Feminist Knowledge | Student Writings

Changing Times in Botswana: a Gendered Experience
By Sandra Decasper Chacon

I. Introduction

The African continent has lived the last years as a time of change, where political institutions have been challenged, where new groups in society have started to gain a voice, and where individuals are given space to reflect about identities. Most countries have also gained independence from colonial powers. This is the case of Botswana, which became the Independent Republic of Botswana in 1966. This independence has not only meant the construction of a new political regime, but the possibility to question the "way things are". This means the social constructs in which Africans live and acquire their identities.

An essential part of these identities is the way in which individuals have became gendered, and the manner in which gender is related and interwoven with all the other features that influence our conception of the self [1] . Topo Maoloasi [2] , a young Batswana, offers a personal approach to the experience of a young Southern African living in this context of regeneration and revitalisation of gendered identities. He was born in Francistown, Botswana in 1974, the first child to his parents. He was the only male, out of four children, and having three sisters to play with and relate to has influenced his later relationships with women, since he argues that he knows women better.

Also, he is part of a minority group in the country that speaks Kalanga, but began learning English, the official language, when he started school. He also speaks Tswana fluently, which is the national language and lingua franca for most people. He comes from a middle class family, where Catholicism has been the main religion.

A very important feature of Topo's life has been the "three-site system" that exists in Botswana. This is a structure that has existed in the region for a very long time, where the whole family moves from one place to another according to the work of the parents. Therefore, Topo Maoloasi has been moving from Moroka, his home village, to Gaborone and Francistown, which are bigger towns where more job opportunities are found. His parents have office work for the government, and Topo considers them middle-class in the Botswana context, where they do have to struggle sometimes to pay the bills. This experience has resulted in the family having lived in more than 8 different places, and meant a constant change of schools and friends for Topo while growing up.

The major consequence of these constant movements has been what he calls "exposure". This is a key element in the following analysis of his gender experience, since it has confronted Topo Maloasi with two different ways of interpreting his world, where a constant flux and clash between tradition and modernity is found. Also, an important aspect of his life is that he has been living the past three years in South Africa as an Honours student. This has been the most dramatic case of exposure, where he is being confronted with a different milieu.

II. Methodology

The aim of the present study is to understand the way individuals are gendered in Southern African societies. The specific goal is to understand how masculinity is constructed in Botswana and its impact on the way youth construct their gendered identities.

The methodology used for this purpose was a meticulous interview with a young Batswana man, where a set of questions were asked with the objective of getting a gender perspective of his personal experience growing up in Botswana. As Amina Mama states, "we can look at micro-social relations - peer relations, family relations, community, ethnic, religious and class relations from a gender perspective […] and see where men and women are located, what are they doing, and whether there are inequalities between them" [3] . Thus, the resulting testimony allows the linking of personal experience with the social knowledge produced about gender issues. This methodology gives opportunity to appreciate how theory and practice can generate a new kind of knowledge, where other voices besides the ones allocated in academia speak and participate in the construction of knowledge and our realities.

Therefore, the design of the interview questions was created in search of the different areas in which the interviewee gets his gendered identity. Some of the areas covered were the influence of culture, religion, race, and the division of labor. All the questions where posed in such a way as to relate these aspects to gender, and to his personal experience of living in Botswana in a time where traditional structures clash and overlap with new 'Westernised' ones [4] .

III. Findings: The Clash of Tradition and Modernity Gives Shape to Gendered Identities

The interview with Topo Maoloasi allowed me to find out the underlying structure that shaped his personal experience of becoming gendered. The construction of identity for young Batswana is nowadays moulded by the clash of traditional belief systems and the growing influence of Western values and ways of interpreting roles for women and men. This situation has put Topo in a position where he has to choose and decide how he is going to deal with two systems that sometimes overlap and coexist, but at other times, completely clash.

This experience can be associated with the studies made by Liljestrom, who states that "differences in knowledge and understandings, in social and economic assets, in worldviews and aspirations, in the perception of modernity and what it can offer, in the rate at which traditional life collapses and the demands of modernity assert themselves, result in confusion, conflict and ambiguity" [5] . Thus, Topo is living in a context where he has been making his own choices about what aspects of his family tradition he wants to keep, along with what he accepts from this new set of values and way of understanding life from the West. It is important to note that ever since colonisation, Botswana - as most colonies around the world - has been experiencing hybrid identities [6] , where some of the colonisers cosmogony is internalised by the colonised, along with the traditional African practices and customs adopted to some extend by the settlers.

