Life is Long

What a week of mixed emotions it’s been for me! 

From the good news that Ghana is moving towards where all progressive Africans have always wanted to go; 

• free movement of Africans within Africa, 
• to the not so great news that the country I live in is run by a family rather than a government. Kung’phindzel’ etulu mncwi (talk about real time déjà vu); 
• to the same country’s deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, announcing the good news that government is considering decriminalizing the oldest profession in the world – sex work; 
• to the ever present reality that the raging and abrasive Donald Trump could be my next boss; 
• to songbird Mshoza’s insistence on going under knives and daggers just so that she can resemble some other woman that her ancestors don’t recognize; 
• to some Swazi bachelor declaring that the reason Manzini Magistrate, Sebenzile Ndlela,continues ‘to destroy other people’s lives is because she does not have a spouse’.  

Phew! Life is long.

Ironically, I was reading the March 2016 DestinyMagazine cover story of the equally husbandless African Union Chairperson, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, when I bumped into the assertion about Magistrate Ndlela on a popular social network.

All this within just a week of International Women’s Day commemorations; a day in which men and women pledged to work towards parity simply because women are as human as men. 

We should all know this by now because after all, it is women who give birth to and nurture boys into men but hey… I guess life is long – just too long to make sense of such simple biological and sociological truths.

In a nutshell, it was not a particularly inspiring week for me. And so I shared with the leadership (read: lover) that this desert fruit salad of a week left me confidently hopeless and clueless about what to write about. I told him that I may just resort to writing about him. 

He laughed it off; “All I can say is good luck Ma.”  I found myself giving half a laugh to what was indeed supposed to be our trivial private joke because mid-laughter I’d realized the depth of his statement.

He obviously said it in a dismissive manner but the truth is, if I ever had to write about his goodness, all HIS mail boxes (not mine) would be flooded with lackluster “Hey”s, “Hi”s and blatant, “So you’re also based in Joburg naboPhilile Masango?” -  Small talk that could easily take the shape and form of a wild winter fire on a windy day- escalating rapidly to a side chick or two (makhwapheni) kind of scenario. 

So yes, I would need all the good luck to have him remember to give all of his attention to me, his Graça Machel, his partner in leadership.

And this is not because the lover is as handsome, rich and ematseni as Duduzane Zuma or HRH Omari but just because ‘indvodza licatsa’ (a man is like a piece of meat that must be shared).

I’m not even exaggerating. It’s happened to me before. I also once witnessed a woman lose her eye at S’tegi Hotel, during a fight over a man whose wife was sleeping peacefully at home during the bloody brawl. 

I’ve seen beautiful professional women in their thirties throttling each other on social media over a man. It’s an awfully ugly sight.

But why are we like this? Is it such questions of our person rather than professional competence like “Does Magistrate Sebenzile Ndlela have a husband?” that put us under pressure to have a man no matter what? 

Do we really see ourselves as of lesser value or even incomplete if we do not have a man to talk about as our own?

I threw in the descriptors about Duduzane and HRH Omari because this is another thing that we like to do as women (including professional women); my man drives a Merc, he lives in Dalriach, his friends are the Princes from Lobamba Lomdzala, he used to date that TV girl Jabu, he went to Salesian and was part of those famous boys known as the TDKs. Like? 

What is it to us what the man possesses (including his exes even)? Are we that much in the dark about who we are individually that we are constantly seeking validation from the roots and stems of patriarchy and capitalism? Why do we want to view these men as resources and sources of life?

Are we still listening to our old school mothers who didn’t have much choice but to seek marriage and stay married for the sake of improving their social welfare? 

But how does this make sense when our academic education and professional careers were supposed to make us look beyond that? Will we ever be able to choose a struggle when it comes to our sexual reproductive health? Is this life too long for us?

I’m not even trying to say that men have no place in our ‘educated’ lives as per accusations leveled against the first feminists of the world. 

On the contrary, I love men, men’s lives matter; after all, I credit much of my upbringing to a man, my father who raised me among a battalion of brothers and therefore men will always have a leading role in my eyes – a leadership role as equal to women–one of the  key lessons from my father. 

I just sometimes feel like we women are unclear about what role we want to play as women in our own lives and therefore in men’s lives. Men and women should complement each other full stop.

Can we return to the drawing board? Life is too short to aspire to be anyone else but you but life is long enough to revisit Beijing and review Agenda 2063 as championed by the women of this continent through the African Union. 

I don’t even know how women ended up being the point of this article and please don’t ask me; I’ve had a week as long as life itself. Thanks. Bye.