Proud to ditch the ‘bro code
Men from my generation heaved a huge sigh of relief when Covid made it socially acceptable just to give each other fist bumps, even during the peace offering of Holy Mass
Iwas fortunate enough to have been invited to watch the 2006 World Cup final on an Indian Ocean viewing deck off Durban’s North Beach. Yes, those were the days of pre-Lehman Brothers decadence, before we even dreamt we’d be paying stokvels just to afford fuel and eggs, while cursing Ramanomics by candlelight.
The fellow who’d invited a bunch of us aboard got motherless towards the end of the evening and started acting like a pig’s rectum. The next morning, all of us received an SMS that read, “For every sin I committed in my state of intoxication last night, I apologise unreservedly. For everything else, talk to my lawyer.”
Back then, we were not as woke as we are now, so it didn’t occur to us that our feelings had been invalidated or that we had been gaslit. We just shrugged and made plans to meet at the top-rank shisanyama in Clermont to deal with our respective babbalases after work. That’s how we dealt with conflict back then, which may explain why we’re spending dozens of hours a year — and maxing out our medical aid funds — in psychotherapy in our middle age.
My fellow Generation Xers and I were raised in a very different emotional landscape — a harsher “children must be unleashed onto the streets and may the fittest survive” milieu. The Zulu regimental system cultivated by Shaka kaSenzangakhona had not survived beyond our Baby-boomer parents because of the exodus to urban spaces. As boys, we were left to roam the streets like wolf cubs, to be indoctrinated by any boy with hair on his groin and under his arms. The end result was that, by the time we got into our twenties, a loose, informal “bro code” had spread through all the urban centres around the country.
Any show of emotion, affection, or empathy for any of your mates was frowned upon. Crying was punishable by being given a “real reason” to cry. And one of the cardinal rules, never to be broken, was the “snitches get stitches” golden rule.
Not even when Toqoyi, the neighbourhood arsonist, accidentally set Ma’am Hlongwane’s laundry on fire did any of the witnesses come forward. It was the perfect cocktail of ingredients to produce the emotionally stunted males we were to become in later life — a generation of men who never verbally acknowledged their love for each other, that they missed their mothers and girlfriends, that they sometimes felt hurt, or that they were emotionally vulnerable.
I have a friend of 43 years I’ve never really hugged, unless you count those sideways shoulder bumps that suffice as embraces. Men from my generation heaved a huge sigh of relief when Covid made it socially acceptable just to give each other fist bumps, even during the peace offering at Holy Mass.
I look at the young men I’m raising and am struck by just how different they are from us. When one of this bunch finds a buddy, he sticks with his mate, and the two of them actually make an effort to nurture those deep bonds of friendship. They sit up at odd hours chatting via their Bluetooth earpieces, engrossed in their PlayStation games.
Back in 1985, I’d ask my mother for the key to the house phone so that I could call one of my friends, and my big brother would chime in with, “Oh, you want to call your boyfriend and talk about your feelings?”
I’d try to explain that I wouldn’t be long — I just wanted to confirm what time we were meeting at the Mcoyi taxi rank, so that we could catch a double feature at Victoria Street’s Shiraz cinema. And my brother would start singing, “Jack and Jill went on a date” while making kissing noises. A sleepover? Forget it. You might as well have been asking for a bottle of Smirnoff vodka, a key to the family Mazda 626, or a wad of R2 notes to hit a strip club on Point Road.
I’m especially chuffed that these Gen Z boys even get each other gifts for their respective birthdays. Not only did I not know my mates’ birthdays, but the thought of actually buying them gifts would have been too ghastly even to contemplate. It would have been tantamount to broadcasting the fact that you were planning on attending Cape Town Pride in the distant future. I won’t get too much support for this one but, whether we admit it or not, we’re a damaged lot in need of urgent repair.
If you’re from my generation and you’re inclined to disagree, please tell me you’ve never experienced this. It happened so many times in my youth.
I once made friends with a neighbourhood boy and for about three years we whizzed around the place flying our kites, playing marbles, amusing ourselves with our toy cars, and chasing after girls.
One day, three of us went to this boy’s house to fetch him so that he could join us on a mission to catch a water snake in a nearby stream. The imposing figure of his mother appeared in the doorway, glaring down at us. “Afternoon, Mrs Mazibuko. May we please speak to ... to ... to ...”
It was at this moment we realised, to our profound mortification, that none of us knew the name his folks had christened him with. We knew him only as Mdavazo (a township colloquialism for the sex act). Thinking on my feet, I decided that, as in the township men called David often had their names shortened to “Mdavu” ,I feebly asked, “Can we talk to ...
David?” She scoffed, turned around, and then yelled, “Mdavazo, nampa abangani bakho la!” (Mdavazo, here are your friends!)
It was only that day we learnt his given name was Daluxolo, which had been corrupted by his uncles from the Johannesburg gold mines to “Mdavazo”. I’m sorry, but if telling my friends I love them, remembering their birthdays, and knowing their full names makes me less of a man, then go ahead and slap that pink tutu on me — because I’m proudly going to Pride.