IV. Analysis

The data collected during the interview led to a number of different aspects concerning the construction of masculinities in Botswana. There are three main points that are going to be highlighted during this analysis: the role of space in the construction of masculinities, the implication of hegemonic masculinities, and the bond between culture and gender identity. Only for analytical purposes, they have been separated, but they all structure the way masculinities are defined in Botswana, and are closely related.

Space and masculinities
The way in which Topo conceives spaces allows us to stress the importance of spaces, since they carry signifiers of masculinity and femininity. As Shire states, "in different spaces and at different points in the lives of men they move between these spaces and acquire or are addressed by gender-specific languages" [7] . This is very clear in the case of Topo, where the continuous change of place of living gave him different gendered experiences of those spaces. Hence, as a child when he lived in his village, the spaces were clearly differentiated: the boys go to herd the cattle, and the girls stay at home and help in the kitchen.

However, this conception is challenged when he moved to a bigger town, where there were no cattle to herd, and everyone was supposed to help in the house. Topo remembers that his mother never let him say "this is a job for a woman" and she tried to make him wash the dishes, for example, but he would always have an excuse since he felt that it was not part of his job as a boy. Here we can also appreciate how space is not only important for the immediate family matters, since Topo felt that getting into the kitchen, a female space, made him feel embarrassed in front of other boys. Hence, even when his mother told him to help, it was possible as a child to refuse these responsibilities. We can state then that "women, as well as men, construct and define masculinities, by policing men to keep them out of women's spaces and by creating and affirming a range of male identities through their interactions with men as mothers, wives and lovers" [8] .

It could be said that this is the traditional way in which spaces are gendered, but modern life has forced youth to rethink these practices, since their situation is different. Topo said that as he started to mature, he saw that it would not emasculate him to get in these spheres, but at the same time he stated that he still debates about having to wash nappies, for example.

The city therefore can be seen as a space where identities are being negotiated, as pointed out by Shire when talking about migrant laborers who earn wages: "they did not mind cleaning and cooking for their masters, yet at home they would not contemplate doing the same for their wives" [9] . This change of attitude about gendered spaces in Topo has been influenced by his so-called "exposure", where the contact with gendered identities in urban areas has made him adjust his personal gendered perspective.

As a result, Topo affirms that it is completely fine for him that his girlfriend works, and she is actually earning twice as much as he does. So, nowadays, those issues are taken in materialistic terms of modern world, where having more money as a couple is more important than coping with the expectation of society to have women in their houses and men working outside. Thus, he knows that his country is in a transition stage, where many things of the Western culture are being copied, but other customs are kept in the core of his gendered identity.

Hegemonic masculinities
Most societies have a dominant view of what it means to be a man. Even though the volatility of gendered identities that Botswana is experiencing at the present time is important because it shows that masculinity can change and therefore is not fixed, fluctuations in gendered identity also reveals that men differ since they do not have all the same masculinity [10] .

Even so, there is a hegemonic masculinity, one that dominates other masculinities, creating binding prescriptions and cultural images of what it means to be a "real man". Topo Maoloasi defined what he consider the dominant view of masculinity in Botswana, as being related to finding jobs and owning property. He stresses that it is important to have something that people can see, so society knows that men can take care of their wives. Therefore, it is not expected of women to be in these roles. A good example was found in the new chief of his home village, who happened to be a woman who the community refused to recognise, even when she performed tasks inherent to chieftaincy. As Morrell points out, "the discourses that become dominant tend to legalize or censure certain gender constructions" [11] .

Also, the hegemonic conception states that men can be unfaithful in sexual relationships, but women cannot. In this case, Topo does not takes part in the hegemonic discourse of masculinity, since he believes that issues of sexuality have to be decided by the couple and the rest of the society does not have a say in it. That is why "masculinities are fluid and should not be considered as belonging in a fixed way to any group of men" [12] , since the whole Batswana society is constructing their understanding of gender, even when some are in subjugated positions.

Linking gender identity and culture
The gendered identity of Topo Maoloasi cannot be understood without talking about culture. The importance of culture in shaping identities is undeniable, but the term culture is used here in a way to create boundaries. So "boundaries are created and maintained when people observe, learn, and finally internalize the rituals and habits of speech, the dispositions and dress of their bodies and the modes of thought to the extent that they become entirely automatic and unconscious" [13] . These boundaries state what society expects from men and women, and also shows us through traditions and customs how people have internalised them.

