On Solitude

On Solitude

It has been hope that distilled errors, farce and truth of life experiences into the sort of scathing insight I always wish to put to paper – a personal journal to always recall.

The most important topics which plague and enrich my human experience range from bouts of introspective self-analysis of nightmares coiled under my pillow, my childhood and its complex neuroses and bruised happiness of youth. Often my self-analysis is aimed at investigating the evolutionary origins of my social exclusion and voluntarily reclusive demeanour towards society.

I always wonder if I am a victim of my own repressed neurosis.

And as victims often broadcast victimhood involuntarily, how can I best mirrors the best of myself in mind, not the worst of someone else?

But there is a fierce pleasure when the mirror is in effect looking into itself; seeing beyond the flattering distortions upon the lake of memory, rejecting the role of passive reflector for the acquisition of that “self yet to be”.

This journal is not only a tool through which language employs my memories to exist, but serves as a mirror not of the world, but of other mirrors and of the process of mirroring. When living mirrors gaze into mirrors, as when language stares only at itself, only mirrors and mirroring will be visible.

For a man raised primarily by women, a self-suppressing recapitulation of masculine expression and an autonomous resistance to the conventional truths and methods of maternal inscriptions create a complex conflict and dissension for the mind.

Existing at that pivot, suspended between an effeminate masculinity composed of rudimentary lessons from a homosexual foster father and masculinised femininity cleaved from lessons from my mother, lingers a self-scrutiny that requires a space to view the mirror in silence, and silence is often acquired through seclusion, exclusion and solitude.

For a first born male child, there is an imposed obligation to often take the role of mother to your siblings. That maternal instinct tends to become heightened during this tenure of inadvertent parenting, and this vantage point also provides efficient insight into the feminine yet hideous wounds of my ego. It often deprives one of basic adolescent times, and once you have discarded any ideal of “being alone”, the need for growth in solitude is postponed. Throughout these times, I had a perfect mirror of acquired parental and social standards of a responsible young black man – a father figure. But my ‘fatherly’ prowess were designed by an upbringing populated my female perspectives of what the male-inscribed attributes of manhood.

I guess in the end you always think about the beginning. My mother's guilt-inducing refusal of polygamy saw my family being fatherless from an early age. Those abandoned stages of growth come with their own conflicted self-identity caused by social pressure to reconcile the competing obligations of masculinity and domestic life, and they made me recollect my mother’s gaze at me in embittered self-search.

Was she aiming at designing a prefecture of masculinity which has ‘a woman’s needs in mind’ through my immersion into the domesticity attributed the female gender within a patriarchal black community?

I mean, I still find having more than one partner at a time quite insulting to both ladies, but is this a symptom of an implanted defence mechanism developed in corroboration with a mother’s sentiments translated through my masculine elements?

‘Once vanquished, the final human question remains, our last and deepest hungry doubt rises up, and in gratitude, brightly falls away: What of human suffering?’

Rich Norman – The Tangible Self

Lessons I have learned.

On Growing

Society has a number of obligations set out for each of us. One is to succeed financially at 30 and the other is having built a life with a partner by the same age. Sadly, I have not achieved any of these, and they seem a far-fetched ideal for a person like me. I have two children with two different women, both of whom could not stand me. My children are growing without a sight of me, without memories of a father’s love or care. I am to blame for all these shortcomings. And it therefore takes an immense courage to say that love and wealth are not on my slice of the cosmic pie. I have failed in love so often, I am certain any attempt at loving would be as futile as creating a life or becoming a Patrice Motsepe of 2020.

But, there are a number of life lessons I have managed to cleave from experiences which constitute my life on earth. These lessons might seem pessimistic or fatalistic to most readers, but once you pay attention to the details of the content they provide for contemplation, one would come to agree that these are lessons of maturity (or an acceptance of maturity as prescribed by society).

Never love anyone more than yourself. That is the ultimate goal of self-preservation.

Always seek the joy you want because love is not a joy, but a joyful desire to have undeniably. Never love anyone who suffers from a disease called ‘Consumerism’, because as Solzhenitsyn’s Ivan Illich once said: “The first enslaving illusion is the idea that people are born to be consumers and that they can attain any of their goals by purchasing goods and services.” Never love anyone who loves ‘things’, their souls have no place for ‘beings’ and solely divested to internalised hatred of their kind.

In literature, authors have investigated and documented common features of the contemporary love culture. Most have surmised that wanton copulation and sexual gratification are characteristic of modern day partnerships. And parallel to the visual representation of romance in mainstream media, there has been an emergence of fairy tale ideals which often see young couples venture into a dangerous terrain which eventually dehumanises them. Financial depravity adds fuel to the fire of social disapproval of love based relationships. Relationships are about mutual bargaining in terms of social security such as housing, health and education – and these securities have nothing extenuative to the abstracts of LOVE untarnished by the whims of mass opinion.

