CHAPTER 4: MENSTRUAL PREPARATION AS REPRODUCTIVE LABOUR-WORK
4.2 M ENSTRUAL PREPAREDNESS : FIRST ENCOUNTERS WITH MENSTRUAL KNOWLEDGE
4.2.7 SUM(Menstrual preparedness – sexual socialisation) = Danger?
of research that involves the elderly in post-colonial Africa” (Batisai, 2013:3).57 In the above section on menstrual literacy (cf. page 112), I put forward ménarche as an index for maturity in order to better understand the transition into adulthood and the responsibility heralded thereof. Relational maturity blurs the distinctions between biological age and social age, and in so doing, the study takes us “beyond the apparent links to biological facts of age” (Jones, 2009:2) by centring adolescence and the social significance of biological graduations into adulthood for Ndebele girls.
a woman is ‘underneath’ a man. Unlike the majority of the research participants in this study, Gogo MaGumede was prepared for menstruation holistically. She receives sexual education alongside her menstrual education. Although vague, she says that she understood completely what the cultural messaging about ‘playing under’ boys meant.
Menstrual preparation for Ndebele girls ideally included sexual socialisation and warnings against engaging in sex after ménarche. The sense of terror about interacting with boys that ogogo express is one that rings true with Mason et al.’s (2013) study, which found that in Kenya, girls they were likely to avoid playing with other children because of an internalisation of their own sense of sexual vulnerability after the onset of ménarche.
Gogo MaGumede also shares that:
[With] splintered families, where children are left on their own in town without adult guidance [while the parents have to find work outside of Zimbabwe]; with elders like the child’s grandparents in the village, girls fall by the wayside and end up falling pregnant. As a girl, you can find yourself ususindwa ngemphilo ungumntwana omncane – while still only a child too – heavily pregnant and in the fields working the field with a small child [on your back]. Toiling just to sustain yourself and your child because you have no education.
What Gogo MaGumede says above indicates that poor menstrual preparation is a consequence of migration.
She refers to girls not being assured of two-parent investment in the rearing of children (Goldsmith, 1991) that may prevent early unintended pregnancy. For Gogo MaGumede, adult behaviour like sexual intercourse brings with it adult responsibilities. In her own words, even if a girl is young when she falls pregnant, she must (now) provide for her baby as an adult would and work hard, subsistence farming for their sustenance. In her view early unintended pregnancy disrupts school education and diminishes the chances of young mother’s chances at formal employment.
Gogo NaNambitha also laments girls are fraternising with boys. Her lamentations and those that I heard from other grandmothers in Sikelela reflect a collective anxiety that children are becoming adults before their time. To be seen walking with a boy, let alone holding his hand in the open is an act of rebellion and defiance in Ndebele rural culture. Gogo MaGumede comments about what used to happen in her day if a girl was caught in the company of a boy. She says:
We were brought up the right way and any adult that you saw falling by the way side could give you a talking to saying, “My child...” as if they themselves were your own parent
She believes that children these days do not want to be parented and corrected by adults who are not their parents or caregivers. In her view abazi phathi kuhle (they do not behave with self-control/they do not abstain from sex). ukuziphatha is an extension of the ubuntu-centred principal of ukuhlonipha. It is the respecting of one’s own body. As we hear in Khanyi’s remarks on page 110, of “Christian notions of
‘respectability’ (Mkhwanazi, 2014a:108) come to frame the body as a “temple”. The grandmothers connect the brazen behaviour young adults today to the early unintended pregnancy crisis that they perceive in Sikelela. In their view there has been an abandonment rural “practices of sexual socialisation” (2014a:108), whereby young Ndebele girls received a sexual education and were warned of the dangers of pregnancy at ménarche. It appears that the youngest generation of girls in the study are receiving a fragmented menstrual preparation at ménarche. One that at first only deals with technical aspects of menstruation – like the use of MHMMMs and an introduction into MoMs without a holistic sexual socialisation grounded in cultural values whereby the sexual abstinence of a Ndebele girl is framed as a positive reflection on herself and the wider community.
