CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION
6.2 I NTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE CONSTRUCTIONS OF CHILDHOOD VS
typically terminates in fourth form with attending and completing sixth form (i.e., Form 5/Lower6th and Form 6/Upper 6th), cf. Fig. 5 (page 23). The reproductive labour-work of rural Ndebele women is performed with the aim of keeping safe the bodies of Ndebele girls; bodies that are seen as reproductively mature but still too young to have sex and fall pregnant (Burrows & Johnson, 2005). While done privately, the benefits of this reproductive labour-work are experienced at a household, community and national level because in time, girls are successfully socialised into (re)productive women; wives and mothers. For example: by shortening menses and providing pain relief, iporridge eyophoko and umbondo respectively prevent menstruation from being prolonged and inhibiting their productivity within the home and outside of it.
Therefore this application of Ndebele medicinal grains and herbal remedies in the management of menstruation is precolonial, decolonial and anticolonial as it does not from the onset problematise menstruation as pathological but only intervenes where it is extended, debilitating and/or inconvenient. The prepositions of MHM in international development discourse that focus predominantly on sanitary wear interventions are an overstatement of MHI that largely misdiagnoses the problem and overlooks the agency of donor recipients. This study, by visibilising Ndebele MHMMMs that promote MHH (and RMNCH+A), reclaims medicine as a non-western practice. The reproductive labour-work of the rural Ndebele resonates transcendentally with international development discourse as they each seek and effectively do to influence the experience of (school)girls as they transition into adulthood.
6.2 International development discourse constructions of childhood vs localised constructions of
children (page 114) and my concept of relational maturity. The adult children who are the child-heads of CHHs assume parental responsibilities for caring for their siblings and other children in that household.
These ‘adult children’ have financial responsibilities. This leads us appreciate the taking on of (financial) responsibilities as another marker of adulthood. The taking on of (increased) responsibilities signifies of the “psychological development[s] that help transform ‘children’ into ‘adults’” (James, 2009:34) and is an echo of what I describe as taking on the role of a proxy adult.Given that parental responsibilities (by way of caregiving and financial provision) index adulthood, childlessness can also be an index of childhood. I shall now demonstrate, drawing on my personal experience in the field, the role of maternity6 in indexing social age among the Ndebele. Though I am a menarcheal adult, to the grandmothers and mothers in the study I am a child both in relation to them (i.e., relational maturity) and because I was nulliparous at the time of the study.As a result, interviewed participants in their homes (as opposed to them coming to Gogo Betty’s), I attended the IDIs with Gogo Betty who stood in helped me attain a proxy (elderly) adulthood.
This was a sign of ukuhlonipha abadala.
Postman (1995) highlights that in a literate world, children become adults. In connection with this, Lee discerns that “[a] division is often drawn between adult ‘human beings’ and child ‘human becomings’”
(2001:7). Responsibilities (e.g., caregiving, motherhood), literacy (a kind of knowledge responsibility), menstruation (which comes with the responsibility managing it) are an important part of this adult- becoming. Though there is a socially constructed watershed between adulthood and childhood, we have seen that adult children exist in African culture. International development discourse problematises such ambivalence using terms such as “child brides” and “child mother” that do not always translate in African culture. For example “[i]n international development practice and academia child marriage is defined as a formal marriage or informal union before the age of 18” (Giaquinta, 2016:2). Many African cultural practices are predicated on the fact that a mother cannot be a child, and that equally a wife cannot be a child.
As such, adulthood is not marked exclusively by biological age but takes into account life events such as motherhood and marriage. Kamwendo Naphambo found that biological age not “a marker of maturity for marriage for local communities” in Malawi (2021:131). She also points to the contradiction between the
“legal construction of girls’ readiness for marriage in Malawi [which] is shaped by international human rights instruments[7] and, as such, do not reflect community constructions of girls’ readiness for marriage”
(Kamwendo Naphambo, 2021:131). Kamwendo Naphambo highlights a male participant in her study who remarked that “Marriage has no age, it is a shoe that has a size! (ukwati ulibe saizi, nsapato ndoyomwe
6 which can biological or fostered
7 What Kamwendo Naphambo (2021) describes as “international rights instruments” are localised addendums of what I refer to in this dissertation as (international) ‘development discourse’.
