Review: 'Spots of a Leopard: on being a man' by Aernout Zevenbergen

The high incidence of rape and domestic violence in Africa suggests that African men need to have a conversation about masculinities – on what it means to be a man in contemporary Africa and how they define their relationship with women. Recently, there has been a proliferation of reports on the emerging significance of a violent form of masculinity in Africa, manifested in a high incidence of men using physical might or brute force to harm and dominate women. Though outcry has come from African women’s organisations and international NGOs, since the majority of African men do not participate in such violence, the lack of contribution of progressive African men to the discussion is of concern.

So here we have, Aernout Zevenbergen, a journalist and a Dutch national, who was born in Africa, who has started this conversation about what it means to be a man in contemporary Africa. He sets out initially to understand the reasons for the men’s lack of sexual restraint or caution in the face of the high incidence of HIV/AIDS on the continent. Not satisfied with either ‘rightwing’ cultural relativism or ‘leftwing’ structural determinism, or even the ‘power dynamics’ of gender studies, he embarks on a continental journey to find his own explanations as to ‘what fuels the man who feel this urge to want to plant his seeds in as many flowerpots as possible?’

The book is based on research between 1996 and 2006 conducted in several countries across the continent. From Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), to Niger and Liberia, the author criss-crosses the continent gathering narratives from men and women on African attitudes to sex, homosexuality, rape, domestic violence, masculinity and changing gender relations.

The strength of this book is the narratives of these men and women adhering to hegemonic notions of masculinity and femininity that do not seem to make sense in the contemporary world. Using an impressive array of vignettes, some extremely poignant, Zevenbergen exposes some of the insecurities affecting men in contemporary Africa, where economic collapse, unemployment, war and new constitutions have seemingly undermined what it means to be a man. These narratives of ordinary men and women put voices and circumstances to the statistics. As Zevenbergen rightly claims, he ‘encountered confusion, aversion, frustration, despair and nihilism, balanced by times of ingenuity, resoluteness, laughter and lightness’ (p. 244). There is a strong argument by the male voices for the need for procreation to carry on the family line and to have the freedom to plant their seed, as well as for children and women to provide labour. Yet these are not justifications for maintaining inequalities or for sexual abuse.

Zevenbergen's narratives debunk the myths about rape in Africa: that virgin rape is a cure for illness – the man who raped baby Tsepang did it out of vengeance – a way of hurting the mother; that it is about lust – most seem to be about the desperate need for respect, coupled with low self-esteem. However, Zevenbergen book reveals more than wounded male pride. In Kenya, the desperation of the HIV-infected widow to be cleansed is not just about her being tradition-bound, but about her dependency on family and clan for her and her children’s economic and spiritual survival. Furthermore, the lack of sound leadership in the face of crisis is exemplified by the young King Mswati of Swaziland with over 12 wives and several concubines, and the unspoken cause of the frequent deaths of the males in the royal family.

Zevenbergen provides explanations throughout the text but draws no conclusion. Despite his early rejection of explanations that focus on the vagaries and inequalities of capitalism, the narratives lead him to address the crisis of patriarchy and masculinity in Africa in the context of societies undergoing capitalist modernisation. Researchers such as Ifi Amadiume have already shown that in some pre-colonial societies gender relations were more equitable, and the introduction of an aggressive Victorian-era masculinity infused with capitalism and Christianity transformed some matriarchal societies into patriarchal ones, and redefined men’s and women’s roles in society; if those changes were possible then, transforming the destructive aspects of gender relations today is not impossible.

However, Zevenbergen’s narratives do not give us much hope. The Ugandan ministers who demonise homosexuality as Western are shown to be so blinkered that they cannot read critically into their own history. The Ugandan reverends’ virulent attacks against homosexuality are contrasted with their more subdued approach to the rape of adult women. These narratives throw up a confusing dynamic in contemporary Africa, where men can adopt Western practices yet criticise any that are independently adopted by women, and where the 20th century European fashion of virginal white wedding gowns are deemed appropriate, while mini-skirts are derided as Western and un-African.

However, it is clear from the vignettes that the social basis of the form of patriarchy that emerged under colonialism had disappeared by the late 1990s. Women’s empowerment, however limited, linked to economic crises have left men insecure and unable to fulfil their expected roles in the domestic and public spheres. Many African men, in their defence, blame women for the problems they face – ‘they are too materialistic’, and even Zevenbergen bewails materialism ‘as the new bar by which people measure each other’. The vulnerability of gender relations to economic crises is not peculiar to Africa. The feminist geographer Linda McDowell in her book 'Redundant Masculinities' reveals how the closure of the mines in northern England in the 1980s created a crisis of masculinity among miners whose raison d’être was determined by the toughness of mine work. Miners and their wives, and their sons and daughters, had to negotiate new ways of living together and that process was not always non-violent.

The book is also a personal quest for Zevenbergen and perhaps that is where it loses direction. His spiritual quest is woven throughout, so that the reader is sometimes unsure as to whether he is discussing himself or the men he encounters. The focus of the book gets somewhat lost toward in the third part of the text. Does his single, childless status, seen as problematic by the Africans he encounters, suppose to make him empathetic? The moving account of his family’s reaction to the death of his nephew serves to immortalise the boy, but what conclusion does he want us to draw from this personal revelation?

Apart from the structural weakness of the text, a key element missing is more narratives with men who perform non-violent forms of masculinity. These men appear essentially – young as Ronald in Botswana and Thando in KwaZulu-Natal, homosexual in Uganda, or old as Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia. Given that only a small proportion of the men in Africa carry out these violent acts, understanding what it means to be a man in Africa should involve exploring the range of masculinities on the continent. Zevenbergen refers frequently to the destructive effects of materialism and individualism in contexts where community and the spiritual once bound societies together, where different generations and gender are playing by different rules, with different gods and different heroes. Is modern man doomed, because of ‘a misdirected arrogance and belief that reason alone defines where it is we go and how we should live our lives’, as Zevenbergen seems to argue? Though this book does not present a way forward, it does provide the basis for conversations about the destructive effects of redundant traditionalism and unbridled modernity, despite the underlying pessimism in Zevenbergen’s text.

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* Aernout Zevenbergen, 'Spots of a Leopard: on being a man', (2009, Cape Town: Laughing Leopard Productions), ISBN: 978-0-620-43311-2, pp 280.
* Dr Patricia Daley is a lecturer at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.

REFERENCE
McDowell, L. (2003) Redundant Masculinities?: Employment Change and White Working Class Youth, Wiley-Blackwell.