African Women Writing Resistance: An Anthology of Contemporary Voices

Woman Weep No More

My roots lie in the village of Sibizane, three hours drive from Durban, South Africa. My grandmother and my mother struggled to raise us with the ability to face a world that they knew was tough. For them, life was to get married if you were a young woman, and to work in the mines or cities or stay home and look after a healthy herd of cattle if you were a young man. Work, livestock, and marriage were the sources of pride or failure among the residents of Sibizane. This was the society I stepped into in my teenage years. One afternoon when I was sixteen, I went to the Umzimkhulu River to fetch water as usual. I met two young women of my age group. Zenzile asked me, “Sibongile, who is your boyfriend?” “I don’t have one,”I answered. They both shouted at me “You are lying!” “It’s true!”I protested. Khethiwe then accused me, “I suspect when my boyfriend comes to you asking you to call me for him, you first give him a bite [have thigh sex with him]. If you don’t stop this habit of yours, we will fight you.” 43 Woman Weep No More Sibongile Mtungwa I was shocked. I did not want a boyfriend because I knew my uncle would beat me to death. Also, I wanted to be a nun. When we were collecting firewood and the weather was hot, we normally walked bare-breasted. On one of these days, two young women, Ntombi and Nomusa, confronted me. “Why are your breasts so straight?”Nomusa asked. “That is just the way they are,”I answered. “You mean to tell us that you have not slept with a man since your first period?” Ntombi asked. (Sleeping with a man meant thigh sex. Sexual intercourse is not sanctioned for young women before marriage.) “Of course I have not slept with a man,” I answered. I did not know what the breasts had to do with sleeping with a man. They squeezed my breasts and both confirmed that they were hard, so it meant no man had slept on them. They looked at me with eyes of disapproval. That painful experience left me feeling confused and ashamed of myself. It taught me that to be a woman of my age and accepted in my community, I needed to have a boyfriend; otherwise I was in trouble with my peers, and perhaps with my parents too. I was afraid of being rejected. So I started to think whom I would choose of all the young men who were proposing love to me. I was afraid of any young man who was much bigger than me in case I would not be able to defend myself if he wanted to have sex with me. I decided to get involved with Vusi, who was five years older than me. Now was the time to practice all the things the iqhikiza (the older girl who is the advisor to girls in the village) had taught me about relationships. It was the time to learn to love and why to love. Control was awakened in me at this stage. The iqhikiza had taught me the rules of being with a man. “When you sleep with him, you always sleep on your left arm. That is to make sure that you will be able to defend yourself easily if necessary, using your right arm, which is powerful. Put his penis between your knees and the middle part of your thighs, not more than that because you can get pregnant. Wipe yourself downwards to avoid pregnancy.” The first day I had thigh sex with him, I forgot all those rules. I slept on the wrong side. That was bad because he could have interpreted that as a sign that I had previously had intercourse and it was difficult to change the habit. But luckily Vusi told me I was on the wrong side. I felt very embarrassed. But there were many other things about boy-girl relationships that I learned from him. I was eighteen years old. The nine years I spent in that relationship were full of moments of learning, awakening, questioning, and action. The learning stage 44 Part Two. Speaking Out was when I learned to deal with peer pressure and community expectations. At that time I did what my community expected me...