Subjective confirmations of social norms have been a trait among black romantic relationships, and these have become inextricable fallacies which inform our social interaction, even when it comes to matters of love. Is he handsome enough? Is that ‘HOT PUSSY’, as Bell Hooks eloquently labelled it? Is he or she marriage material, meaning ‘can he afford me’ or ‘can I afford her’? These and other questions form the exegeses and foreground screens through which potential mates are viewed and therefore categorised. The inherent detrimental nature of ‘black love’ is preserved in that it shares the same contextual arena with other misrepresentations of ‘black’ — public opinion. And by ‘black love’ I am not only making a distinction that is based on my own racial biases, but fact remains that love among black folk is categorized by society; these categories indicate boundaries that distinguish one type of romantic love from another superficially roused desire that is often prevalent.

Question then becomes, how does a culturally ostracised people dogmatised by worldviews that have eradicated their own genuine inter-personal relations, find a place in the romance of this century? A people whose entire cultural identity has been ‘veiled’ cannot at any given voluntary injunction obscure the trajectory of their demise. So, this applies to whatever socially coercive structures they fathom, which are sadly doomed to a collapse that would resonate for centuries through generations of scarred descendants.

An analogy I like returning to is that of black youths in their 20’s. The males are obsessed with finding soul mates at that age, to create a formidable family system that is not confined by western standards of unions. The females on the other hand, are seeking the beauty queen they were sold through media. They are ‘on the market’ they feel, until they reach 30. By the time women figure out a need for companionship, the males have long understood that women don’t want companions. They love themselves a hell of a lot. So, males opt to ‘love’ themselves selfishly, a time when males are not giving ‘two fucks’ about women and their need for ‘love’ – based on observable lessons from the opposite sex. You have noticed the number of sugar-daddies around campuses…

Black Man You Are to Blame!

I agree that every woman deserves security, a family system that is nurturing and loving, but I also propose that black men are now trying by all means to ‘whiten’ their women and this project will have dire consequences for generations to come.

Logically, which black woman would want a black man fascinated with the white sexualized female body?

Would any woman stand for such subjugation and fixation on the white female body portrayed as pristine and perfect?

Which black woman would be caught dead with men who refuse to play a typically masculine role in the capitalist economy?

These romantic losers who reject traditional jobs are the epitome of persons who cannot build a poster family life.

Ozzie Davis once surmised the situation of the black man as that of ‘one who is chained to an eternal desire to be loved by the white man’. Sadly these innate desires are translated into quests for acceptance and assimilation into any system of white folk.

Through our zest for western knowledge, which inadvertently planted dreams which fire our insidious ambition, we have been integrated into these systems that make us ‘close to white’ as possible.

The fruits of our journey into their education system sadly seem a tad too insufficient for sharing.

Perhaps reason is because these dreams were never to be a collectivised effort towards uplifting the black community, but an individualist endeavour at finding one’s own within a system that preached an epitaph ‘each man for his own’.

These dreams entailed a bionic family ideal upheld in our psyche as sacred, embellished as a symbol of white cultural affluence; a picket fenced house and a car - all sustained by a functional preoccupation with work within capitalists institutions.

The greater the achievements within the capitalist work space meant a greater chance at ‘affording the woman’.

Here I am not insulting the custom of LOBOLA.

I am implying a certain abstract price-tag that is allocated the black female body in the eyes of his black man, and the white male gaze or perspective assisting in determining the value attached to the black female being in the eyes of her black partner.

Unfortunately, this value tends to fall short of white women’s worth in the eyes of black males, a crisis of black masculinity which is galvanized by white masculinity’s own value attached to white femininity.

And the white supremacist male misunderstanding that the black female body is inherently promiscuous corresponds to an impulse to oversee, patrol, exploit and contain that body in both the white and black male. 

In terms of representation, black women are left viewing themselves as vixens; exploited by black men orchestrating sexualised degradation of ‘the white female character’ black women portray of late.

This spectacle subsequently becomes a strip show that facilitates satisfaction of subconscious desires in white men - the objectification of the black female body. 

Ultimately, in the eyes of black women, negative portrayals of black men mostly proliferated by mainstream media, perhaps reveal repeated, even obsessive, efforts to redeem white masculinity – making black men more of villainous counterparts to white men.

Therefore, this unspoken comradery works to justify white male anxiety about black male sexuality and about interracial relationships between black men and white women while harbouring a sexual preoccupation with and a desire to repress the black male.

If the white supremacist male propaganda machine has portrayed black men as criminals and rapists focused on violating women, particularly white women – wouldn’t it make sense then for black females to attempt emulating and assimilate white feminine identity? 

I would assume NOT. But it seems that is what is prevailing.

Should our black women now be called upon to make an investment in interrogating gender roles within the black community, which has been effected by various psychological assaults on our identity and identity forming mechanisms?

So, if the black man’s insatiable desire to ‘step into his master’s shoes’ managed to be fulfilled, would it not make sense for him to rally his entire black family towards  this newly attained paradise and ‘cultured’ worldview?

And if every member of the family follows suit proselytised, why would the black man be astonished at how dextrous these family members would become within the system?

We know affluence is addictive and self-centred, so why do we expect that the ‘things we attained’ in order to lure others would not take precedence in the psyche of our recruits?

