Who needs a father? South African men reflect on being fathered

The legacy of apartheid and continued social and economic change have meant that many South African men and women have grown up in families from which biological fathers are missing. In both popular and professional knowledge and practice this has been posed as inherently a problem particularly for boys who are assumed to lack a positive male role model. In drawing on qualitative interviews with a group of South African men in which they speak about their understandings of being fathered as boys, this paper makes two key arguments. The first is that contemporary South African discourses tend to pathologize the absence of the biological father while simultaneously undermining the role of social fathers. Yet, this study shows that in the absence of biological fathers other men such as maternal or paternal uncles, grandfathers, neighbours, and teachers often serve as social fathers. Most of the men who participated in this study are able to identify men who - as social rather than biological fathers - played significant roles in their lives. Secondly, we suggest that while dominant discourses around social fatherhood foreground authoritarian and controlling behaviours, there are moments when alternative more nurturing and consultative versions of being a father and/or being fathered are evident in the experiences of this group of men.IS

Gender and participation: critical reflection on Zenzeleni Networks in Mankosi, South Africa

This paper unveils the complexity of gender dynamics by reflecting on lessons learned in Zenzeleni Networks and provides a different perspective to notions of “participation” by asking “who participates and how?” The paper employs a feminist conceptual framework, particularly social constructionist theory and intersectionality, to understand women’s participation and experience, analyzing multi-layered and intersecting structural injustices that marginalize women’s choices, empowerment, scope for agency, and sense of ownership. In-depth interviews and focus group discussions gathered information from women living in Mankosi and women who are working for Zenzeleni Networks, respectively. Results show that gendered power dynamics of the community were reproduced within Zenzeleni Networks. Although women play a key role in the everyday operationalization of Zenzeleni Networks, their role has been considered part of their domestic duties, which results in misrecognition and underrepresentation of their work.CONFINE Integrated Project FIRE #288535 Telkom, Cisco and Aria Technologies via the Telkom Centre of Excellence (CoE) programme

Pathways to gender equitable men: Reflections on findings from the International Men and Gender Equality survey in the light of twenty years of gender change in South Africa

This article reflects on the findings of the International Men and Gender Equality survey through the lens of contemporary South African contexts of change. While huge strides have been made toward gender justice in South Africa since 1994, there are many indications, including high rates of gender-based violence, that inequalities on the basis of gender intersected with other forms of inequality persist. Further, some research illustrates a growing resistance among men and women to gender justice policies and measures. The article argues that far more work is required in South Africa to shift both men and women's perceptions of the value of gender justice for boys and men, and in facilitating a more authentic investment for boys and men in their own and social change. It also points to how much of the current scholarship on men and boys focuses on "problems" that reproduces a negative construction of certain groups of boys and men that is also raced and classed. In taking stock of a lack of progress in twenty years of democracy and gender equality goals in South Africa, the article argues the importance of shifting emphasis to what may be seen as the "positive" moments of men's relationship to gender equality and justice. It argues that the findings of the survey point to the value of strategic engagement with and acknowledgment of existing participation of boys and men in alternative, equitable, and constructive practices, such as more active participation in caring practices.IS

The singularity of the post-apartheid black condition

Informed by Césaire’s awareness on the singularity of the black situation as well as Biko’s sense of the consequence of black-conscious solidarity for overcoming white racism, I present some notes concerning social cohesion. I counsel against social cohesion without socio-economic justice. I would like us to consider how we might radically rework what I see as the sentiment urging the discourse of social cohesion into socially-just solidarity in relation to the peculiarity of the black condition. I argue that even if social cohesion is considered a preeminent social ideal, it remains an empty signifier if not preceded by policies and programmes to overcome persisting socio-economic inequalities, especially because of the history and contemporary facts of colonial, apartheid and neo-apartheid injustices. I contend that projects intended to foster cohesion might do best if they are prefigured by a radical politics of socio-economic justice. In turn, a politics of social justice needs grounding in an understanding of our unique situatedness as a historically and currently unjust society

Watch your man: Young black males at risk of homicidal violence

This article will argue that masculine domination is a crucial factor in black male homicidal victimisation in South Africa, but that this is not always appreciated. Under apartheid it was black men who were most likely to be at the receiving end of fatal political violence. Currently black men are still most likely to die violently from interpersonal conflicts. This article aims to underline the fact that it is important for political leaders, policy makers and police chiefs to speak out more often, publicly and without beating around the bush, that young black males are at the highest risk of homicide in South Africa. The article also offers an explanation why young black males are most vulnerable to homicidal violence

Psychology in society (PINS) and traditions: Back towards a critical African psychology

Tradition is an ubiquitous yet in the main veiled question in the annals of Psychology in Society (PINS) and critical psychology. The traditions I have in mind are what might be provisionally be referred to as “African traditions”. Critical psychology seems to be comfortable with neglecting doing some self-examination on its African traditions or absence thereof. In this article I thus reflect on PINS’s and critical psychology’s knowledge traditions, including our intellectual ancestry, and their dis/connections to Africa. I suggest that we might want to ask ourselves questions such as what, for whom is, and why a critical psychology, in a recently liberated society, on this continent, today, if it is not simply and mainly opposed to mainstream psychology. I contend that it is important within the context of imperial and colonial knowledge that marginalises thought from the global South for critical psychologists to account for their own traditions, not only others’ traditions, and link to critical African thought from beyond our borders

