Exploring South African Masculinities

Abstract

C hanging Men in Southern Africa is an important book. Indeed, a leading scholar in the field, Robert Connell, writes on the back cover that it is 'the foundation text of masculinity studies in southern Africa'. The intrinsic value of studying masculinities in addition to femininities has become increasingly accepted over the past 20 years. The feminist contention that all men have power over women is questioned when studying the construction of masculinity, because not all men have equal power. The patriarchal nature of apartheid, gendered crises of violence and the HIV pandemic, and many other dynamics make the exploration of South African masculinities especially pertinent. The book's content derives from a Colloquium held at the U niversity of Natal in 1997. The themes of the Colloquium have also been discussed in an issue of Agenda ('The new men?' No 37, 1998) and an edition of the Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol 24, No 4, 1998). The book's 20 chapters cover a wide and eclectic range of subjects, all seeking to assess how masculinity is constructed and exercised in a local context and how political and social change interact and are influenced by these constructions. Morrell's opening chapter introduces a key theme of the book, that of a hegemonic masculinity. A hegemonic masculinity (first articulated by Connell) subordinates other masculinities in the successful projection of what it is to be a 'real man' (pg 3). This is a contested and shifting process. The result is to create a 'gender consensus' which orders society and legitimates the power of certain groups of men (pg 9). The question of what constitutes South Africa's current hegemonic masculinity is a particularly fascinating one to pose. For, as is clear from reading the book, constructions of masculinity are highly contested and in many places, contradictory. Morrell asserts that the state is the most important agent of policing and initiating changes of masculinity (pg 20) and he contends that unlike other post-conflict societies, such as post-war West Germany where the state successfully demilitarised masculinity, South Africa has faced particular challenges because 'the state is the symbol of victory victory over apartheid' (pg 21). This has not only threatened previously elite hegemonic masculinities (Afrikaner and white men who are studied in two excellent chapters) but has also threatened 'comrades' who defined their masculine identity through the armed struggle and who now are marginalised, their identities criminalised in the post-apartheid space. South Africa's violence is explored in a number of chapters. Jacklyn Cock attributes South Africa's 'gun culture' to a crisis within masculine identity. Legal gun ownership has been intermeshed with notions of citizenship. Illegal gun ownership, particularly of AK-47s has become a profound basis of self-definition because this weapon 'is not just a gun. It is a legend, a currency, a rrig