her family. The burden of the pregnancy was also left with the women, unless the matter was reported to the male’s family and compensation took place. The interview below explains the following on this matter:

Vintshima, a young teacher interviewed by Qayiso mentioned that:

“I have never heard that so and so, is suffering because once he impregnated a girl. It is when a young man denies responsibility for his actions and refuses to pay compensation for damages that ill luck has befallen people. Such misfortunes that befall him are said to be due to girl’s inyembezi (tears – that she sheds in broken heartedness)”.76

74Mavenge, 4. 75Delius and Glaser,‘The Myths of Polygamy’,31. 76Vintshima, Butterworth, 40. 82

In other pre-marital pregnancy cases, young men involved did compensate the girl’s family, with money or cows. In such cases, the burden and shame of the pregnancy was covered and justified by the actions of the young man. The interview below deals with this.

Mr Vuma, a 34-year-old, unmarried School man gave this account:

When my sister got pregnant at the age of 14 years, when she was still attending School at the ‘Higher Mission’ my father applied corporal punishment to her and she was never allowed to go out to the street again unless she was going to the clinic for treatment. She was virtually under ‘house arrest’ until she gave birth. My father sent men who were related to my home to go at the Higher Mission and he was (the boy) about 21 years old. I would classify her family as the middle-class family. I say so because I would not classify them as low people. The mother is a church-goer and occupies and fairly decent house on the Emazizini part of the location. They are also property owner because of the plot of land at (‘E’ Street) on which their house stand is there. The mother works as a domestic servant at Rhodes University. I do not know the father and I have not met him. In any case, I do not think he is alive. The boy did not deny, and six heads of cattle were paid at R12 each beast. Unfortunately, after giving birth to the child my sister died. The child lives and bears my family name – Vuma.

The interviews in this thesis revealed that the punishment for pre-marital pregnancy was harsher for the unmarried girl. This factor was important to acknowledge as a social ill which exacerbated the dominant gender order. This cycle of vulnerable women saw an increased number of unmarried women/mothers under increasing violent forms of masculinities and fatherlessness.77 The interview below revealed this:

Nomalungelo Vonglo, a School Girl of 21 years, Tribe: Xhosa of the Mringe Clan, Education: Standard IV. Church: Methodist. Qayiso mentioned that Nomalungelo [revealed] that she was a full member of the Methodist Church before she became pregnant. At the time she was interviewed, she was pregnant).

I would not say that I liked it (full sexual relations). The only thing is the way a person speaks to me. I did not like it though I agreed. He made a promise (to marry me). The young man who set me pregnant was my third boyfriend. With the first

77Mager, ‘Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power’, 13. 83

two, we never indulged in full sexual relations. We only used to play between the thighs. I was still growing then, and I used to hear others that, that was the way it was done. [...]78

In the twentieth century, one of the most frequently-used terms in scholarship is Respectability. This term or philosophy is important to consider because, amongst the school Xhosa, the concept starts to influence sexual relations amongst individuals. In the interviews, some of the individuals refer to others as ‘decent’ – a comment on their respectability. It is also interesting to see how, towards the mid-twentieth century, women’s respectability was questioned when claiming paternity over her pregnancy. It is evident from some interviews that men would argue did not make the girl pregnant because she had already lost her virginity and that she had other lovers. Some young men say they can practice full sexual intercourse with the woman because they could deny her in the case of a pregnancy. I argue this because Black men, from the beginning of the century, began to assert their masculinity with regards to their control of female bodies, at the same time asserting independence from their kin. It is evident from these interviews that the idea that young Black women were ‘wayward’ did not just exist in the minds of white liberals, patriarchs and missionaries, but also amongst young men of the urban areas.79 Some of the explanations for this change are the assumptions that young Black women, especially in the urban areas, had multiple lovers and were in essence ‘loose’.

Incest interviews

Interviews which cover incest are limited as Qayiso did not include interviews of people who spoke out of the experience. This sub-topic with its scandalous nature, is merely referred to as shameful and regarded as worse than rape or any other sexual immorality. This is because relations amongst kin or people with the same or common ancestors were regarded as strictly forbidden. Thus, there is a reference to people’s isiduko (clan) and emphasis on its significance to their identity. This does not suggest that incestuous behaviour was absent amongst the Xhosa.

78NomalungeloVonglo, 13. 79Klausen, Abortion under Apartheid, 30-31.Gaitskell, ‘Wailing for Purity’, 338–57.

84

Conversations around the issue are silenced. Unfortunately, Qayiso did not interview many people on this topic. It is important to note some of the interviews which he did include and examine their significance. Qayiso interviewed Bobani, a Red Xhosa man mentioned earlier. Talking about behaviour which is deemed as incestuous in Xhosa sexualities, Bobani spoke on ukuzuma (having sexual relations with women who are asleep or drunk or without their permission). This definition of the action is very problematic because in contemporary notions, the actions are very similar to rape. It is not clear where the difference is between ukuzuma and ukudlwengula or Ubudlwengu (rape). Below are Bobani’s perspectives on ukuzuma:

A person who zuma (have sexual relation with women who are asleep) is always having a difficult time because women are always talking about him saying ‘lizumaeli’ (he is a creeper). He chotha’s (creeps) on other people’s wives or girls who are asleep. Such a person has no isimilo because he is a cruel man. In a beer drink other man may spend the night in the same hut with women, but if a well- known izuma wants to sleep there women would tell him, ‘since you are there you have come to zuma’. Women dislike an izuma very much. They dislike to have sexual relations with a person who has nothing to do with them (not in love with them).80 [...] An izuma is like a thief as you would hear people saying to him, since you leave so late in the night you want to take away other people’s goats. It is not that thieves only steal goats. They can also steal sheep, but there are more goats here and you see very few sheep.81

Another perspective noted earlier is by Bobani who mentioned:

“People who commit imbulo are both said to have done into engcolileyo (something dirty). They are both given considerations, but the one who is greatly blamed is the man because it is maintained that women [sic] never take the initiative in making love”.82

Sango is another interviewee whose views elaborate on incest. He is a School man, from St Luke’s. He mentioned:

80Bobani, ‘Xhosa morality’, 8. 81Ibid 82Bobani, 4. 85

“Umbulo (incest) is very bad because it is an ihlazo (scandal) to those who do it. The stigma often affects those of the same lineage. Other people may talk in a derogatory manner and say, ‘what kind of people do they suppose they are – people who commit ‘incest’.”

As a sanction to incest, Sango mentioned that:

“Nobody was killed for committing incest, but a goat used to be slaughtered. A white goat to ‘wash’ the scandal so that it should not occur. Those who had committed incest would not be given any meat from the goat. It was said that ‘they could not eat on ihlazo (scandal) that they had committed; otherwise it (scandal) would occur again and again”. 83

Abortion Cases

Qayiso’s interviews revealed cases of Black women who induced abortion by ingesting home remedies (mostly prepared by the mothers of the young unmarried girl). There is only one recorded account on Qayiso’s notes, but we can assume that home-based abortions could have been common since antenatal care and information on contraception use was not widely available for Black women. What is also seen is the women in Qayiso’s interviews are said to go to East London to rid of unwanted pregnancies. Both narratives highlight the extent to which sexualities amongst the Xhosa had changed and show examples of the consequences of the breakdown of sanctions. More young women were making individual choices about their fertility, as they did not have the social support as unmarried mothers, or amankazana.

As it has been noted in Chapter 2, some Black people (particularly Xhosa sexuality) had been quite open to sexual expression as long as appropriate sanctions were applied in order to deter unwanted consequences like pre-marital pregnancy and abortion. It is evident from most of the interviews in Qayiso’s work that both pre-marital pregnancy and abortion were not acceptable. Abortion was deemed as evil and regarded as a practice brought by European intervention to Xhosa livelihood. Fertility and its control have been very important amongst the Xhosa, and as a result, new brides were encouraged and expected to conceive and give birth to healthy children.84Some School women continued to engage in full intercourse and discontinued the traditional means of fertility control, namely ukumetsha. Burman and van der Spuy argued that the scholars who belonged to the Xhosa morality trilogy found that School Xhosa girls were ‘enjoined not to fall pregnant before marriage, in contrast to Red girls, they were given no guidance on how the

83Sango. St Luke’s, 6. 84Fertility in a marriage situation is discussed in chapter 5. 86 pregnancy was to be avoided.85 Thus, most interviews from Qayiso’s narratives reveal that the majority of abortion cases were from the School group, as more young women were in control of their bodies, but sought to avoid societal shame and the responsibilities that come with parenthood.

