"We Are Made Quiet by This Annihilation": Historicizing Concepts of Bodily Pollution and Dangerous Sexuality in South Africa
2006; Boston University; Volume: 39; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2326-3016
Autores Tópico(s)African studies and sociopolitical issues
ResumoUNokufa Whenever I tried to visualize you, Death, . . . I thought I saw you lurking in darkness, . . . Then you appeared, and families were scattered And many alas, were lost to us forever! . . . Again I cry, alas! For have I not seen The children of Sihlonono Dying in their prime? Have I not watched, behind a screen of shrubs, The daughters of our scattered tribes Abandon struggle to keep their maidenhood And quench lust of youths who were their kindred. -Benedict Wallet Vilakazi (1935)1 It has become a sad truism that black youths comprise of most vulnerable risk groups in South Africa. Their rising rate of HIV infection is ascribed, in part, to chronic unemployment, which afflicts post-apartheid society and frustrates their pursuit of modernity. In this milieu transactional sex becomes a vital source of income and commodities.2 Such quests, in turn, stoke rumors that fertile women with multiple partners spread fatal bodily pollution, umnyama, in provinces hit hard by AIDS KwaZulu-Natal. This charge of promiscuity embodies a prominent concept in Zulu cosmology-dread of misfortune that can be transferred through intimacy. It also evokes a colonial idea that African sexuality is debased and menacing. The latter accusation triggers conspiracy theories that blame whites for hatching AIDS.3 Some observers of pandemic have asserted that these attributions reflect novel responses to a scourge defying local explanation.4 B. W. Vilakazi's 193S poem, mourning those dying in their prime and the lust of youths, begins to tell a different story. A revered Zulu intellectual, Vilakazi grew up in colonial Natal learning dramaturgies of of old. A decade before his birth in 1906, his parents lived through rinderpest epizootic. By 1897, this virulent virus had left veil strewn in carcasses and cattle kraals emptied of every ox, cow, or calf their owner possessed.5 Four decades later, Vilakazi compiled a comprehensive lexicon for a massive Zulu-English dictionary. The term for death, ukufa, precedes definitions alluding to epidemic, indecent appetite, diseased cattle, and one vicious person [who] will infect a whole community. One key noun for rinderpest explains how livestock perished like flies, an apocalyptic vision summarized in ukufa idiom, zabulawa ngukufa iathi qimu: 'They were destroyed by epidemic, collapsing everywhere.6 Vilakazi's etymologies confirm that words describing catastrophic death had already been enfolded into Zulu language. The similarities between AIDS and rinderpest extend beyond linguistics. Both outbreaks progressed from localized epidemics to transcontinental pandemics, generating alarm within Western medical establishment.7 They also highlighted unrelenting social and physical stresses on African families and attendant restlessness of their youths. The epizootic first infiltrated Horn in 1880s after invading Italian forces shipped rinderpest-infected cattle from India (where virus was endemic) to Somalia.8 Rinderpest then advanced inexorably to South Africa by 18%. Along way, it eradicated entire herds, destroying bridewealth cattle (known in Zulu as ilobolo) that upheld traditional African customs regulating fertility. In absence of ilobolo, which sealed nuptial negotiations sanctioning reproduction, Zulu-speaking youths at turn of twentieth century increasingly engaged in premarital intercourse, accelerating a trend that gained momentum with mounting labor migrancy. Such transgressions worried elders who tried to safeguard sexual norms and buoy their sinking world of domestic patriarchy. After British conquest of Zululand in 1879, white authorities imposed heavier taxes on homesteads and appropriated more land from chiefdoms. Shrinking native reserves yielded fewer crops, which propelled youths to seek wages in colonial economy. …
Referência(s)