Gogo MaGumede went on to express that “parents of today” are also adopting the same attitude. I reiterate the African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” at this juncture. The proverb can be taken to mean that it takes a community, with each member playing a part in the reproductive labour-work, to raise safe and healthy children. This is the heart of ubuntu. This notion of collective parenting is embodied by the Ndebele family lexicon. For example: in isiNdebele, your mother’s older sister is a not aunty, she is mamomdala which is a contraction of mama omdala. Mama omdala means “older mother”. Inversely, your mother’s younger sister is mamomncane (mama omncane) – younger mother58. So, if your mother has many sisters, you have many mothers. Even if your mother’s younger sister is your age or younger than you, she is still accorded the respect (inhlonipho) of a mother even if she is younger or “little mother” as the translation lends itself more closely to. If she were to chide you, you must heed her because she is your mother. Reciprocally, your younger and little mothers must treat and recognise you as umntanami/umntwana wethu (my child/their child) where and when possible. As such she may choose care
58 The same goes for your father’s siblings: babomdala (baba omdala) and babomncane (baba omncane). Vowels are contracted (similar to French) for the words to run onto one another more smoothly.
for you and indulge you as a doting mother would. Collective parenting resonates with the concept of relational maturity and the idea of social age.59 She underscores what Gogo MaGumede explains about the role of adults in guiding and raising up children. In accordance with the ubuntu, it is not just parents and caregivers but also neighbours and fellow villagers who are allowed to rebuke children when they see them veering off the beaten track, in particular being in danger of early unintended pregnancy and single motherhood in the case of Ndebele girls.
This collective parenting as seen by the Ndebele menstrual etiquette of letting a father know that a girl has reached ménarche, after she has been prepared for menstruation represents a kind of ‘third shift’ (Gerstel, 2000) reproductive labour-work. From an ubuntu-centred perspective, it should be performed by kinsfolk in the household and the wider community of the village as illustrated in Figure 7 on page 52. This reproductive labour-work through the collective rearing of children in the village, socialises them into sex through guidance around acceptable and unacceptable forms of courtship in Ndebele culture. An important aspect of Ndebele sexual socialisation is teaching children the different types of sexual relationships in order to safeguard against abuse, and romantic relationships that do not culminate in marriage.
From my deep hanging out with Gogo MaGumede, I learned that she was reticent about the fact that she had placed marriage as an aspiration over education. She explained that this was common in her generation but that now, sexual socialisation is as much about preparation for preventing early sexual debut as well as encouraging girls to pursue education so that they may be empowered (both with knowledge and financial means60) in marriage. In this way, sexual socialisation is about raising well-rounded partners who can build durable, long-term relationships and are not promiscuous. That way they can protect themselves from STIs by negotiating safe sex where possible. In marriage and wifehood, ukuziphatha is synonymous with fidelity.
My conversations with Gogo MaGumede help us to understand that monogamy was encouraged for Ndebele women over multiple concurrent relationships because male parental investment in offspring was assured if the father of a child felt “certain of his paternity” (Nel, 2007:93). In the same vein, Gogo NaNambitha remarks that, “Back in the day, men would come back [and take responsibility if they impregnated you]. It was assumed that you were lying if the father of the child didn’t come back.”
59 Social age is dependent on relation and relationship roles. For example: the role of the niece of babakazi is to be a mother to babakazi’s children. So, though her niece is technically her child by virtue of her being her female father, her niece is the mother of her children regardless of whether or not babakazi’s children are younger or older than her niece.
60 e.g., to get access contraceptives to prevent unintended pregnancy
According to Ndebele culture, for adolescent girls, singlehood and fraternising publicly with a boy is virtuous. It reflects the virtue of ukuziphatha in showing restraint by literally ‘holding oneself’61 rather than others. Public displays of affection bespeak a carnal hunger in adolescence that is unbecoming for a future wife. A woman oziphathayo (who ‘holds’ herself, i.e., abstains from premarital or extramarital sex) is one who can be taken at her word, e.g., with regards to the paternity of a pregnancy. Her self-restraint is a credit not just to herself but to her family; for as Mkhwanazi (2014a) highlights, in African culture a child’s behaviour is a reflection of the family’s upbringing of the child.