The typical fine for illegitimate children involved compensation of five or six head of cattle. This was important as Qayiso argued that ‘[...] since cattle belonged to the whole in-group, it was only logical that members of the group played an important role in the administration of sanctions against premarital defloration and parenthood.86 Qayiso further argues that ‘deflowered girls are ostracised when they get pregnant for that is the only recognised pointer to defloration since vagina examination had been abandoned’.87 Thus, the social youth groups were responsible for the socialisation of young people in pre-marital contraception (ukumetsha), the kin were responsible for administering the sanctions on those who defiled the system and the family and society (village) maintained their role by ostracising deviant members, thus instilling shame and fear. Instability was inevitable due to the breakdown of this system as young people moved to the cities and policing methods like virginity testing and sanctions were abandoned, and this situation was compounded with the threats from religion, modernity and industrialisation

There was a significant pattern of young women who suffered humiliation as a result of being denied by their lovers with regards to their pregnancy. It is argued that the shift to more secret sexual partnerships was disturbing and far-reaching as unwanted pregnancies abounded (this was more common in the School group).88The period in question also highlights how uninvolved the government was in maintaining a form of social stability amongst the Blacks in the face of dire living conditions in the townships and rural areas. There was a deep sense of anxiety and ‘moral panic’ from government authorities and parents.89 The panic was related to the growing number of teenage pregnancies and the ‘unsupervised’ youth in mostly urban and township areas. Klausen argues that “parent’s loss of control over youth was a significant factor in the rise of incidences of pre-marital pregnancy”.90The rise of pregnancies, (especially in the major cities of South Africa from the inter-war years onwards) coincided with rising abortion cases, for both Blacks and white people.

Qayiso mentioned that he had a conversation with MaDlamini, a 28-year-old woman who worked as a nurse in Butterworth but was, at that time, teaching children because she had a child.

85Burman and van der Spuy, ‘The Illegitimate and the Illegal’, 627. 86Qaysio, Chapter 6: Sanction’, 107. 87Ibid. 88Mager,‘Youth Organizations’, 662 89Ibid. 90Klausen,Abortion under Apartheid, 31. 87

MaDlamini spoke to Qayiso about a young woman who had the experience of having an abortion due to unwanted pre-marital pregnancy:

Nikiwe is a funny person because she does not want any of the people who come here to miss her. She falls in love with every newcomer in the place. When Skeyi (a man who had come to East London to open a garage at Ndabakazi) came, he fell in love with her although she already had a boyfriend in East London. In fact, when she became pregnant, we suspected that Skeyi and not her boyfriend had set her pregnant, yet she blamed her boyfriend in East London. Of course, she knew that he is a very rich man and she would get something from her. At present, she is pregnant again. She confided to me that she is not very sure who set her pregnant because she has a boyfriend in East London and two in the country. But she would not tell any of her boyfriends but would rather go to East London to get rid of her ‘isisu’ (pregnancy) by committing abortion. She had gone to East London for that purpose.

Although this is not a first-hand account, this narrative does show that an awareness that there were alternatives for women who did not want to suffer social suicide by unwanted pregnancy and those urban areas provided that alternative.

Qayiso also included this interview:

“This has been confirmed by several people. The conversation started one afternoon when I was conversing with three married women from Ndabakazi station. These are MaRadebe, Mamthembu and MaNuga, MaRadebe started saying this: How is it [sic] that Khuthala is a friend of Majola’s wife since the latter (Majola) despises Khuthala so much and talk so bad about her’. Asked what he usually says about her, MaRadebe remarked: He says she is an unomokhwe (bad woman who enjoys being a flirt with men)’. At one time it was heard that Khuthala was pregnant. We could see that she was really pregnant. But she suddenly disappeared, and we did not know where she had gone to. When she returned she had nothing. She had a hungry stomach. When other people started to talk about this the mother tried to cover the whole thing up’.91

91Ibid. 88

There no available supporting data which showed the disastrous consequences of illegal abortions or other fertility issues (in these cases disasters are inevitable or expected). This silence also reveals the silence in scholarship when looking at Black narratives on other topics on sexuality, especially those that are controversial. The silence is evidence that ‘controversial’ topics are not discussed in scholarship (especially research produced in apartheid and colonial South Africa), because it would expose the detrimental impact that the systems had on the lives of marginalised Black women, especially the uneducated location-dwellers. Epprecht argues that when examining this scholarship, it is clear that ‘a strong theme to emerge was that efforts to control and reshape Black gender relations and sexuality to suit colonial and capitalist interests were central to state formation’.92

Mamthembu, a 48-year-old School woman mentioned:

‘Girls today indulge in full sexual intercourse. They would reject a man who still practices ukumetsha. Very few girls still metsha. We used to be examined. The present girls ‘eat’ pills or commit abortion to avoid having a child. Others are sterile by nature whilst their lovers protect others’.93

Other Interviews on abortion include:

Nothombile Ntshabeni, a 45-year-old School married woman, who was a member of the Methodist Church had this to say about cases of abortion:

‘They know how to get rid of their pregnancies by way of abortion without the knowledge of their parents and the people. Educated girls are very clever. Even if I stay with her in this very hut, she can commit an abortion without my knowledge yet a Mtshato girl, because of her ignorance can only commit abortion through her mother’s ubugqwira (evil) that she can commit an abortion. A lady teacher who became pregnant simply visits a friend where she commits abortion and then go back to her work [...]’.94

Mavenge narrates another view on abortion, a 41-year-old School man, who worked in town as a driver of a firm is also included in Qayiso’s collection. Mavenge revealed this:

92Epprecht, ‘Sexuality, Africa, History’, 126. 93Mamthembu, ‘Butterworth: Ndabakazi’, 6. 94Nothombile Ntshabeni, ‘Butterworth’, 17. 89

Abortion is bad. It is bad isimilo. In fact, it is ubugqwira (witchcraft). The one who commits abortion is an umbulali (a murderer). To kill a child is even worse than killing an old person. The very fact that she is pregnant shows that she has no isimilo, and to commit abortion is even worse. This was never dome in traditional Xhosa society. I mean that no deliberate abortion was ever committed. It is a new thing in the life of the Abantu. Women commit abortion because of the reasons I have told you already, that she is often not sure who the father of her child is and that even if she picks one men, this man is likely to deny. She will have to looks after the child until she is big enough to be let loose with other children in the streets. This means that a mother is tied down at home, whereas she wants to go to places of entertainment.95

From these interviews, we see that onlookers felt that the youth displayed unpleasant behaviour. Mager argues that the decades after the Second World War ‘saw accelerated social changes’, and consequently cultural ideals became more complex and fluid, with sexual identities becoming more individual and private [...]’.96 These changes were seen as negative by some, especially adults who were themselves involved in the now individualised intimate relationships. It is evident in the broken youth groups which were mainly responsible for maintaining a group Xhosa identity and its norms and values, while also policing the youth from deviant behaviour. This period of the mid-twentieth century saw increasing social anxieties with regards to sexual practices and youth, especially in urban centres. For instance, Qangule (one of the men who had admitted to having full sexual relations with three women) admits that the behaviour is ‘wrong’.97

These narratives revealed women’s agency in the face of negative responses to abortion and pre-marital pregnancy. These narratives do not capture the voices of Black women, whose stories have been filtered through the patriarchal, predominantly male lens. Shefer and Foster argue that ‘silence about female sexuality appears then as a necessary condition for male desire’.98 This unfortunate argument is relevant when considering controversial topics like rape, abortion and pre- marital pregnancy. It further revealed that the silence in scholarship is a result of the silence on female voices on all platforms, whether traditional or contemporary. Although in Qayiso’s interviews in some cases older women refer to the women who have allegedly committed abortion(s) as immoral. Consequently, these (‘immoral’) women are ‘othered’ and silenced.

