Setswana Culture and Gender

Selected excerpts from 
Culture, Gender and HIV/AIDS
Understanding and Acting on the Issues
MUSA W. DUBE


We are gendered human beings, all the time, everywhere. Gender pervades all aspects of our lives and of our human senses. In fact, we often think it is divine, hence unchangeable. Here is the strength and difficulty of dealing with gender issues. Many people think gender is natural or biological. It is not. It is a social product. Hence members of the society can reconstruct it, if and when we find it wanting. For example, the people of our era have been brought to realize that gender is “a major driving force behind the AIDS epidemic”. This, I insist, is more than enough reason for us to seek to change our current gender constructs.

Culture and religion: how is gender constructed and maintained?
When we begin to ask how gender is constructed and maintained, we realize how central culture is. Something as deep and as pervasive as gender needs a range of social support that helps to maintain it and keep it alive through the generations. It can only thrive through myth and cultural and religious beliefs that give a stamp of approval and a “blessing” to what is certainly a social construct. I would like to plot the construction of gender from birth to death by showing how gender is maintained and reproduced in culture, using particularly Setswana cultures.


Naming: What happens when a child is born? How is gender marked? In most cultures the child is named. The naming can be neutral, but in some cultures it becomes the first social construct. In the Setswana cultures, for example, a girl child might be named Segametsi (one who draws water), Mosidi (one who grinds flour), Bontle (beauty), Khumo (one who will bring bride wealth), Boingotlo (the humble one), Dikeledi (tears, one who cries), Maitseo (the one who behaves well), Lorato (love). Boy children may be given the following names: Modisaotsile (the shepherd), Mojaboswa (the inheritor), Kgosi (the leader), Seganka (the brave one), Moagi (the builder). Each of us can think of our own naming system and examine whether it distributes power of leadership, property ownership and public leadership equally among boys and girls. In the Setswana naming system, the names spell out the gender roles and they certainly do not distribute power equally among boys and girls. The boy child is marked as leader, property-owner and public leader; the girl child is a domestic player, humble, a lover, and one who must be beautiful.

Storytelling: The childhood stage is characterized by culturally educating children through proverbs, story-telling, language and school. For example, when I grew up we learned proverbs and story-telling round the fire. If you go back and check what these say about women and men, you will find that it is a cultural bank that does not distribute power equally between different genders. Here we learn such proverbs as Gandinke di etelelwa ke tse di namagadi (a woman never leads), Monna o wa kgomothwa (a man need not be handsome – just pick any), Mosadi tshwene o jewa maboga (a woman’s labour is harvested by someone else).
We learned many stories. When looking at them now, we realize they taught that a good girl is one who is obedient and cooks a good meal for her husband (like the folk tale about the wife who tamed her snake husband with her good cooking); a girl must care about beauty (Tsananapo), a boy must care about cows/property (Masilo), and must be a brave protector (Delele). Today this may not be reproduced by traditional ways of learning, but it is quite prevalent in TV shows like the soap operas children watch and the magazines they read.

Marriage: This stage is one of those rites of passage where gender roles are underlined and reinforced. In Setswana cultures, the old married women take the new bride and counsel her quite painfully until she cries. Some of the things they say are: Nyalo e a itshokelwa (you must endure marriage, it will be difficult), Ngwanaka, monna ga a botswe kwa a tswang (my child, a man is never asked where he went or slept), Monna phafana oa fapanelwa (a man is a calabash that is passed around). Culture expects and tolerates a man’s unfaithfulness. You must remember that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach – so cook for him. If your husband hits you, and you get a black eye, never reveal it; say you bumped against the wall on your way to the toilet in the dark. Here violence is institutionally tolerated! The bridegroom, on the other hand, is told, “Today you are a man. See to it that your wife and children have food and shelter. Make sure they are protected.” In most cases, the new husband is not counselled. It is just assumed he knows what it means to be a husband.

The representation of gender roles during the wedding celebration is also evident in the songs and actions. One of the most dramatic demonstrations of gender roles in a wedding of the Northern Botswana is when the bride enters the home from the church. Guests stand in two rows holding all the domestic utensils and acting out what a wife is expected to do. As she walks in, holding the hand of her husband, some will be pounding or weeding, others will be nursing a baby, some will be sweeping or cooking, some will be carrying a bundle of firewood. All these activities will be demonstrated, against a background of singing, dancing and ululation. Again, in this demonstration of gender roles very little is said about the role of a husband – except that the husband is to expect all these numerous activities from his wife. Some of the latest gendered traditions surrounding marriage are what are called the kitchen party or bridal shower. The fact that it is called a kitchen party speaks volumes on what is expected from the wife. 


Death: Even the passage from life to death does not escape gender construction. Culture has put in place rituals that reinforce and maintain gender roles surrounding death.In some Botswana cultures,widows undergo quite painful rituals to cleanse them of the blood of their dead husband. In Botswana a widow must wear a black or blue dress for a whole year to mark her status and warn other men to stay away, for any man who has sexual intercourse with a widow before the cleansing ceremony will supposedly fall ill. During this period, therefore, she must not see another man. The widower, however, does not have to wear black mourning dress for the society to know him. It follows that he does not have to abstain, except out of his own good will towards his late wife.

In many cultures, burials of women and men were and still are gender-marked. A man was buried in his kraal, wrapped in a fresh skin of a cow, and well equipped with weapons of war, spears and rods. A woman could be buried in the home, with pots and other cooking utensils. The cultural thinking is that even in the other life/heaven women and men would still be pursuing their socially ascribed roles. In some Batswana cultures, once a woman marries away from her ethnic group, she cannot return to be buried in her home town or village. A married woman stays married – dead or alive.

http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/mission/hiv-curriculum-index.html