The myth of African maleness exposed

Prof Jimi Adesina (Incumbent of the SARChI Research Chair in Social Policy and Family, UWC) delivered the keynote address at the Archie Mafeje Symposium at Unisa on 27 March.

Africa has an ancient history of gender equity and needs to use extracts of the “useful past” to deal with problems of the present, said Prof Jimi O Adesina during his keynote address at the Archie Mafeje Symposium at Unisa on 27 March.

Adesina is the incumbent of the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) Research Chair in Social Policy and Family at the university, and heads the Sociology Department at the University of the Western Cape. The theme of the symposium and accompanying memorial lecture was “Understanding African social formations, African families and social policy”.

Audience members, which included the Jamaican High Commissioner to South Africa, Her Excellency Norma Taylor Roberts, were taken on an intellectual journey second to none as Adesina exposed the fallacy of a number of commonly held beliefs regarding gender roles. One of these is that the perceived subservient role of women on the continent (“chained to the kitchen sink due to domesticity and the absence of economic power”, in the words of Adesina) is the result of patrifocality, that is, a focus on the father, being the norm in Africa.

About the Archie Mafeje Symposium and Memorial LectureUnisa’s Archie Mafeje Research Institute (AMRI), in collaboration with the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA), hosts an annual symposium and memorial lecture in honour of Professor Archie Mafeje, the great Pan Africanist and renowned African intellectual. The lecture and symposium celebrate the memory of an inspiring figure who worked tirelessly to highlight the importance of being African through self-knowledge, self-control and self-emancipation.

Adesina’s presentation speaks to the heart of Unisa’s celebrations of its 140 years of shaping futures on the continent and its future responsibilities in this regard.

Female husbands not unusual

Citing the work of a number of scholars, Adesina explained that, in fact, matrifocality – a focus on the mother – is the norm in Africa. “In her work, the Nigerian Ifi Amadiume turned gender discourses preceding hers on their heads,” said Adesina. She examined the societal dynamics of Nnobi (in Eastern Nigeria) and identified a strong matrifocality and female orientation.

Interestingly, she noted the phenomenon of what she termed “female husbands”: the wives taken by first daughters, barren women, rich widows, wives of rich men, and successful female farmers and traders. Procreation intercourse happened between the wife and chosen relatives of the “female husband”, with resulting offspring recognised as the child of the “female husband”. This, she argued, proved that much of the anthropological works of the 19th and 20th century on gender, kinship and descent were derived from specifically Indo-European histories which were mapped on non-European experiences.

Looking beyond anatomy

Yet another Nigerian, Oyeronke Oyewumi, focused on the Yorùbá society and confronted the gender narrative in Western feminist discourse. Said Adesina: “Oyewumi stated that in pre-colonial Yorùbá society, body-type was not the basis for social hierarchy: males and females were not ranked according to anatomic distinction. Put simply, gender was not an organising principle in Yoruba society prior to colonisation by the West. Rather, the primary principle of social organisation was seniority defined by relative age. What Amadiume, Oyewumi and others demonstrate is the importance of historical sociology; one that goes back to before late colonialism and how Indo-European influences profoundly reshaped many African societies—a process that is ongoing.”