95Mavenge, 4. 96Mager, ‘Youth Organizations’, 666. 97Qayiso, P. ‘Butterworth: Ndabakazi’, 3. 98Shefer and Foster, ‘Discourses on Women’s Heterosexuality’, 380. 90

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have revealed how the issues which affected the Xhosa people in the mid- twentieth century has been shaped by factors from colonisation into coercive and oppressive legislation in apartheid which transformed the Black family lives. I have argued this because the changes over the years did not favour Black women - even though ‘School’ women were free from direct traditional patriarchal control (in the townships and in the cities), they endured harsh realities under men. Black women were already deemed as the cause of immorality in the urban areas. The inaccessibility of support systems (family planning, employment and opportunities), in the face of massive social changes, resulted in a revolving cycle of perceived ‘waywardness and immorality’ of Black women. The coercive legislation that forced Black people into controlled compounds or locations led to spiralling issues of over-crowdedness and ‘immorality’. All these factors were structural deficits in apartheid, South Africa. It was not that Black women were problematic; it was because of the marginal position in society which held (even before colonisation) that they were vulnerable to sexual assault and other problems. Thus, Black women - especially in the School group - were left unprotected from these vices and their bad reputation exacerbated the situation. The ‘wrong’ consequences of sex and sex without consent were embedded within a variety of factors which characterise the nature of intimate relationships. Underneath these topics is a broad discussion of the impact of colonial and ‘customary’ law, the impact of changing masculinities and the double standards around rape in South Africa. It is evident that the nature of sexual relationships and intimacy in both urban and rural spaces in the Eastern Cape was unstable due to the changing lifestyles in both worlds and the new urban environment99. Qayiso managed to include substantial interviews on these topics, not only for comparison but also for the noting of overall trends. It is evident that in the interviews, the most prevalent form of sexual assault is heterosexual. The males who were revealed to be the rapist held a measure of power over the women. Some of the men were professionals, while others were usually slightly older than the women. There is a reasonable balance between men and women who give their involvement or experience with sexual violence. The interviews were mostly with young adults and some adolescents. Again, there is an element of silence with regards to Red views on this topic; most of the interviews were from the School group. Rape in Qayiso’s interviews is not addressed as an offence against a woman but more as a question of morality.

99Epprecht, Hungochani, 57. 91

92

Chapter5: Xhosa Marriages

Introduction

Traditional Xhosa marriages involved the subjugation of women under male supervision alongside rules and norms which governed the livelihood of all Xhosa people. In the sociological book published by Hellman, Max Gluckman refers to the problems found in the ‘slums’, problems such as the “instability of marriage, a high illegitimacy rate, a fluctuating and heterogeneous […] population in various stages of detribalisation and urbanisation […]”.1Although using the language of the time, Gluckman refers to the view held by various people, including the state, about Black people. Thus, from the 1940s it is evident that this concern had started to take root in the consciousness of scholars as well. This chapter will reveal marriage relationships in the troubled context of the twentieth century and how individuals interviewed by Qayiso elaborated on this institution and its norms. I use the term institution because marriage, not just Xhosa notions, is a feature in the society which defines identity and is also monitored by the law. Essop Sheik argued that “the regulations of local customary marriage practices were key to several broadly stated colonial aims in the nineteenth century”.2 These aims were that Black marriages played an important role in Native administration and regulations. Black marriages were also central in the economy of traditional settings. Any threat to the economy of the traditional Black economy meant a threat to Black marriages.

When examining the nature of marriage in Xhosa standards, it is evident that women (both School and Red) were still under the control of male authority, although there were notable variations. In the twentieth century, it is evident that growth and changes influenced the number of Blacks entering into marriage- both customary and civil. It is argued that ‘from 1936 until the 1980s, between 50 to 60 percent of the ‘Black’ population aged 15 and above, have been married (including both civil and customary marriage)’.3 It is not clear whether these figures reveal a positive shift, examining marriage relationships in this thesis is important because for traditional Red Xhosa, marriage is the ultimate institution which organises the whole society and gives meaning to gender roles. It is evident from the interviews in the earlier chapters that individuals, (especially females) were groomed from their adolescent years for the possibility of marriage. The survival or destruction of the marriage institution amongst the Xhosa was also a socioeconomic

1E. Hellmann, Rooiyard: A Sociological of an Urban Native Slum Yard (London: Oxford University Press, 1948). 2Essop Sheik, African Marriage Regulation,75. 3M. Hunter, ‘The Changing Political Economy of Sex in South Africa: The Significance of Unemployment and Inequalities to the Scale of the AIDS Pandemic’,Social Science and Medicine 64 (2007), 689–700. 93 factor. This was because in the twentieth century, traditional marriage was expensive for those who could not afford to pay lobola. Klausen, on the other hand, argues that the rising cases of pre-marital pregnancies amongst young Black women, “contributed to the lowering of the age of sexual debut and the rise in the age of marriage”.4 This means that the inevitable changes in the society led to the rise of young people entering unprotected sexual relationships at an early age (mostly without the education or guidance from senior members of the community or parents) and some more Black people entered into marriage slightly older than before.

The Western concept of marriage was very different to the Xhosa view because it was influenced by Roman and Canon law, which upheld the idea that marriage was a voluntary union of two individuals.5 This idea remained the official form of marriage which most School people ascribed to, although the customary marriage was recognised6. In traditional Red Xhosa marriages, there was violence and abuse. The only difference would be the matter of articulation: whether the behaviour was deemed wrong by the victim and the victimiser. In this chapter, the nature of Red and School marriages is discussed. What is significant is the nature of relationships in the marriage. It is argued that colonial Africa “tended to condone domestic violence by husbands against the wives and children, including older women”.7 This is evident when scholars have noted that in court cases domestic abuse cases were not, in most cases, solved by the punishment of the perpetrator. The results of the cattle-killing rendered the Xhosa dependant on the systems established for them by the colonists and this continued into through the end of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century. It is important to mention this because the institution of marriage had transformed for many Xhosa people in both the towns and rural areas during the mid-twentieth century. As culture is not a static aspect of society, marriage, like culture, had evolved as a result of both internal and external forces. It is argued that ‘members of households who violently subjugated other household members did so within the intimate space of family relationships, but these acts were part of the larger socio-historical connections’.8 Those ‘subjugated’ were Xhosa women within the system of marriage, including all the roles and norms they were expected to buy into.

4Klausen, Abortion under Apartheid, 31. 5Bennett, The Application of Customary Law in Southern Africa, 137. 6Ibid., 138. 7Burrill, Domestic Violence and the Law,20-21. 8Ibid, 21. 94

The Anthropology and history of Xhosa Marriages

Traditional Xhosa society is patriarchal was its nature and had established roles for men and women, both married and unmarried, which were accepted and supported the established systems that stemmed from early practices. Anthropologists have played a significant role in codifying Black traditions, (in most cases) like the Mayers. They did so through the help of Black interlocutors. It is argued that Black marriages had played a pivotal role in the development of anthropological research and scholarship. Black marriages became sites for the observation and studying of Black life and norms and provided governments with data for policy-making purposes. This is seen with the 1884 Commission established for the Transkeian territories as part of the colonisation process. The setting up of the commission saw the conceptualisation of Customary Law. Tamale argues that research in the colonial context contained a power dynamic between the researcher and the research assistants.9 This point has been supported by revisionists, with the increasing influence of Marxism towards the 1970s (as noted in the historiography), and as a result, the hierarchical frameworks in research have been discouraged.10

Thornberry argues that the Eastern Cape has been the “fieldwork site for several classic works in South African anthropology” - this has emerged from the work done by Monica Wilson in the colonial context.11The works done by ethnographers in the colonial context were still relevant because “they provide a context for the experiences captured in colonial-era court records”.12The pioneers of Black anthropology who defined the early literature were from British social anthropology and they viewed Black systems of kinship and marriage as the central ordering of pre- colonial society. It is notable how Black marriages were defined as hierarchical institutions of central economic importance.13 These institutions, characterised by the transfers of wealth and were also “connected to the gendered class formation”.14 Since the transfer of cattle was central to the institution of marriage amongst the Xhosa, the marriage proved to be of economic significance because that would determine how many wives men could attain and how much political power they could grow or maintain. Guy argues that “in pre-capitalist Black societies, marriage 'initiated the productive processes upon which the society was based': processes 'predicated upon male

9Tamale, African Sexualities, 14. 10Ibid. 11Thornberry, Colonizing Consent, 39. 12Ibid. 13Ibid. 14J. Pauli,‘African Marriages in Transformation: Anthropological Insights’ in Etim, Introduction to Gender, 95.Bradford, ‘Women, Gender and Colonialism’, 357. 95 control of female productive and reproductive capacity”.15 This is a significant point because in the twentieth-century marriage for most Xhosa (especially the School people) functioned differently, and ultimately shaped Black family life. This aspect, in most cases, crippled the various Black groups as they became coerced into the modern capitalist life which destabilised interdependence amongst kinship networks and created gaps which put Black women in vulnerable positions (subjugated to men).

