By Aly Yarwood
The role of women in a society is a discussion that has happened in relation to every corner of the earth. The most modern countries tend to have similar views when it comes to women as they are the most progressive and have always taken the first step towards equality. What we sometimes forget, however, is how much of an effect a countries traditional history can have when determining those rolls.
The traditional background of South African society is exactly what we got to examine as a class yesterday as we visited the cultural village of Lesedi, positioned in the Cradle of Humankind. This area celebrates South African’s deepest roots by educating visitors on the different tribes that created the origins of the rainbow nation. They take great pride in knowing that their country is one of the most diverse in the world with their eleven official languages.
Lesedi means light, and they express their hope that you will have found that bright light in their story. Their pamphlet reads: “Our culture is the light of our nation. Whoever walks among our culture in Lesedi, can also see the light.” However, one area in which we noticed that the light truly did not shine was the gender rolls that shadowed their history.
Our tour of this colorful town took us through different set ups of the original South African tribal villages. We met the Pedi, the Zulu warriors, the Xhosa and the Bosotho all of whom showed us their dress, their “huts” and spoke of their lifestyle, each which included the different rolls of both men and women in their tribe.
In every village we visited, it pretty much started the same: with our guide bringing us to a small circle and telling us that “this is the meeting area. Only the men are allowed here, no women.” Almost immediately after we started discussing payment. Exactly how much was one woman worth if a tribe man wanted her as his wife?
At first the answers were almost comical. In some tribes you needed eleven cows to buy your wife, in others you needed the cows plus two horses. Some tribes even offered a sort of discount if your future wife was not considered educated or a hard worker. What an absurd notion! We laughed a little as a class but then began to seriously think what this all meant.
How could you put a price on a human being, let alone making that price some farm animals? And how could a woman even dream of becoming educated when their place, as our guides so frequently reminded us, was always in the kitchen? This was all shaded with notions that the women were always protected and that no tribe would ever harm a female, but with the ever present underlying tones that females were truly just the weaker sex.
Obviously we know that these traditions were most present hundreds of years ago, but we also know that tribes are still present practicing their traditions and celebrating their heritage throughout South Africa. Maybe they are or maybe they aren’t still trading cows for wives, but the lessons are still there.
Our guides that took us through the tribal history were quite modern and probably not still practicing most of the traditions they taught us about, just pretending for a job. Despite that, however, the tone in which they used to speak of women and the jokes that they made not realizing how insensitive they may be, led me to believe that no matter how modern, the views of women in South Africa seem to still be well behind what we are used to.
In different places we had visited on our own and as a class, we had noticed that women tended to always be more submissive to men, never truly speaking up to defend their rights as women. Of course, there are some women who have worked to become quite powerful in their society as they lead their companies or play a role in the government. However, these women unfortunately do not represent the majority of the female population in South Africa.
While I continued to think about how wrong this whole outlook is, I heard something that made me stop to dig a little deeper; “in a democracy, you cannot dictate how people live.” Democracies all over the world pride themselves on the fact that they are a free nation. Unless a life choice is literally against the law, how can anyone say that someone else’s lifestyle is the wrong way to live? It is their choice as a citizen of that democracy to decide the values under which they live their lives.
In short, no. I don’t agree with the outlook that South Africans have when it comes to women. It is my opinion that their decisions are outdated and instead of celebrating trading farm animals for women they should focus more on the holistic traditions in which they were founded, ones that people can celebrate and appreciate all over the world. But then again, its not my history, its not my life and in truth I know very little about the country and its people in general. Who am I to come in and say that their way of life is wrong, when it’s not my life at all?
