Patriarchy to Ramaphosa’s defence
IT took me a long time to finally pen this piece because these days when you write about figures like Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, you get swallowed into the trending headlines and find yourself an active player in the gallery.
One dangerous thing about playing to the gallery is that you do not have time to think and you don’t set the topic of what you want to write about.
The gallery sets the topic for you and you come under pressure to write something that will stand out in the entire gallery.
As a result, you swim carefully between exaggeration and downplaying events at the expense of misdiagnosing the social problem, misleading your audience in the process, receiving personal attacks and wasting the space given by the publisher.
However, as bad as it may be, sometimes it is important to offer your opinion using the gallery with the hope that your view will reach as many people as possible.
The purpose of revolutionary ideas, in my opinion, is for them to provoke and be shared with the marginalised majority to inspire their liberation.
My target has always been attempting to offer accurate analysis of the immediate socio-economic issues facing our people rather than focusing on personalities.
In this instance, I will be using the personality of the gallery (Ramaphosa) to share a socio-economic issue (patriarchy) with the hope of reaching and enlightening millions of readers to inspire their liberation and obviously to be on the receiving end of attacks. That’s okay.
It was reported in the Sunday Independent newspaper a week ago that Ramaphosa, also a married man, was having sexual relations with about eight students.
Only one of the participants mentioned in this outrage has denied the allegations.
Instead, the focus of Ramaphosa, his supporters, government communication, the media and even the ANC itself have been on the assertion that these revelations were acquired unlawfully and they are being used to disrupt his campaign for the presidential election at the ANC December conference.
Other extremists have even gone further to purport narratives such as: these women were after his money anyway, every man does that, Jacob Zuma is worse, at least the scandal isn’t about stealing our funds and these girls are lying, he never slept with them.
I’ll try to dismiss all these narratives collectively.
There is a general assumption in the public, driven by patriarchy, whereby powerful men are deemed to have an unlimited access to free sex with whoever woman they desire.
They have a large pool of options of available sex without obligations.
Patriarchal society assures powerful men that they are entitled to the appearance, bodies, opinions, attention, conversation, time and decisionmaking of females.
That is why Ramaphosa’s supporters are able to say: “These girls love money anyway” or “No, these girls are lying, he never slept with them”.
It is because patriarchy has grilled it deep in their psychology that whenever a sexual allegation against a powerful man is brought up, their subconscious and immediate response is to compare the social position of the woman stated against the powerful man and begin to ask: “If he can have unlimited access to free sex with whoever he desires, why wouldn’t he have it with you?”, or rather they ask: “If he can have unlimited access to free sex with whoever he desires, why would you, of all people, say no?”.
It is this “access to unlimited free sex with whoever he desires” narrative that silences society from asking the important questions about Ramaphosa’s alleged conduct.
How does a public figure of his stature, a deputy president of a country with one of the highest HIV/Aids infection rates in the world, allegedly have multiple sexual partners?
What does this do to the moral fibre of society and the institution of marriage in a country riddled with high rates of divorce and fatherless families?
Where does this put the overall status and imagery of men in our communities?
How do his wife, children and extended family feel? Does he think of them? Nobody asks those questions. Instead, patriarchy jumps in defence of Ramaphosa as it always does for all men.
Artificial events such as leaked e-mails, the conference campaign and election “sabotage” all divert our attention from the violation of human life.
The effects of Ramaphosa’s conduct to his wife and children is invincible in the discussion.
In fact, it is as though his family does not exist.
Ramaphosa’s job and the integrity of his office remains unaffected, a consequence that would not have been the case had Ramaphosa been a woman.
As for the eight women that he has allegedly slept with, they remain subjects without names and voices.
Even if they were perhaps raped by Ramaphosa, patriarchy was still going to jump in defence of the violence and ask: “If he can have unlimited access to free sex with whoever he desires, why would you, of all people, say no?”.
As Professor Pumla Gqola states in her book titled Rape A South African Nightmare: “Nobody wins against a hero!”.
Patriarchy instructs society to treat women as though they are inferior, invisible and relatively powerless.
Patriarchy has deeply entrenched the handling of women in society as though they do not matter.
It has subconsciously trained women to accept situations that yield their subjugation.
Patriarchy has trained society to believe that the purpose of women’s bodies is to satisfy men sexually.