The influence of missionaries and the dwindling of the Xhosa societies as there was limited access to cattle contributed to this vulnerability. Black women, even into the twentieth century, remained vulnerable because neither Black customary law nor the capitalist state supported them. The Western concept of marriage was very different from the Xhosa concept of marriage because it was influenced by Roman and Canon law, which upheld the idea that marriage was a voluntary union of two individuals.16 This idea was the official form of marriage which most School people ascribed to, although the customary marriage was recognised17. Within the marriage institution, (whether Red or School) domestic violence is an underlying topic. The only difference would be the matter of articulation: whether the behaviour was deemed wrong by the victim and the victimiser and how was it handled. In this chapter, the nature Red and School of marriages are discussed. What was significant is the nature of relationships in the marriage union.

The concept of order is introduced in the social anthropology work pioneered by Radcliffe- Brown, a Durkheimian anthropologist whose work centred on the concept of functionalism. The key aspect of this type of anthropology was to “concentrate upon the relationship between the individual and the group – upon the process by which individuals internalised communal values and generated by the group”.18 Varied scholars have criticized this style of writing but most significantly, this style also influenced other scholars who came after Radcliffe-Brown. There is a measure of functionalist social anthropology within the work of later anthropologists like the Mayers - marriage had a functionalist role since Black kinship bonds were significant in maintaining order

It is through the discussions by Julia Pauli that we receive the fundamental details of Xhosa marriages. Pauli argues that marriage is not to be described or defined as a condition or event, but rather as a process involving various stages. The stages referred to include lobola payments, gifts and services exchanged between two family groups. This process is also one of ‘flexibility’ and can

15J. Guy, 'Gender oppression in Southern Africa's pre-capitalist societies', in Walker, Women and Gender, 41. 16Bennett, The Application of Customary Law in Southern Africa, 137. 17Ibid, 138. 18Kuper, The Social Anthropology of Radcliffe-Brown, 3. 96 be reversed or dissolved.19The most definitive stage in this process is the negotiation, payment or transferring of bride wealth. It is only with the finalisation of this process will the couple be considered as married.20 Lastly, Pauli argues that marriage is also defined in legal terms, whereby children were made legitimate, and fathers were “manifested publicly”. Thus, influence and power located with the husband and his family in claiming rights to the wife and children she bears.21 These politics around marriage were incorporated into tradition and norms – under which women were figures whose bodies and lives were controlled by clearly defined norms and regulations. Marriage followed the patrilocal feature of most Black customs. For women, marriage was a bridge between ‘girlhood’ and ‘womanhood’.22 This is added to her ability to bear children for the homestead of her husband’s family.

In Xhosa marriages, (as with some of the Nguni speaking groups in South Africa) one of the key aspects is the concept of Intlonipho. This term refers to the avoidance that - mainly women - should exhibit to the seniors, older men, their in-laws and their husbands. These behaviours were what determined whether the person was of a good character and if they had been taught or trained well by their parents. Intlonipho was not the same as imbeko (good manners), although manners and good behaviour were imbedded within intlonipho. Intlonipho goes beyond plain respect and good behaviour. Thus, intlonipho is defined as “women’s code of behaviour for respect and obedience”.23 Erlank argues that intlonipho was a “means of regulating the interface between male domination and female subordination”.24 Thus, when analysing the interviews on morality within the marriage aspect, it is apparent that there were specific rules which women were prescribed to follow. Their morality is linked to their ability to abide by the rules of intlonipho. Over the course into the twentieth century, intlonipho has evolved as culture changed as a result of the influence of Christianity and urbanisation. Ukuhlonipha has come to incorporate dress as well, with women having to wear a doek (head scarf) in church, at funerals and even family rituals. This dress code is seen to apply predominantly amongst the School Xhosa, and not amongst the Red.

Amongst Red people, traditional practices before and after the union in 1910 were still practised and regarded as important by some people. Red practices have been affected by missionary ideas and customary law in terms of creating ambiguity and disconnections between the older generation and the youth. Christianity and colonial efforts shaped the institution of marriage for traditional Xhosa. During the missionisation of Eastern Cape missionaries opened their doors for

19Pauli,‘African Marriages in Transformation., 96. 20Ibid., 96. 21Ibid., 96. 22Rice, ‘Ukuthwala in Rural South Africa’, 386. 23Mager, Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan, xviii. 24Erlank, ‘Gender and Masculinity’ 17. 97

Xhosa converts. This process was not an automatic response to missionary activity in Eastern Cape but a result of colonisation. By 1859, there were about fourteen formally constituted mission stations in Western Eastern Cape, each playing their role of conversion and teaching Christian morals25In the scholarship on Xhosa livelihood and Christianity, there were clear consequences of the two in Xhosa society, especially with regards to the School-Red divide. Thornberry argues that “Christian missionaries urged Blacks to adopt new sexual moralities and gendered divisions of labour that directly challenged pre-colonial forms of patriarchal control”.26 This intervention by missionaries was similar to pre-colonial society with regards to patriarchy, and strict supervision of women’s’ bodies and fertility. Missionary influence was one of the factors which led to the abandonment of some practices (as we have noted in earlier chapters), tensions within Black groups, changes in the way of thinking and the gradual loss of control of women.27 Erlank argues that “the key issue behind the regulation of sexuality concerned not with marriage but female fertility”.28 This point is important to note because the aspects of Christianity which clashed with traditionalism were the sexual practices which missionaries found to be inappropriate (discussed in Chapter 3). The European understanding of the morality of Black customs, including marriage, was fundamentally biased. Europeans (and missionaries) understood that in “Cafferland sin was universal”, under this category of sin fell lobola, polygamy and other practices and rituals.29 Erlank argues that “missionaries’ perceptions were that women were victims of male attention than willing participants”.30 This sympathy for Black women had both positive and negative results for Xhosa women who converted to Christianity and moved to mission stations.

Black women in both colonial and apartheid South Africa were the most affected by change and coercion because of the long existence of patriarchy in traditionalism and missionisation. From the early years of colonial rule, Black people in the Eastern Cape found themselves in a predicament of having to “negotiate their identities, [...] while caught in between the socially ascendant view of themselves as unclean, idle, negligent, indecent and licentious”.31 This view is part of a wider context of colonial discourse and its impact on Black people concerning their identity. Christianity was an essential tool used to assert colonial power as wars and dispossession brought visible changes. Christianity brought ideological as well as cultural changes to the Black people. De Kock mentioned that “missionary discourse and its various forms never achieved the

25Erlank, ‘Gendering Commonality’, 940. 26Thornberry, Colonizing Consent, 17. 27Erlank, Ibid. 28Erlank, ‘Sexual Misconduct’, 72. 29Erlank, ‘Missionary Views’, 13. 30Erlank, ‘Sexual Misconduct’, 72. 31De Kock, Civilising Barbarians, 55. 98 status of absolute hegemony but was resisted and negotiated”.32 This is seen in the differences in Eastern Cape, even in the twentieth century as no family, kinship group or community lived strikingly identical lives. There is always nuance when looking at the transmission and adoption of culture.

Epprecht argues that by the 1970s, scholars began to show how the “efforts to control and reshape Black gender relations and sexuality to suit colonial and capitalist interests were central to state formation”.33 This notion was not just a phenomenon from the 1970s, but earlier - from colonisation and apartheid. Fransch wrote about rape concerning South African history and politics. His views, although exclusively about sexual assault and its history, were also relevant to the topic of marriage and the whole study of sexualities in South Africa. He argues that “non-consensual sex or rape was largely defined by the Sexual Offences Act No. 23 of 1957, also known as the Immorality Act No. 23 of 1957. Most of the act reflects the state’s obsession with controlling brothels and prostitution, with very little emphasis on the rape itself”.”34 Thus, the policing of Black sexualities was essential for creating the desired state suitable for white citizens and structures. This state did not pay attention to systems which Black people needed for their development or survival. This is also notable when looking at the lack of health care, family planning facilities and necessary education for Black people. Instead of challenging this need, missionaries were obsessed with curbing undesirable Black behaviour through strict policies of segregation and discrimination. Missionaries, especially in the early years of the twentieth century, became obsessed with regulating the behaviour of Black women - especially through supervision and socialisation. This was done through clearly defined roles for women around the standards of respectability. Brink argued that one of how “in male-dominated societies control women is by giving them a well- defined but circumscribed” positions within society, to which some status, honour and respectability attached.35 It may be argued that both state and missionary attempts to control all facets of Black sexualities was a reaction to not solving the root causes of the ‘immorality’, and ultimately created a vicious cycle of other problems. The supervision of recreation and health was a priority in church hostels on moral and religious grounds, rather than reasons of industrial efficacy.36Within this study on Black interpersonal relationships, including marriage relationships, various topics emerged like domestic abuse, extra-marital affairs, and single parenthood. Since Black family life has been under

32Ibid. 33Marc Epprecht, “Sexuality, Africa, History,” The American Historical Review 114, no. 5 (December 1, 2009): 1258– 72. 34C.Fransch, ‘... Wood, Carved by the Knife of Circumstance’. 35Brink, E. 1990. ‘Man-Made Women: Gender, Class and the Ideology of the Volkmoeder’ inWalker, Women and Gender, 272. 36Gaitskell, ‘Christian Compounds for Girls’, 44. 99 scrutiny in the growing studies on Black sexualities, it is important to look beyond the defined criteria established under colonial discourse.