Six theses on African Psychology for the world

Thesis 1: All of human psychology is African psychologyRead from below, from the perspective of victims of slavery, colonialism and contemporary racism, histories of knowledge are reminders of subjection. Europe’s triumphant march of progress expresses the destruction of indigenous know-how. European civilisation implies the dehumanisation of locals. Any history of indigenous African psychology is therefore a history of subjugated knowledge. Like all histories of victims of legislated dehumanisation, be they of the first nations, indigenous people, blacks, women and queers, such a history will always be entangled. It is outside history, against the archive, reflective of conquest. It speaks to loss, haunted by attempts at rediscovery. Thesis 2: The spirits of European philosophers and United States (US) poets in psychology in AfricaPsychology in the non-colloquial sense refers to disciplined knowledge. It is the systematic study of the psyche. That is one definition. It is not undisputed. Other psychologists prefer the study of behaviour. That is another definition. Not everyone agrees with it. There is actually no universally agreed upon definition. Thesis 3: A need exists for more interchanges and more openness to influence each otherTo state that psychology in Africa has been influenced by European presuppositions, notions and morals is not to be interpreted as arguing for expunging all foreign ideas. In his contribution to the present issue, Augustine Nwoye, contends “although some Eurocentric theories of the human personality or personhood … already exist, including those developed by some African American psychologists … some of which are very relevant to our experience, a continental African version of the theory of African human personhood is still needed”. Nwoye is arguing for a universal psychology of pluriversal psychologies, a multiplicity of views of the personhood instead of a domineering Euro-American centred perspective of the self. In passing, given the dearth of African centred theories of personality, I conjecture that over time Nwoye’s article, “An Africentric theory of human personhood”, is going to be very influential and well-debated. Thesis 4: Black psychology is linked to but not identical with African psychologyIn 1969 Noel Chabani Manganyi (2013) published his paper on hysteria among African women. The following year he completed a doctorate in psychology at the University of South Africa. Because he is black, Manganyi could be seen as the rightful father of African psychology and, therefore that the history African psychology begins in the late 1960s. Thesis 5: A distinction is made between extraverted, Western European/US American-centric psychology in Africa and introverted, African-centred psychologySo confusion reigns when surveying African psychology. Elsewhere I have said, unless one twists oneself into knots, “all of psychology done in and for Africa, about Africans, by Africans as well as non-Africans (working on Africa) is African psychology” (Ratele, 2017b: 1). It is clearly a straightforward matter, I averred, except when it is not. And the latter, not the former, is usually the state of affairs. Thesis 6: A critical African-centred psychology between African psychology and critical psychologyFollowing the founding of the African Psychology Forum in 2009 as a division of Psychological Society of South Africa, the debates on, among other things, the uses, definition, status, aims, and approaches of African psychology were reignited. However, there is still often more heat than light about what is African Psychology and why we might need it or not

Masculinity, sexuality and vulnerability in 'working' with young men in South African contexts: 'you feel like a fool and an idiot...a loser'

South Africa has seen a rapid increase in scholarship and programmatic interventions focusing on gender and sexuality, and more recently on boys, men and masculinities. In this paper, we argue that a deterministic discourse on men's sexuality and masculinity in general is inherent in many current understandings of adolescent male sexuality, which tend to assume that young women are vulnerable and powerless and young men are sexually powerful and inevitably also the perpetrators of sexual violence. Framed within a feminist, social constructionist the oretical perspective, the current research looked at how the masculinity and sexuality of South African young men is constructed, challenged or maintained. Focus groups were conducted with young men between the ages of 15 and 20 years from five different schools in two regions of South Africa, the Western and Eastern Cape. Data were analysed using Gilligan's listening guide method. Findings suggest that participants in this study have internalised the notion of themselves as dangerous, but were also exploring other possible ways of being male and being sexual, demonstrating more complex experiences of manhood. We argue for the importance of documenting and highlighting the precariousness, vulnerability and uncertainty of young men in scholarly and programmatic work on masculinities.IBS

Teacher as learner: a personal reflection on a short course for South African university educators

Higher education is understood to play a critical role in ongoing processes of social transformation in post-apartheid South Africa through the production of graduates who are critical and engaged citizens. A key challenge is that institutions of higher education are themselves implicated in reproducing the very hierarchies they hope to transform. In this paper, I reflect critically on my experiences of a course aimed at transforming teaching through transforming teachers. In this paper, I foreground my own positionality as a white female educator as I draw on feminist theorising to reflect on my experiences as a learner in the Community, Self and Identity course. I suggest that we need to teach in ways that are more cognisant of the complexities of the constraints on personal freedom in the past if we are to contribute to the development of social justice in the future.IS