Psychology, patriarchy and a politics of men and masculinities : reading inequality in three South African texts

Abstract

After the 27th of April 1994, South Africa entered an unchartered territory, turning its back on a long history of segregation and of inequalities. With the new democratic government having assumed office, many were right to hope for a better future: better employment opportunities, better education for the previously disadvantaged, better racial integration and equality across racial groups, genders, and sexual preference and/or orientation. However, inequality continues to be invasive in many facets of post-apartheid life. An observation of inequality in the country using the Gini index showed a rise between 1991 and 2001 from 0.68 to 0.77. Masculinity unlike maleness is ideological rather than biological, therefore it follows that context would naturally play a significant role in informing ideologies that dominate in such environments. It also follows that inequality like other social phenomena influences masculinity as an ideology and a set of practices. This dissertation explores how inequality affects and influences a politics of men and masculinities in South Africa. This is investigated in three South African texts namely The Smell of Apples (1995) by Mark Behr, Ways of Dying (1995) by Zakes Mda and The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001) by K. Sello Duiker. These three texts lend themselves to an exploration of inequalities in the country in relation to South African men and masculinities during specific historical and political contexts. The Afrikaner ideology which enforced a militaristic kind of masculinity as the most dominant type through its State/Patriarchy/Hegemonic masculinity pact is discussed in relation to The Smell of Apples and how such a pact is shown in the novel to affect boys and men. Following through on this thread is an investigation of black township and informal settlement masculinities as represented in Ways of Dying. That chapter focuses on the South African interregnum and how toxic and violent masculinities are subverted in the novel by the self-marginalisation of the protagonist from the construct of masculinity itself. Finally, what follows is a discussion of masculinities in South Africa as represented in the most recent text, The Quiet Violence of Dreams. The text shows how since the 1994 political transition, it is no longer easy to distinguish between the oppressor and the oppressed. The chapter investigates how, in Duiker’s representation of these issues, the ideology of masculinity manifests itself in an environment that assumes equality for all but in which stark inequalities persist.