Xhosa Marriages

The topic of marriage contains varied issues ranging from adultery and domestic abuse to the question of the subjugation of women. Marriage in the traditional Red sense was peculiar because “sex was not the cornerstone of marriage”, but marriage aimed to create strong and functional homesteads.37Unlike in the usual Christian sense, unmarried individuals and the youth could engage in pre-marital sexual expression without participating in actual full intercourse that could result in pregnancy. People did not see marriage as access to sexual expression and enjoyment, and pre-marital non-penetrative sex was seen as ‘practice’. I discuss the nature of marriage amongst Red Xhosa groups and the expected and acceptable practices within marriage relationships, including symbolic aspects. I will also highlight the acceptable and unacceptable practices linked to marriage.

Many feminist and gender scholars have written about this topic from their perspectives. One of the things this topic brings into the light is the nature of marriage according to traditional Xhosa people. Marriage was not necessarily a commitment that individuals make to each other. Traditionally, the marriage of unmarried individuals was established by the fathers and senior kin members of the family. In this case, marriage was not defined as forced, but technically – women in most cases did not have a say about who they were to marry. Thornberry mentioned that British officials understood and regarded forced marriages as part of the Xhosa custom; this included adultery and seductions as wrongs against the family [...].38

One of the interviews in Qayiso’s manuscript refers to the practice of Ukwendisa (sending a girl to a man chosen by her parents): Zinyusile Sango, a 67-year-old Red peasant man mentioned:

This is a traditional practice of the AmaXhosa people. The father of the girl could love a certain homestead because of its imbeko and ingqeqesho (teaching of what is right). He would, therefore, send his daughter to marry one of the young men of the homestead. In such a case the girl does not know anything about the matter, nor does she know the intended husband looks like, until the day she is sent to his homestead.

37Reid and Walker, ‘Sex Then and Now’, 81. 38Thornberry, ‘Sex, Violence, and Family’, 130. 100

Usually, this is known by the husband. The wife (mother of the girl) is not told because she might tell the girl, and the girl might run away. This is one of the things that a man never tells his wife about [it] until it has been accomplished. It is not the young man that is endiselwa (given a girl in marriage) but it is ‘so and so’s homestead which is well known for its good name. Girls of long ago used to accept this. They never ran away from home of their marriage even if they had gone there much against their will. They respected their parents and knew that they could not run away [to anywhere], since the present spirit about going to towns was not so much in those days. If a girl runs away from her home of birth of her home of marriage, she would only go to the relatives of her home of procreation, who would eventually report her presence to her parents. So, it is unlike today where a girl can disappear into town. On those days, the man aimed to get cattle and his wife did not care about this aspect. She only cared about her daughter’s happiness – even if the husband to be had no cattle. Today men no longer force their daughters to marry young men of their parents’ choice. This is because girls might run away. The will of the mother is done today rather than the will of that of the father. There is nothing wrong in the traditional practice of ukwendisa (choosing a husband for a daughter).

There are is one thing that is apparent from this interview, the point that the urban environment has changed how tradition worked, thus allowing for more young women to flee. This interview makes it clear that the new capitalist system (although it challenged and transformed the traditional practices amongst the Xhosa), allowed for more repressive measures to be sought in the efforts of preserving tradition. These repressive measures were seen with regards to Zinyusile’s statement of secret/arranged marriages, which made it possible for men to maintain their power over women.

One of the Red men interviewed by Qayiso mentioned:

“In marriage the aim of the Xhosa people was to builds a homestead and not just to meet a girl in the bush, fall in love with her and think that you have got a wife. The girl must be according to his father’s wishes. Even if she goes crying, people will simply shout at her thus: Hamba, uyakufike ugwebe nalapho (go, you will eventually rule where you are going)”.

101

This interview emphasises the hierarchical nature of traditional Xhosa marriages. Secondly, this view by Bobani also highlights the aspect of mobility within the hierarchy in the Xhosa marriage which made the arrangement bearable for most women. Finally, this point also indirectly makes it important to consider how power in traditional Xhosa society worked between relationships and how the established roles and hierarchy were functional in society. Theories on Black customs can be elaborated through examining the consciousness of the individuals involved

Missionary activity and Xhosa Identity

As mentioned above, missionary activity in the Eastern Cape had a profound impact on identities and practices. Erlank argues that “[for missionaries] marriage was necessary for companionship, procreation and the legitimate exercise for sexual inclinations [...].39 This concept of marriage varies with the Xhosa concept of marriage, especially regarding the idea of companionship. Xhosa marriages, (as we will discuss later in this chapter) were organised in such a way that the woman married the whole family of her husband. In that, her whole being is dedicated to taking care of everyone who lives in the homestead, and she answered not necessarily to her husband, but to either the senior wife or mother in law. Missionaries thought of women in traditional Xhosa marriages as intensely subjugated under their husband and society at large. Erlank argues that “missionaries perceived women as victims and not willing participants, and in most instances, women were held liable for pre-marital sex”.40 This view explains the approach that the missionaries adopted in pursuing converts. It was clear to missionaries that Black people and their practices were contrary to the Bible. Thus, efforts to enforce Christian norms among congregants were central to the missionisation pursuits.41 The changes brought by missionaries and Christian norms on marriage challenged the very system of traditional marriage created ambiguity. Scholars like Fast in articulates the impact of the missionary message and activity on Xhosa society. She argues firstly that missionaries created a phenomenon whereby most Xhosa-speaking people were left with unanswered questions and experienced insufficient answers from missionaries.42 Hence, some Xhosa converts were left with a lack of satisfaction by the Western world view and some who were not satisfied returned to their traditional ways.43 This created two problems: Xhosa people who lived in “two realms” and “a few [who] were able to harmonise their Black identity with

39Erlank, ‘Missionary Views’, 19. 40Erlank, ‘Sexual Misconduct’, 72. 41Thornberry, Colonizing Consent, 38. 42Fast, ‘In at one Ear and out the Other’ 43Ibid, 168. 102

Christianity”. There were two examples of people whose Red identities were affected by the Christian message. Nowanisi, a 43-year-oldRed housewife may be described as an individual who lives in ‘two realms’. She notes that “good habits of a married life include wearing clean clothes and going to the house of prayer and listen to the teachings of the Bible”.44 She is one of the few Red Xhosa who also resorts to Christian interpretations of what is good or not. Nowanisi also revealed influences of principles of respectability, a concept which has been associated with Christianity from the early years of the twentieth century. Red Xhosa, in most instances, understood Christianity to be Western and foreign (which in fact was true). Dlingili, a 39-year-old Red man explains that the adoption of European dress is what causes disruptions in society. The inciyo (traditional undergarment for girls) firstly made it penetration impossible during ukumetsha. He explains that girls wore ‘bloomers’ (modern underwear for young women) which makes penetration easier as it could be taken off. Dlingili mentioned that this is because young women were ‘too much of School’.45 In understanding Red Xhosa ideas on what constituted wrong behaviour and causes, it is important to understand that the very message which was promoted by the missionaries had been negotiated and reinterpreted.46

The enmeshment of beliefs is inevitable, especially in cases where there were competing cultures. In Eastern Cape, Christianity and other agents of cultural change began to characterise rural identities. Elphick stated that “real people negotiate their way through life, grasping, combining and opposite different origins”.47 This ‘negotiating’ happens throughout interactions as people aim to make sense of their reality. As missionaries promoted the Christian and Western ideal of marriage, Black people were expected to remove themselves from traditional practices and norms. Erlank argues that it is harder to write about how Black people enacted or thought about sex or morality than it is to write about Europeans because there is already an existing scholarship for the latter.48 This point also includes the difficulty of writing about how Blacks enacted and thought about varied aspects of life, especially in the middle of backlash and cultural hegemony.

In the mid-twentieth century, missionary activity had dramatically reduced but the prevalence of Xhosa people who identified with Christianity was more evident.

