Political agenda behind rants
SOUTH Africans have lost their human sensibilities in pursuit of political expediency. It baffles the mind to see people’s obsession with political mileage at all costs.
It makes them do anything, even if it means trampling on good for bad. Hating an individual, for behaviour or political thoughts you do not agree with, is part of human discourse.
However, hating a group of people on the basis of what you dislike about one individual is childish. Comments directed to a group of people is tantamount to phobia.
This became apparent in the reaction to Athol Trollip’s action, when people could not restrict their hatred of him, but spread their venom to an entire people who do not practice the Xhosa tradition of circumcision. The mayor was invited, in his capacity as the political head of the municipality, to assess the appalling conditions under which the abakhwetha stay.
The place is overcrowded, littered with rubbish, and has no ablution facilities nor running water. The place is a fire hazard.
If a fire should break out, there will be no chance of putting the fire out, since there are no roads for firefighters to access the amabhoma. This year, the urgency was also sparked by the death of an initiate in Uitenhage due to an unrelated cause.
The traditional leaders in the area are well-known personalities who have, over decades, decried the demotion of the culture of the majority of citizens in this region. Through their proactive stance over time, they have intervened in the practice of this custom, to the extent that abakhwetha fatalities here are close to zero. This is as a result of the improved implementation and application of the custom.
The response of the mayor to their call this time highlighted the issues that they see as creeping into the area and to seek ways of countering them. This was leadership practice at its best.
The drug and alcohol abuse, and the accessibility of the area to malicious and criminal characters put the lives of abakhwetha at risk.
Trollip’s political opponents went berserk after hearing of and seeing him visiting abakhwetha a week ago, to inspect the appalling conditions at their temporary “village”. They made the most disparaging racist and anti-cultural remarks and comments.
They called him “inkwenkwe”, the worst slight or insult one can heap on a person in the culture of amaXhosa, both in the print and social media.
The term inkwenkwe is deliberately used in a derogatory manner for a Xhosa boy who has not observed the custom of ulwaluko, (circumcision). It is particularly a strong condemnation for a boy who has long passed the age of going to the bush.
The use of the words to boys younger than 18 years, who have not been to the initiation school, is no insult. When I grew up we were always made aware of the term in its crude sense when spoken to amaXhosa boys and that it was never to be extended to people who did not practice the custom.
In that way, our forefathers were teaching us to respect the cultures of others as much as we respected ours.
Trollip was accompanied by Mongameli Bobani and a delegation of representatives of various amaXhosa royal houses. This visit was immediately seized upon by Mxolisi Dimaza, a politician in the Eastern Cape Legislature: “My own understanding of our traditions and culture is that the person who gets to emabhomeni is a person who is a man”.
I am not sure about the politician’s understanding. There have never been any restrictions for people other than women to visit amabhoma.
Unless of course Dimaza has made such a law in secret, for I know of no such restrictions.
Dimaza asserts: “If Trollip has never gone to an initiation school like ourselves, he cannot go there and address abakhwetha because he does not know anything that happens there.” This claim of someone who “does not know anything that happens there” is a baseless claim.
What will Dimaza say if someone tells him that safe circumcision in this province was pioneered and spearheaded by Dr Mamisa Nxiweni Chabula, a woman. The metro has the safest circumcision practice in the province, as a result of her initiative.
Knowing about something and doing nothing about it are two different things.
What makes Dimaza’s intervention extremely opportunistic is the fact that he knows or he should have known that Trollip was not there to discuss or advise on the application or non-application of the rite. Trollip was invited to go to inspect the appalling and dangerous conditions that the abakhwetha stay under.
He is quoted as having described his visit as follows: “I am here to look at the conditions. We have a setback of an initiate who died here in an incident that is not related to initiation.”
Local iingcibi (traditional surgeons) have, over the years, called for the proper demarcation of grounds for the boys. They have been talking of a looming fire disaster and the potential outbreak of deadly diseases in the area.
Curiously, Dimaza is quick to say that his disapproval has nothing to do with his race. However, his comments have opened the floodgates for racist rants by those who understood him to be disapproving of Trollip because of his race.
The use of “inkwenkwe” is the severest scorn you can heap on someone.
Mninawa Nyusile, an MPL who is reported as heading the co-operative governance and traditional affairs portfolio committee, claims Trollip’s visit is “a problem and it undermines our culture”. This response is highly political.
Rather than overseeing correct delivery of the required facilities to the place, he ranted: “For him to be mayor does not mean he would have to break through to all issues of traditions and customs where he never performed such”.
This level of resentment, to come from a person who is supposed to promote and defend our culture, is politically lame.
I hope that Trollip can see his way through this and start putting into place the processes to improve the conditions that the abakhwetha stay in. The rite is a difficult one for boys to become men, without having to stay in appalling and unhygienic conditions.
Political ranting and raving about the mayor’s visit is low and basic political expediency.