Gogo Nkosazana (55 years)62 remarks that, “As law bearers, for a long time, lawyers could be disbarred for fathering a child out of wedlock”. From this we see that policy and cultural mores mirror one another. Until 2020, “custody and guardianship of a child born out of wedlock [wa]s vested in the mother and the biological father only pa[id] maintenance, […] and [met] all the child’s requirements but d[id]not have the right of access”63 This status quo was overturned by the High Court which has legalised the joint custody of ‘illegitimate’ (GoZ, 197164) children65. With this in mind, marriage can be seen as a possible
“reproductive strategy” (Fisher, 1992; Nel, 2007; Murdock, 1949) for simplifying what may otherwise evolve to be complex parenting structures.
Ntombi describes how she would swim naked with the boys when she was a young girl and that until she entered into puberty, she saw little difference between herself and them. Once she became reproductively mature, she could no longer swim naked with boys. Though Gogo Betty was alarmed by this freedom when Ntombi shared this memory in the first FGD, this narrative is consistent with what Batisai (2013) found when interviewing Shona grandmothers in Zimbabwe. They explained that they too swam naked with boys
“until we developed some breasts” (Batisai, 2013:99). As we will learn when we get a deeper glimpse in Ntombi’s childhood, her parents did not believe in constraining her to the gendered role of a girl at a young age. They allowed her to participate in certain freedoms and activities more commonly conferred to boys, however, this changed when she became reproductively capable.
61 This is a word play on the literal translation of the Ndebele verb ukuziphatha.
62 Gogo Nkosazana like NaAnita is Ndebele-speaking but she is not Ndebele according to cultural heritage. But as she is Kalanga and therefore kinfolk to the Ndebele (cf. footnote 23, page 147); hence she has been included in the study.
Both have Ndebele Mothers. Gogo Nkosazana is not a rural woman but is well-educated. She was educated in the city, like Gogo Bhekiwe, and Gciniwe. Though they are in Sikelela when I interview them, their lives have not been unilaterally located in the rural areas.
63 https://www.herald.co.zw/give-us-access-to-our-kids-born-out-of-wedlock/
64 Children’s Act [Chapter 5:06]
65 https://allafrica.com/stories/202003200738.html
It is my view that the village elders’ apprehension about early sexual debut (both consensual and non- consensual) reflects a collective anxiety among the Ndebele that is linked to the reproductive labour-work prevent early unintended pregnancy. The messaging around ukuziphatha is pervasively transmitted, even if not completely understood by adolescent Ndebele girls. This is seen with Gogo Betty who says that when she first started menstruating her periods were irregular. With bemusement over her youthful naïvety, Gogo Betty recounts that she once confided in a friend shortly after ménarche that she feared she may be pregnant because she had not had her period in some months. Her friend was surprised and remarked that it could not be possible as Gogo did not have a boyfriend. To this, the then teenage Gogo Betty confessed she had been ‘touched’ by a boy. By touched, she meant that he had touched her hand with his own. Her friend burst into hysterical laughter saying, “You can’t fall pregnant like that. You would have to be another case of the immaculate conception!” This is an example of the kinds of “falsehoods about menstruation and their [girls’] own bodies and possibly make [girls] more vulnerable to maladjustment” (White, 2013:65). Gogo Betty’s surprise about Ntombi having been allowed to swim to swim in the river with boys in the first FGD shows that Gogo Betty – as an elder – is worried about early sexual debut and early unintended pregnancy.
Her views on the impropriety of allowing Ntombi to swim with boys as a young girl is influenced by her Christian upbringing which she shares with me. She concedes that this upbringing shapes her views about the Ndebele culture and Ndebele sexual socialisation. It is evident from the opposing stances of Ntombi’s elders and Gogo Betty that even among Ndebele elders there are divergent views about how and when Ndebele girls should be socialised into sex.