44Nowanisi, (16), 1. 45Dlingili (11), 1. 46Fast, ‘In at One Ear and out the Other’, 147–74. 47R. Elphick, "Writing about Christianity in History: Some Issues of Theory and Method", in Proceedings of Conference on People, Power and Culture: The History of Christianity in South Africa, 1792-1992, Belville, 1992. Belville: University of the Western Cape. 48Erlank, ‘Sexual Misconduct’, 70. 103

Red Xhosa/Customary Marriages

Marriage amongst the Red Xhosa was understood to be an alliance of two families and could be polygamous, although in most instances it was monogamous. This concept is different from the Christian notion sees marriage is that it is a union of individuals.49It is imperative to note that various scholars have acknowledged that amongst the Red, “marriage was more about the organisation of the household, the transaction of cattle and the rights to offspring”.50

Bobani, a 67-year-old Red Xhosa peasant man from Dushane describes what a Red Xhosa marriage looks like, the expected roles of married men and women and the issues of concern concerning marriage.51 He mentioned that “her aim should be to build a sound and solid homestead”.52 Mayer mentioned that “the new wife is the bride to the homestead first and foremost”. Furthermore, ‘building the homestead means that the women were expected to have children of her own, whilst also providing domestic care not just to her husband, but to her in-laws. This was important because her “labour-power and fertility were exchanged for cattle to compensate her family for their loss”.53 Marriage for young Red women was more likely to be inevitable, especially if they remained within the traditional sanctions which fertility control. This likelihood depended on the isimilo of her family and that of herself.54 The isimilo or demeanour that is observed by the community or potential in-laws affects both young men and women. With young men, the isimilo affects the outcome of the negotiations and their reputation. What is pivotal with regards to marriage in Red families is that the parents were the main actors who make the decisions for their children. This was accepted because of what marriage meant to Xhosa traditionalists in both political and social terms. In the Xhosa traditional marriage, the in-laws of the man played a significant role in the relations between their son and wife. Bobani explains this by noting that the young woman does not directly approach her husband or her father-in-law for permission to visit, but instead would be expected to approach the mother-in-law, who would then speak to the husband on her behalf.

Bobani mentioned [...]

49Erlank, ‘Gendering Commonality’, 944. 50Reid and Walker, ‘Sex Then and Now’, 81. Delius and Glaser,‘The Myths of Polygamy’, 84–114. Erlank, ‘Missionary Views’, 19. 51Qayiso’s interview with Bobani is quite extensive however; he is one of the few elderly men included in this collection of interviews. 52Qayiso, P Bobani, (9), 2. 53Ibid. 54Qayiso, ‘Bobani (9), 2-3. 104

“She is not his, [...] she is under the rule of his parents, [and] they are looked upon as mere children”.55

The strict control by the parents of the young married man was more restrictive to the daughter-in-law because both she and her family were judged based on how she behaves. Married Red Xhosa women said to no longer belong to their birth family from the time they leave to go live with the family of their husband. What officialised this transition is the compulsory ubulunga ritual which is done both as a symbol of her marriage. This ubulunga, is described as a custom that is done by both her family of birth and that of her husband’s. Bobani explains the practice by mentioning that:

“[...]it is to seek the blessings of ancestral spirits of her home of birth”.

On the side of the husband,

the ritual is done in order to “[...] accept her under the [ancestors] and customs of [her new home]”.56

Another crucial practice for the Red Xhosa during marriage transition is the ritual of giving both the man and woman admonitions with regards to their new identities as married individuals. The main concern is avoiding shame or ilishwa (misfortune) as a result of unacceptable behaviour. Married Red women hold a vulnerable position in their new homes. In one of the Red interviews by Qayiso, it is mentioned that:

Upon arrival to her new home, the young wife is given a name in which in most cases have “[...] underlying meaning that expresses the wishes of the people of the homestead”.57

This renaming part of the marriage process also acts as a means of removing the young wife of her old identity and to also signify the birth of her new self – from a girl to a woman.

55Bobani, (9), 8. 56Bobani, (9), 1. 57Khekhetya, (27), 1. 105

Bobani mentioned that a man should never be ‘ruled by a woman’ as she is “[...] not fit to do this”. The reasons behind this argument by Bobani are unclear but were distinctly tied to her identity as not fully belonging to her husband’s family. Domestic affairs between men and women amongst Red Xhosa are problematic to articulate, and the same goes for School people. Women amongst the Red Xhosa were said to be ‘thrashed’ by their husbands, in the efforts of ‘taming’ her.58 The Red wife may eventually save herself by reporting her husband to her izizalwane (kin), and he will be brought to explain himself and fine him if he is at fault.59

Bobani emphasised the mutual respect which husband and wives are expected to uphold. This was important in order to build a successful homestead and not bring shame to the families and kin. 60Kinship ties played a critical role in Red people as mediators in family affairs. The men who were responsible for mediating interpersonal relationships which involved women.

Bobani further mentioned that:

“Trashing of wives has happened under different conditions. There is a case where it springs from the man’s cruelty. On the other hand, it is due to the wife’s cruelty. If the husband is ‘Khohlakele’ (cruel) the wife should lulama (be tame) and should always keep in mind that her husband is cruel. If it is the wife who is cruel, the husband should lulama. In truth, it is not in order that the wife rules the husband. Other people would tell the husband who always thrashes his wife that [sic]: No so and so, you will eventually kill this woman. You can see that she is cruel’. An intelligent husband will eventually decide not to thrash her anymore. The wife is created to be cruel and insubordinate”.61

Traditional marriage was very different to the Western marriage. It should be noted that marriage along customary lines was a private institution. This is so because this type of marriage is outside the intervention of a state official and a court decree to dissolve it.62 Thus, any matter of seriousness or importance is strictly the affair of the family or kin concerned. Customary law also perpetuated silence about domestic violence in Black marriages, and it becomes an impossible task to address domestic abuse through contemporary notions. Another Red Xhosa man interviewed by Qayiso had this to say about domestic violence:

58Bobani, (9), 5. 59Bobani, (10), 1.

61Bobani, (9), 9. 62Bennett, The Application of Customary Law in Southern Africa, 137. 106

“A married woman may be thrashed by her husband when she has done wrong and people will tell her that ‘the reason why you have been thrashed is your own fault’. The wife should not cast an insult towards her husband”.63

School Marriages

School people populated the wide areas of the Eastern Cape, both urban and rural. Mayer mentioned that literacy should not be used to distinguish Red and School people as by the mid- twentieth-century literacy was widespread across Red and School.64 If one were to distinguish the Reds from the School people or vice versa, values and norms would be ideal determinants of difference. It is imperative to note that the birth of the School group in Eastern Cape was a consequence of European contact and missionary efforts to reform Black beliefs. Divisions existed in the Eastern Cape before contact with Europeans and mission stations. The School group faced a backlash from the Red because of their conversion and were seen as betrayers of the Xhosa nation - those who succumbed to the white man. Their identity has been defined in comparison to Red people and depicted as immoral by the Red. Erlank argues that immorality was understood as moving towards an association with particular people and away from an association with relations between people”.65 This change of association is a consequence of the breakdown of unity in the Eastern Cape, the abandonment of practices and the emerged identity and reputation of the School. Mayer refers to the four factors considered critical to distinguish the Red and School. These factors were “[...] dress and externals, religion, education and ‘manners’“.66 These factors provide scholars with lenses to use to examine the Xhosa groups. They may also restrict scholars because there may be more factors which could be used. These ‘lenses’ should also be used in consideration of the historical factor which is crucial in understanding the current past or the matter under investigation.

Marriage was the ultimate determinant of identity, whether Red or School, because of the differences in the meaning and practices. Marriage was important in making this distinction because, although someone may be known to belong to a particular faction, they may ‘still be in- between’. Thus, Bennett argues that ‘marriage has been used to provide an exemption from customary law’.67 In other words, if people marry according to civil law, all laws or clauses from the customary law did not apply to them and vice versa. It is apparent from this that into the twentieth century, what became significant was the choice of law. Bennett mentioned that religion

63Mondile (20), 3. 64Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 27. 65 Erlank, ‘Gendering Commonality’, 945. 66Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 23. 67Bennett, The Application of Customary Law in Southern Africa, 139. 107 could not automatically allude to law especially in the face of the growing Black churches. The question of marriage in the School setting was peculiar in comparison to the Reds because the very identity of School incorporated not only the so-called literate but also Christians who were said to live differently from the Reds. Mayer mentioned that “School families in the country vary more than the Red families in the degree if their insistence on traditional Xhosa marriage etiquette, but most of them preserve a good deal”.68 This meant that, although School people were influenced by Christianity and may be identified as such, Xhosa notions and concepts around marriage may be preserved. One could also argue that there were variations between colonial School people and the post-colonial apartheid School group. This difference may be the consequence of migrant labour at the turn of the twentieth century, to post-war changes, and difficulties associated with the peak of apartheid in the 1960s-70s. These changes in South Africa have manifested in policies and social dynamics which have inadvertently shaped identities, both Red and School. How the marriage was arranged was challenged by the visible consequences of industrialisation and urbanisation, which created tensions and conflicts between genders and generations.69 This variation is visible generally, in both Red and School people as both factions were under pressure from the changing society.

