This week has been one where I was on edge, given its been a few weeks in a stressed state with UKZN assignments and all however the underlying stressor is the conversation around Gender-Based Violence where police are not doing enough, where we find more enablers and perpetrators tweeting freely, and women, fearful of their lives share the plight that falls on deaf eyes it seems.
South Africa, 26 years into a rainbow nation pipedream has become one of the highest-ranked rape capitals of the world. In this country, women say “Men are living the good life, this country is a haven for rapists and abusers, they are protected they are in powerful positions the chances of a man getting away with murder (literally) are higher than the looting of Parliament officials being bought to book)”.
Granted. I love hip-hop, I am guilty of Homophobia at a time when it was more tolerated than the present, misogyny, which was the central norm in commercial hip-hop until a point where women started taking ownership of their own bodies. Women started owning their sexuality, empowering themselves beyond the video vixen objectification and unpolemically controlling the narrative of their power, which to no surprise was met with criticism of men. Same men hypocritically justify their moral compass when their power position in society is challenged by capable women who have confirmed a fear that has driven patriarchal oppression: The fear of not being needed. The fear of not knowing what to do for a woman who can do just about everything on her own, what can you bring to the table that is not on her table already?.
How do I become the better half of a complete woman?
An Insecure Man
Let’s step back a little bit to my previous paragraph. What normalized my homophobic nature? What do I mean when I say at a time where it was more tolerated? Enter: The Boondocks. The Boondocks unbeknownst to my consciousness was a satire concept show where just about every black stereotype was brought forward comically though I am now aware that the primary mission of these episodes was to bring light and conversations around these stereotypes social practices that were popular and capitalized on. One of them being: Homophobia.
Beyond the typical (and the fact that this was a conventional norm as and is a problem in and of itself) Moral Sin that the Christian community directs towards Homophobia being a sin, most social power structures did have a point in time, millennia if we are specific where the narrative of Homophobia was endorsed as far as countries making homosexuality a punishable crime, often by death.
If we are a product of our environments and what we are socialized into social psychology and sociology state, then I was a full product of the American Negro Complex. Not the Nigger from the era of slavery, but the Nigga a fractured by-product of anger, perpetual violence misogyny, gang culture, gun culture, Xvideos culture, and Homophobic Culture.
Remember when hip-hop had a hypersensitivity towards homosexuality that the slightest sentence that had a gay connotation had to be followed with Pause? Lil’ Wayne said No Homo Though despite referring to himself when Lollipop stars because the sentence He’s so swee Sweet shawty wanna lick the wrapper so I let her lick the rapper would be interpreted in the scope reference to his adoration for another man.
Is the prefix of He as a pronoun so problematic that a lesser mind would ignore the suffix of Shawty (a slang term for a woman) and assume that Wayne is homosexual because of the interpretation of the sentence itself from a homophobic stance that was popular in 2008 and years before or was it the many YouTube conspiracy theorist who profess the Illuminati mission of normalizing homosexuality?
I’m sure you have heard of the Gay Propaganda Conspiracy. Where Wayne being gay was at the center of attention because of the infamous Birdman Kiss picture in addition to the many time’s Birdman has made affectionate references to Wayne as his baby (in a romantic context) and how cash money is a den of sin where Birdman sleeps with Male Artists and initiated them into the “cult”?
There was a time where our latent homosexuality could exist vicariously in endorsing these conspiracy theories with a view, a like, and a comment and fortunately the conversation is changing where the narrative transcended from “Damn I need to stop listening to Wayne cause I’ll be possessed to What is wrong with Wayne being gay IF he is gay?” The old frame of thought where Sin and Satanism are attached to homosexuality is slowly being challenged, especially when the LGBQTI+ community can maintain their sexuality without losing their belief systems.
The second notion that was a by-product of the famous “Nigga you gay” by Riley Freeman. The personification of one half of the black conscious mind: the wild ignorant hoodlum man the thug America loves because he fills the prisons with labor and gang culture, which does nothing more than benefit private corporations. His polar opposite is the black intellect, the panther Huey Freeman a personification of Huey newton, the rationale of the angry, uncontrollable Tupac of the freeman family.
Often the voice of reason and makes us aware of concepts that are often the pitfalls of society, more specifically the black community. In Season 2 of The Boondocks, there was an episode that made light and bought attention to snitching.
The history of black communities being against the notion of being informants even though, according to Huey Freeman, each neighborhood had at least one informant. The anti-snitch campaign and movement’s tradition originates from how informants worked with law enforcement to report political activities and manners, sometimes illegal, where black people were taking their power back from white supremacy. Impimpi, Snitch Niggas were not so different from the House Nigger, the happy slave who reported everything to his master and was a faulty split end in the progress of black liberation, it is of no surprise that the murder of such a person was justified and normalized.