In the case of Topo, a way culture is clearly defining his gender experience is with the practice of lobola. He explained that the origin of the tradition meant that it was not two individuals getting married, but two families coming together, so the male's family would give something - like cattle- to the female's family. The problem, he argues, is that nowadays the woman's family thinks that the money is for them, and uses this tradition as a way of controlling their sons and daughters. He feels caught in this situation, since he still has to follow this cultural practice, even when he does not agree with it. Here it can be seen, how these boundaries set by culture "come to seem uniquely real and permanent" [14] and gender identity is therefore shaped in this context.

The reason of why Topo gendered perspective differs is his "exposure" to other cultural environments. Consequently, he now chooses what he finds appropriate or inappropriate. He points out that it is not a matter of just changing his gendered perception for the sake of changing because it is supposed to be old-fashioned. Topo considers that he can use and adapt what is valuable from each cultural environment he has been exposed to.

Contrastingly, there are other aspects of his culture that Topo considers proper. In Botswana, when a woman gives birth, traditionally the husband is not allowed to see the baby for three months, and visitors are also forbidden. This cultural practice, which clearly defines spaces for men and women, has been challenged by Western ideas. Now, Topo says that people think that they should change and permit the father see his child. The setback is that they forget that there was a reason for the custom: to protect the baby from infections. Consequently, Botswana is adopting Western values that sometimes do not apply to their context, since a lot of villages still have major sanitation problems and are at present putting babies in risk if they get into contact with the diseases around them.

Briefly, I want to mention that the interview also revealed that religion is taken as part of culture, and therefore has a part in shaping gendered experience. Topo lives in accordance with the principles of Catholicism, but says that he "puts reasoning on it" to make it compatible with his life. The other aspect relevant to culture is race, but the interviewee did not think that it had a great impact on his gendered experience, in comparison to religion, and culture.

We can thus appreciate that the Batswana youth is facing a situation where so-called modernity and its values are clashing with many African traditions, and this creates new non-hegemonic masculinities. Therefore, the creation of boundaries through cultural means is only obvious when it is possible to step outside of normal day-to-day interactions [15] . This is what Topo has experienced recently when living outside Botswana, and from the outside he is having another look at his masculinity and what it will imply in the future.

V. Conclusion

The present study points out how the experience of being gendered is cut by the transition of Botswana from a traditional society to another that has been increasingly "Westernized" [16] . Therefore, the understanding of how masculinity is being constructed in the country is shaped by cultural clashes, that results in ambiguity and conflict in the ways in which youth construct their gendered identities. As Morrell states gendered identities "are socially and historically constructed in a process which involved contestation between the rival understandings of what being a man should involve" [17] . This is taking place nowadays, where the roles of space, hegemonic masculinities and culture are being negotiated by Batswana youth, as Topo Maoloasi shows us.

I want to point out that one of the values of this research paper was to be able to link the theory with the actual, lived realities, and realise how they are two faces of the same issue: gender. It is important to remember how to link production of reliable knowledge with our everyday experiences, because it allows a real perspective of our gendered identities to be articulated.

Finally, I want to add that the present study allows us to understand how gender is socially constructed [18] , since all the factors on society that make us gendered beings can be contested in different places and times. I can understand it by comparing the experience of masculinity in Botswana nowadays with the gendered perspectives existing in Mexico - my home country - for example. The fact of having a wide range of experiences of being a man or a woman within the human race acknowledges that gender is basically a social institution. Hence, as a social construct, the concept of gender opens the door to a whole new conception of the markers man and woman.

Bibliography

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Liljestrom, R. et al. 1998. "Cultural Conflicts and Ambiguities," in Rwebangira, M. and Liljestrom, R. eds. Haraka, Haraha - Look Before you Leap: Youth at the Crossroad of Custom and Modernity. Stockholm, Nordiska Africainstitutet.

Lorber, J. 1994. "Men as Women and Women as Men: Disrupting Gender," in Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Mama, A. 1999. 1999."Notes: Thinking About Gender".

Morrell, R. 2001. "The Times of Change: Men and Masculinity in South Africa," in Morrell, R. ed. Changing Men in Southern Africa. University of Natal Press/Zed Books.

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Shire, C. 1994. "Men Don't Go to the Moon: Language, Space and Masculinities in Zimbabwe," in Cornwall, A. and Lindisfarne, N. eds. Debating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies. London & NY: Routledge.

Sylvester, C. 1999. "Development Studies and Postcolonial Studies: Disparate Tales of the Third World," in Third World Quarterly, Vol.20, No.4.

Footnotes