Bomse, A School man, mentioned that a School woman is feared because ‘she is too clever and has tricks of educated people’.

Extramarital relations

As I have noted, intimacy for men amongst the Xhosa, in both Red and School groups is quite open. The very concept of multi-relationships and the evident double standards were seen also amongst young people of Xhosa groups and not just in marriage relationships. Qayiso refers to some of the views brought to him about ‘multiple sexual partners’ and promiscuity amongst the young unmarried Xhosa. This kind of behaviour was regarded as a facet of male sexuality. It is mentioned in Qayiso’s manuscript that:

“[...] a girl who has many lovers is not behaving well. That is not the custom for a woman to mix together many people (lovers). She would be called a ‘sexually weak woman’ and her chances of marriage would be lessened. Young men would be ashamed to marry an easy woman”.70

68Ibid, 216. 69Rice, ‘Ukuthwala in Rural South Africa’, 382. 70Qayiso, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 15 108

Simelane also mentioned this about promiscuity with regards to young men:

“A young man may have a number of lovers in different locations but not in the same location because they are going to fight”.71

Such ideas about sexuality were evident in the way shame is usually inflicted on women (whether Red or School, urban or rural-based) because of their social status. Missionary teachings on chastity also maintained these double standards. The concept of adultery amongst the Red is very different from the School interpretation. Although in both groups’ adultery/ukukrexeza is a controversial subject, for the Red adultery is acceptable when traditional values were observed. The traditional values include the acknowledgement of the man’s sexual appetite and the inability of the Red man to be ‘satisfied’ with one woman. The explanation for this phenomenon is explained away by the reason that the man is the one who pays lobola to the woman, and therefore she is married into his homestead and not vice versa.72Qayiso mentioned that “in the minds of Red men, marriage does not offer any restrictions for their sexual activity with unattached women”.73The same advantages not set in place for Red women because of their social position as well as their responsibility to maintain dignity for the sake of her family’s reputation and her own. These double standards favouring men are prevalent owing to the patriarchal society which existed in Red communities. A 36-year-old Red peasant man recounts a moment of encounter between a married man, his wife and inkazana [...].

“On one occasion a man who had told his wife about his love affairs had visited his girlfriend and was sleeping with her near a forest when the wife came carrying a stick and started attaching the girl. The girl fought the wife and knocked her down, using the stick of her lover. In the meantime, the husband was just sitting down looking on. He was right to do so. His wife was wrong to take a stick and follow her husband when he had gone to metsha. The man never intervened during the fight”.74

A young school man in Qayiso’s interviews had this to say about adultery:

Adultery is bad and it is a sin. Even the Bible says this, that to sleep with somebody’s wife is a sin. A man commits adultery when he ‘sleeps’ with another

71Ibid. 72Qayiso, ‘Red’s people’s attitude towards men’s extra marital relations’, 119. 73Ibid. 74Nqawa, 30. 109

man’s wife. If he sleeps with an inkazana or a girl, he is not. A married woman must always look up to her husband for sexual satisfaction. Adultery is more common these days than in the past. I would say that, perhaps, the cause of this is that married women have forgotten that they are married women. Look at their dresses and you will realise what I mean”. 75

There were also established norms within the open marital relations with regards to Red married men who were required to be observed. Qayiso mentioned that a man might not leave his ill wife or child to visit an inkazana (the other woman).The Red man will be required to give monetary and material support to the inkazana if she becomes pregnant and a child becomes the consequence of their relation.76 Mayer mentioned that “Red women have been brought up to accept husband’s extra-marital affairs as long as she is not neglected”.77Red women do not recognise their husband’s extra-marital affairs as wrong, but such relations happen within customary limits.78Conditions for extra-marital affairs do not apply for women because they were expected to remain loyal to their husband and in-laws because her fertility and ‘Vagina’ have been compensated for to her family through the system of lobola.79Amongst Red Xhosa, the ‘vagina’ thought of as belonging to the husband of the women concerned or if unmarried, the young woman is to answer to her parents.80Thus, it is common to come across descriptions of female vagina referred to as the ‘kraal’ which if defiled is said to be opened unlawfully.81

Adultery amongst the Xhosa is one of the most challenging factors of Eastern Cape by missionaries. This challenge is a result of Western interpretation of Black sexualities and their means to eradicate what in Western notions was primitive, exotic and morally wrong.82 Hildergarde argues that missionaries, especially early missionaries “[...] assumed that Blacks had no concept of sin or morality”.83 This view, although incorrect, revealed the general perception held by missionaries in their definition of morality according to Christian and Western ideas on gender and race. As missionary efforts resulted in challenges to Xhosa sexualities, this resulted in the creation of new identities and beliefs and the ‘re-articulation of tradition’.84The first half of the twentieth

75Vintshima, Butterworth, ‘Xhosa Morality’, 40. 76Ibid. 77Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 257. 78Ibid., 120. 79Bobani, ‘Ubudlwengu and Ukuzuma’, 3. 80Ibid. 81Ibid. 82Tamale, African Sexualities, 15. 83Fast, ‘In at One Ear and out the Other’, 158. 84Bank, ‘Beyond Red and School’, 633. 110 century up until the 1960s has been defined as a time in South Africa where moral and immoral sexual behaviour was at the forefront of public discourse underneath the social and political aspects in history.85The road to this discourse is characterised by the changes in the South African landscape politically, socially and culturally, which saw a new narrative written about Black identities - whether as conformists or as resisters of change.

According to customary law, adultery [did] not provide a good reason for divorce.86 Amongst the School, Mayer mentioned that “[...] extra-marital affairs [could] not be regarded as adultery unless the woman involved is married”.87 It is mentioned in one of the interviews that there was a negative stereotype of wives who were chased out or separated from their husbands. Wives were discouraged from abandoning their marriage by threats of ostracism and shaming:

Bobani mentioned:

Amongst the Xhosa people, A girl who does not love the husband that has been forced upon her would show this by bringing to her husband her excrete and say to him, ‘Nanko Umkhakho’ (there is your wife). This was to show that she does not was him at all. When such a girl returned to her home location, other girls practice what they called, unodyokolo. This is the song which girls sing after the return of a girl who had done such a thing. They sing out of the location carrying a bottle of brandy, which they put down anywhere in that location so that Unodyokolo should be taken by that location. They consider such a thing as isisila (quality in a girl that makes her not to be loved by men). They fear that the same isisila might enter into them as well. This is known as ukuvasa (to wash) unodyokolo, so that it should ‘go’ to another location. This was feared by the girl on whose behalf others washed unodyokolo.88 The ostracism and shaming of women who resisted the system of, especially in traditional areas, acted as measures of supervision and discipline. For School women, the court system was a viable institution of mediation in a civil marriage.

85Glaser, ‘Managing the Sexuality of Urban Youth’, 301–27. 86Bennett, The Application of Customary Law in Southern Africa, 153 87Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, 216. 88Bobani, (9), 4. 111

Conclusion

Marriage relationships were interesting sites in which to examined gendered customs and practices because, from youth, Xhosa people constructed their whole identity around the institution. The impact of colonisation and conversion to Christianity restricted the family system of the Xhosa, creating variations and different family systems. It is argued that “African converts, numerous in the nineteenth century Eastern Cape, integrated these different models of the family in a variety of ways, with some renouncing polygyny and embracing a version of British domesticity, and others formulating new defences of polygyny.89 This point is significant because it highlights how the conversion to Christianity changed and challenged the Black family life, including marriage. In this chapter, I have revealed how amidst these changes, people in Both Red and School groups define and reinterpret their interpersonal relationships. Scholars like Hunter have argued that there was an increase of marriages in South Africa amidst the challenges noted.90 Klausen shows that irrespective of the growth in figures, young people’s debut to sex without protection was to be earlier, and the entry into marriage arrangements was much later.91 The dynamics and relationships within Black marriages were important in examining interpersonal relationships and the socialisation of gender roles.Disruptions in the practices meant that the whole system was continuously under threat amidst pre-marital pregnancy and other factors which challenged Black families. In this chapter, the nature of Red and School marriage is discussed. What is significant is the nature of relationships in the very marriage union. It is argued that colonial Africa “tended to condone domestic violence by husbands against wives and children, including older women”.92In the twentieth century there is evident growth of the number of Blacks entering into marriage along both customary and civil lines. The differences between Red and School interviews in the topic of marriage were seen in relation to the growing sense that young people, especially in School areas, marry later or not at all. Some School women were accused of being ‘too clever’ and thus remained to be amankazana (unmarried mothers or spinsters). There was also a growing trend of the customary law in Xhosa marriages as more School people opted for the system rather than dependence on kin.

