It is never a good idea to consider it wise to grab a Xhosa woman’s buns. One heavily imbalanced Zulu man had to learn this a tad more painfully than most people do.
Before all else, it should be clarified that the Xhosa and Zulu cultures suffer a great deal of cultural differences, a majority of these being centred around the fairer sex. Our (Xhosa) women are boisterous peacocks whose voices can never be silenced. Their (Zulu) sisters are more inclined towards calm and submission -and it is this submission that the men thrive on. This may seem to be a biased stereotype on my part, but I have lived in both sides of the world long enough to have painted a fairly balanced portrait.
A picture I had never conjured up clearly, however, was that of the Zulu man. To me, he was just the regular Joe from next door. He walked with his hands in his pockets, his shoes mirrored the sky and there was always a matchstick greeting the world from the corner of his mouth. Of his attitude towards life and women -especially women- I knew nothing. Life, however, is a prominent teacher and she speedily addressed the issue of my ignorance towards this man.
Reality thought it best to shake the blanket from my eyes while I was still a snot endowed, thumb sucking darling who lived for ice-cream trips with her Shero. It was on one of these trips that one of our Zulu friends' (we will call him Dim) hand reached to explore Shero’s buns. Needless to say, my dear Shero -already agitated from having to sweat over boiling tar just to buy “cream in edible cardboard”- was anything but amused.
From where I stood they sketched a rather comical picture. Here was Dim, rocking on his heels and sporting the most satisfied grin known to man while in front of me, my Shero had turned to match his beam with the hailstorm that was brewing inside her. I would have laughed were it not for the thunderbolt that struck Dim’s fleshy cheek. There was a role reversal. Dim grew a uni-brow. What had just happened was unacceptable. No self-respecting woman would lay her hand on a man. In his mind, he was the king of the concrete jungle and Shero needed to be put in her place.
What followed was a “don’t try this at home” moment. Having grown up in a family where equality reigns, the showdown before me was to be my first exposure to that extremity of violence. Never being raised to bow down, Shero readily rose to the challenge. She threw her impressive amount of punches, moulding hills of black and blue across Dim’s now clouded face. Being the stronger of the two, he managed to pin the battle -and my Shero- down. To see a man pound his heavy fists onto a woman’s body like that is a trauma that no child should ever have to suffer. Even scarier than watching your Shero fight for her life is seeing people with the power to make it stop just stand by.
It was in the 5 minutes that it took my Shero to claw, bite, and kick Dim off of her, that my respect for Xhosa women (and any other woman who would have put up a fight like that) grew. Seeing Shero go through that much blood, sweat , and tears was my moment of epiphany. There was no opening up of the skies or a philharmonic mass of angels, but the sound of the men cheering all around me was an effective substitute. It took three teenage girls to tear Dim off of my Shero and heave what was left of her back home. Her right arm did not survive the battle, but neither did Dim’s pride and manhood.
Life lessons on cultural differences, abuse and general respect can be learnt from Shero’s episode –and they were. Respect those around you, and give as good as you get.
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