From the political arena to all but destructive gang culture, be it your American Bloods and Crips to your South African Numbers Gangs, 26 & 28s, we all grew up knowing that Snitches Get Stitches. Every member of the social structure from your mother, your favorite rapper, and your best friend socialized the notion of not telling, often because snitching was, in many cases, a breach of trust.
The problem comes in how blurry the line gets because often, the normalization of not telling has a consequence of enabling crimes against humanity, more specifically, women. The great irony is how men who are either the enabler or the perpetrator are first in the line to ask “why didn’t you say anything immediately?” as if this culture amnesia that is thrown to a victim didn’t stem from many factors one often being how the woman was socialized into not snitching!
We taught women to Bekezela meaning when the focus of the good and the bad times vow comes into close suffix analysis, culturally the bad meant you tolerate infidelity and abuse, and more importantly, you do not expose your husband publicly as he (as the breadwinner) should be respected even when he is wrong.
So when my friend Luhle Shange spoke of Cancel Culture she touched on Gender Base Violence, especially the part where in addition to accountability, she stressed the importance of seeing something and saying something now. This made me think about how we draw the line between snitching and reporting a crime against a woman? When all we have been socialized traditionally is problematic?
Women fear that men will find out who reported them and could kill or rape them to maintain the power of silencing as a mechanism that serves the purpose of enabling Patriarchal Power. Throughout history, men have known and existed through power and violence and have gone to great lengths to obtain and keep their positions of power as it came with a wide range of benefits the most potent being the adoration of millions and sexual attraction and love of women who would be the trophy prise to validate their worth.
The Trophy Wife culture is older than we think; more importantly, the reason and strength that made the man a leader of his people and his home being the balance that his wife, the reason behind his success being there to hold his hand all the way. In this interesting and conflicting time where women are transitioning themselves into positions of power, the threat, the spiritual imbalance of the masculine and feminine in men, the vengeful ego that comes from an insecure place perpetuates rape culture and secret-keeping.
Quincy D Jones once said the root of all egos is an extensive collection of insecurity; Kiernan Forbes, often the victim of his own songs, once said the ego is the root of all evil. A new conversation is essential to have is taking place where we have to question ourselves even further, is the No Snitching norm still applicable in the era where we need to report crimes against women?
Is it still relevant to blackball women from political positions of power because their “emotional rationale” will be problematic when cold hard decisions need to be made? We men often forget that our power decisions are made by our women, but we will never credit them because our egos are a priority akiri? We forget that women, too, have masculine energy in their spiritual DNA make up.
Women have sacrificed more than men ever will, they have given their bodies to survive a man who has taken abuse from the outside and shot his own wife because he did not know how to process his own emotions. Maybe now indoda kumele ikhale, maybe now therapy should be a prerequisite in all social structures, and most definitely, we need a Female President and Police commissioner.
Bheki Cele being more concerned with COVID Policing than GBV crime is enough evidence that social structures need a significant configuration. As David Ngcobo once said I got into the game to change it now I’m all up in the setting I’m like edit, edit, edit, edit close, woah! we need more women to get into the game and edit the setting, and we need more men to close the notions that have silenced abuse, fraud, looting, Homophobia. We need to go beyond a switch up. We need a whole new page, a whole new way of thought. The ink we are squeezing into the 21st-century chapter of history is not only crowded at the bottom of the page but also written by the blood. The strange fruit that hung from the tree was a negro man, now the strange fruit hanging on the Genetically Modified Tree is of Sarah Baartman, a woman.
Blood on the leaves, Blood in The roots, white supremacy had feared the spirits of angry black souls who were enslaved and killed when they made the earth shake, it is to no surprise rather our fault for not noticing that men name Tornados, ikanyamba, Hurricanes after women. As soon as our winds bring the white superstructure to book and its time for the black man to look into himself and his crimes against his own people, it is the winds of slain woman that will drown us in our opulence. There is no wealth without the woman.
Father, Son, and the holy spirit is a blatant lie. What you mean to say is Mother, Father, and Child as the real holy trinity. Writing women off when they are mother nature herself will be our downfall if that is not already happening. Mother forgive them for they know not what they do.
At the end of her Podcast Luhle did ask for us to send her our thoughts about her podcast and the subject matter so by all means please hit up @LovingLuhle on twitter and IG and be sure to follow the weekly update of The Loving Luhle Show. We Just Know You Going to Love it.
Written by: Malibongwe Dladla
Edited by: Grammarly x Malibongwe Dladla
Image Curation: Malibongwe Dladla
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