89Burrill, Domestic Violence and the Law, 119. 90Hunter, ‘The Changing Political Economy’, 689–700. 91Klausen, Abortion under Apartheid, 31. 92Burrill, Domestic Violence and the Law, 20-21. 112

Conclusions

In the first chapter of this thesis, I introduced the Xhosa groups in the Eastern Cape. Both Red and School groups have been central identities in the scholarship on the Eastern Cape. The impact of Christianity and colonisation caused a significant change in the Xhosa areas, including the formulation of customary law and the consequences of modernity. All these factors have had a significant influence on Xhosa identities as external forces. Internally – the individuals in the Xhosa groups reacted to changes in family life, declining rural economies and the abandonment of traditional practice by reinterpreting and redefining their moral codes. In Chapter 1, I introduce Percy Qayiso, a research assistant for Philip and Iona Mayer in the ‘Xhosa in Town’ project. Qayiso, a Xhosa man with an education from the University of Fort Hare, collected and analysed the sources used for this thesis. His role in gathering the sources is very significant in this thesis because of the interviewees related to him from a certain level. There are more School interviewees than Reds in almost all the topics in this thesis. With topics such as rape, contraceptives and pre- marital pregnancies, there are more School female interviewees than male, and Red. Qayiso did not explain the silences in his manuscript about changing Xhosa morality. There is clearly a methodological problem with this research. A few of Qayiso’s sources have been used by Philip Mayer in his work on Xhosa people, leaving out a bulk of unused interviews.

The second chapter is mainly about the literature used for the research and writing of this thesis. There are three main shifts noted in the review: writing about sex in Africa, in South Africa and on the Xhosa. This section notes the significant authors who have written about central aspects of sexualities in Africa and Eastern Cape.

The third chapter is titled Chastity, Pre-marital Abstinence (ukumetsha), and Contraceptives. In this chapter, I have mentioned the interviews gathered by Qayiso on the main topics. The interviews were central in revealing the consciousness of the individuals under study, their experiences and their attitude towards the three aspects. Through the interviews, we see that most School people existed in a knowledge vacuum about traditional birth control methods and burgeoning socio-political pressures in fertility health care. As noted, these pressures favoured White women, whilst most Black (School) women were left without support. The pressures noted were also connected to the differences in culture, and how different individuals reinterpret norms. Qayiso did not include sufficient Red interviews on the topics in this chapter, and this has contributed to the difficulty in thorough comparisons between groups and in noting how individuals reinterpret cultural norms and adhere to the various principles. There is also a common rejection of

113

‘traditional’ sanctions, primarily ukumetsha in the urban areas. This ‘preventative’ measure is evidence that Black cultures have been historically open to sexual practices for both enjoyment and reproduction. Some young urban males mention that females in town (those whom they have encountered), freely choose their preference of full sexual enjoyment and regard ukumetsha as retrogressive. The ukumetsha practice served as both fertility control and virginity protection for the Xhosa people who still practised it in the twentieth century. As noted in some of the interviews, metsha relations were not always consensual. Some older School and Red individuals were in full support of it, but the practice was regarded with mixed connotations with the younger interviewees. Although deemed as retrogressive by younger people, the practice was not necessarily a suitable preference for all unmarried people. The pressures discussed were met with increasing violence in the male youth of the twentieth century. It is demonstrated in the interviews that most metsha relationships rendered females vulnerable to sexual violence.

Qayiso did not include a variety of interviews on the topic of contraceptive use by Black women. There is no reference to women who had attested to using traditional Xhosa methods, ‘Western’ contraceptives or those who opted for coitus interruptus. It is the males who reveal their methods of contraception or lack of thereof. This dynamic is evidence that Qayiso’s presence and identity as a researcher shaped the outcome of the research. The silencing of Black women in the topic of contraceptives does not equate to the absence of contraceptive use by Black women. In Qayiso’s interviews, it is men who reveal that they practised ‘coitus interruptus’ to avoid setting the woman pregnant. It is clear from the interviews and the secondary reading that Black women in the early years of the twentieth century were not afforded the use of modern fertility contraceptives. Lastly, the variations between men and women, and the silences of most Red voices over School voices reveal a methodological imbalance in Qayiso’s work. When analysing the sources, it is evident that forced ukumetsha did not leave physical scars, but the forced metsha may have left emotional scarring which was exacerbated by male dominance upon female bodies. This is seen in young women’s fear of their metsha partners and their appearance as victims. When comparing the two, forced sexual activity and forced ukumetsha, it is evident that both entailed victimisation of women’s bodies.

Firstly, the metsha practice itself may persuade both outsiders and insiders to think that the practice is consensual since it is defined by some informants as ‘playing’. Secondly, the dynamics around it may suggest that individuals widely accepted it because traditional Xhosa socially accepted it as a chaste behaviour as abstinence is. However, the victims of forced metsha narrated a sense of fear as a result of the violence that they experienced. The forced metsha victims, as a result, were never compensated nor were the perpetrators punished for that. 114

The fourth chapter is titled ‘The “wrong” consequences of sex, sex without consent, incest and abortion cases’. This chapter includes themes which define the bulk of the work on sexualities in South Africa and Eastern Cape. Historically sexual practices amongst the Xhosa were quite open, regulated through sanctions which prevent undesired consequences. The title refers to the fact that Sex amongst the Xhosa can be wrong and therefore yields wrong consequences. For example, pre- marital sex is not forbidden in traditional Xhosa culture. The only thing wrong about it is if unmarried people have the wrong kind of pre-marital sex (full sexual intercourse) and not metsha (right sex). Sex can also be wrong if it is violent, incestuous or beyond established sanctions of fertility control. In this chapter, I have looked at individuals who give their views, experiences and stories of ‘wrong sex’, including the consequences thereof. The inaccessibility of support systems (family planning services, inadequate employment and opportunities) in the face of massive social changes resulted in a revolving cycle of perceived ‘waywardness and immorality’ of Black women. The coercive legislation that forced Black people into controlled compounds or locations led to spiralling issues of over-crowdedness and ‘immorality’. All these factors were evidence of structural deficits in apartheid South Africa. It was not that Black women were problematic; it is because they held a marginal position in society (even before colonisation) that they were vulnerable to sexual assault and other problems. Underneath these topics, is a broad discussion of the impact of colonial and ‘customary’ law, the impact of changing masculinities and the double standards around rape in South Africa.

The last chapter of this thesis is titled ‘Xhosa Marriages’. As the final topic in the discussion on Xhosa relationships, this chapter focuses on the nature of marriages in the Eastern Cape. Most of the interviews refer to the definition of what marriage ‘should’ look like, including the rules and the customs surrounding Xhosa marriages. Again, these interviews reveal the imagined and reinterpreted world concerning their livelihood. Another significant aspect of this topic is customary law. Although there were no interviews which reveal a detail about customary law, this factor is significant because it highlights the impact that colonisation had on the Eastern Cape and other Black groups. This impact revealed the ‘constructed’ nature of customary law in governing the Black people. Marriage is an interesting site to examine gendered customs because, from youth, Xhosa people constructed their whole identity around marriage. This is evident from moral codes for virginity safeguarding. The impact of colonization and conversion to Christianity restricted the family system of the Xhosa and created variations and different family systems. It is argued that “African converts, numerous in the nineteenth century Eastern Cape, integrated these different models of the family in a variety of ways, with some renouncing polygyny and embracing a version

115 of British domesticity, and others formulating new defenses of polygyny.1 This is significant because it highlights how conversion to Christianity changed and challenged the Black family life, including marriage. In this chapter, I have revealed how amidst these changes, people in Both Red and School groups define and reinterpret their interpersonal relationships.

1Burrill, Domestic Violence and the Law, 119. 116

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