imakhala ndi saizi)” (2021:132). This localised reality conflicts with international development discourse and its application as seen through GAD in practice. The same was true in this study, whereby on-the- ground articulations of what the elders in the village perceived to be the Sikelela’s early unintended pregnancy crisis are less concerned with age (i.e., childhood and adulthood), but rather the interruption of schoolingand the occurrence of pregnancy outside of wedlock. Western notions of childhood are linked to innocence (Giaquinta, 2016) and “insulation f[rom] the responsibilities of adulthood” (Ocen, 2015:1588);
so too are African notions. However, African constructions of childhood place less emphasis on the innocence of being unknowing and more emphasis on the fact that that certain types of knowing bring with them responsibilities that transform a child into an adult. For example, once a child becomes ‘literate’ in the adult activity of sexual intercourse, he or she may find herself burdened with subsequent adult responsibility of be(com)ing a mother or father. As Gogo MaGumede expresses on page 117, Ndebele constructions of girlhood encapsulate an innocence that is unsaddled by the burden of pregnancy and motherhood – which in turn ushers other types and forms of reproductive labour-work. I reiterate that this is evinced by the fact that ngesiNdebele when a woman is pregnant, it is said that uzithwele which means
“she is carrying”, derived from the infinitive verb ukuthwala (to carry). In this way, there is a sense that pregnancy and subsequent motherhood is like a weighty ‘burden’ (umthwalo) that cannot that cannot be laid aside once the baby is born. In conclusion, biological age on its own does not capture some of the nuances of marriage readiness and social maturity. Life-course events and socio-economic and political landscapes shape constructions of childhood and adulthood. They are a terrain upon which sexual and romantic relationships are complexly negotiated. These conceptualisations are not unique to (Southern) Africa, however. In the Caribbean8, Pasura et al. found that “some respondents conceptualized motherhood and childhood as states that cannot coexist for teenage mothers” (2012:209).Consequently, this dissertation uses the narratives of Zimbabwean women and girls to portray the incongruence between certain localised constructions and international development discourse conceptualisations.
Other discrepancies between international development discourse and local realities include its depiction of non-Western children as symbols of hope for the future often against a starkly contrasting backdrop of political and economic instability (Malkki, 1997; Ncube, Chimbwanda & Willie, 2019). Along the same lines, Bornstein (2001) gives an example of a contradictory effect of child sponsorship in Zimbabwe. She explains that “In the process of empowering a child,child sponsorship dislodged the purchasing power of parents and in this sense, their authority” (Bornstein, 2001:614). This dissertation visibilises the social capital for health promotion embedded in Ndebele menstrual KAP. Yet Sicelisiwe’s menstrual narrative
8 in the Eastern Caribbean states of Anguilla, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat and St Kitts and Nevis
demonstrates the role of female kin in helping Sicelisiwe – an adolescent girl with a learning disability – to access the local rural health facility to be treated when she experiences a bout of menorrhagia. These social networks are especially important for vulnerable groups such as people living with disabilities where they may have to rely on their support networks in order to gain access to services or mediate their experiences.
They are not replaced by sponsorship the role of donor aid. This is in line with Larsen who asserts that,
“Involvement in networks can be utilised in efforts to improve the social position of individuals by emphasising norms, reciprocity and trust” (2010:821). I have refrained from making any judgements on the socio-cultural practices associated with menstruation, considering instead how ubuntu and rural life-scapes can be incorporated in health enhancement, for example through MHMMMs; cadres like the VHWs and NGO-funded community ‘volunteers’. In line with this, Arnfred aptly argues that “In GAD lines of thinking, ‘tradition’ and ‘African culture’ are detrimental to women, being posed in opposition to equity and modernity” (2004:13). Further to this, Robins (1998) describes the divide between tradition and modernity as an imaginary one. Rising levels of matrifocality also mean that there are far more single- wage-earning families headed by widows (such as Gogo NaSithule and Gogo MaGumede) and divorcées (like Gogo Sinini, Gogo NaKitty and Gogo Betty) and in this we see witness the villagers of Umzingwane
“straddl[ing] the imaginary divide between tradition and modernity” (Robins, 1998:1679). These women are simultaneously culture-bearers and elders as well as self-sufficient heads of homes who care for grandchildren whose parents have been forced to migrate for lebenschancen and those orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The increased divorce rates and financial independence of many of the matriarchs in this study suggests an improvement over time as Ndebele women begin to assume occupations that otherwise would not exist without the prominent role of NGOs in Zimbabwe. The involvement of NGO- funded such as the ‘fieldworker-mothers’ that are part of my own development initiative in the village collapse the boundary of labour-work as they are they do the work of mobilising the community for sanitary wear distributions voluntarily, but sometimes also receive stipends for it. The collective spirit of this work done through NGOs re-enforce menstrual preparation as a community responsibility. Yet at the same time, the economic strife in the country persists, driving the prevalence of poverty in the village of Sikelela and across Zimbabwe.