Why would black men now be surprised when Khanyi Mbau is the whitest black woman who loves white men, when her feminine perspective has been designed to enforce the invention and implications of whiteness?

Just because the black man feels enlightened enough to rebel against the system that has degraded his who being, why would his women feel the urge to follow him away from the idyllic ritual of western lifestyles?

My son will be 18 soon, and I am extremely scared that he will be left with finding a mate among disgruntled 30 something year old black women, who have developed enough hatred for black masculinity. All possible partners in his age group would be terrorised by black men (Sugar-daddies) who have failed women of their own age groups, leaving these young children traumatised left to fend among each other’s spiritual debris. But I am proud to know that there those black women who have managed to ‘reclaim themselves’ from the clutches of a vicarious existence that mirrored warped ideals spawned by colonial psychic deformities suffered by many black men. I hope my son would meet women raised by such women of zeal and strength, who is not confined by tropes common to the mainstream representation of black femininity.

Conclusion

In an era where black men and their women view each other through the prism of western value systems, I hope my daughter will grow to break stereotypes about black female identity.

I wish for her to live out her black female sexuality without demonization. Yes, I desire for her to live not as some the sexually transgressive sister, who knows only to use her body for acquisition of things and admiration from others.

But, the unnerving consciousness that a poverty stricken past and the desire not to return to those times has forced many to accept the atrocious nature of the capitalist system within which we thrive, means sundering black unions as acceptable collateral damage.

Man will never trust woman and woman will always be aware of this traditionally vilified character of a violent black masculinity entrenched into many minds.

Society continues to sanctify whiteness at the expense of blackness, and perhaps by the time she reaches a mature age, much would have been lost, but I still hope.

Having being complicit of the act of misogyny that has characterised our relationships with women, I urge black men to repent.

While the daze of feeling rejection, black males need embrace their new-fangled queen clad in regalia of blue eyed splendour.

Sona Maya Jobarteh once wrote: “Despite his exceptional talents, Du Bois came to the realisation early on in life that “all their dazzling opportunities were theirs not mine”. The combination of this and of the internalised Eurocentric derogatory perspective on black people must have created a context whose persistency might have in dark times tempted even the most radical people to perhaps question their own worth. Du Bois illustrates that these social conditions created a “confused, half-conscious mutter of black men crying, “Liberty, Freedom, Opportunity”. Behind this, too, lurks the afterthought that “suppose the world is right, and we are less than men?”

I am in full agreement with this statement, not only because it sums up what black men have become in our present society, but that it also labels the disease we are all suffering from as a community.

The Gentrification Of Black Creative Output

Part 2

In his book African Art in Transit (1994), Christopher B. Steiner discusses the perceptual shift of art into commodity, which he believes changes the spirit of the art as well as the social life of the artists. Because of the growing international trade in beautiful, non-traditional versions of black ancestral art forms, there is an emergence of predominantly decorative art of ‘African’ decent, and there is mounting debate on the ethics of making such modified forms of the black art aesthetic to meet non-black consumer demand.

“Important also is a new cross-fertilization between visual cultures that once were in conflict, but currently service one another”.

Using an analogy of Ndebele wall art, Steiner shines a light on what now includes stylized images of airplanes and light bulb fixtures, while current Coca-Cola cans and British Airways airplane tails display Ndebele abstract patterns, and de Beers produces pseudo-Ndebele beaded collars from precious gems. The mainstream has found the Ndebele and neither community remains the same.

Undeniably, of all the indigenous art-forms from Southern Africa that is most commodified is the Ndebele art aesthetic. This commodification has implied numerous streamlined stylizations which has fossilised the art-form’s expansion and evolution towards the satisfaction of western stratified tastes. This assimilation spans from fashion, decorative arts and has even adapted to a number of local cultures, but the sad truth has been the elimination of the spiritual dimension attached to these indigenous art practices.

Indigenous art practices which are and should remain familial activities, often practiced during initiation processes conducted by various communities, now serves only as an aesthetic commodity, an economic bridge upon which western mainstream design decisions are impacted upon a world of indigenous cultures .

The convergence of western aesthetics with Ndebele indigenous modes of a spiritualised art has, for instance, somewhat presented a complimentary diversity which is certainly a feat of genius from the black creative aesthetic point of view.

But, does this convergence of an indigenous worldview and visual culture with western worldviews hold the greatest promise for stimulating the resurgent forces that can play a lead role in reclaiming, renewing and revitalizing the responsibility of black art as whole for its practitioners, resources, economies and consumptive communities?

Recurring negative feedback in the relationships with the external forces of western financing, has posed certain concerns for black creative practitioners who now have to contend with a possible extermination of their indigenous aesthetic that has for centuries formed their innate visual culture and worldviews. The assimilation of western worldviews is not solely to blame for the disconnection the art seems to exhibit towards the real lives of the communities of under-privileged and marginalised, as a matter of fact the convergence has had some positive results for a few artists from the black community.

But the positives are too scantily scattered along a perilous road towards reclamation and revitalization of black indigenous artistic practices.