Slaves to Culture

Regrettable? I save that word for milk on the floor, or bumping over someone’s food in Pick ‘n Pay. That’s regrettable. Serving up a 23 year old girl bare breasted ... to become some un-qualified over-paid culture-worshiper possession is far from regrettable. I have a word for that, actually several – it’s abhorrent, debase, repulsive, disgusting, vile. 

Hlaudi Mosoeneng
ACTING COO of SABC - without MATRIC
... but with attachment

Culture – what does it mean to you? Does it mean braaiing in good weather or going to the beach on boxing day? Perhaps being in Cape Town to cheer for your Klopse band or to throw crackers and fireworks somewhere in November? To others their culture is perhaps caught up in their dinner reservations or the meal they prepared for supper, or they think of how they dress and represent themselves every day or only on those special days?

Culture to the head of the SABC, Hlaudi Motsoeneng means power. He was lucky enough to be born with a certain attachment into a certain family group. Thus a matric certificate is absolutely not necessary to hold the position of acting COO of the SABC – especially when one can up one’s salary from R1.5 million to R2.4 million a year. Do the math – I’m sure a MATRIC is not necessary to see that the increase is SUBSTANTIAL, this despite flailing cries of a broke public broadcaster. But there you have it, CULTURE makes it not a problem.

CULTURE further dictates that if one is presented with an absurd gift, say … A HUMAN BEING … one is to choose from the line of girls the one girl that one’s lucky attachment would want (based to a large degree on the bare breasted façade of the girls on display), and then like a slave trader of old, one is to be happy and consider one fortunate to have found that perfect specimen. This is all done as culture can have no objectors and needs to be obeyed at all costs – it is CULTURE after all!

Gender and gendering is fundamentally influenced by culture. The way one’s culture sees the roles and duties of a particular gender, serves to either free the individual or set them up for a lifetime of enslavement. The process starts with the highest echelons of society and feeds into the everyday through institutions such as churches, schools and civil organisations. When those holding power set an example, such as the Venda elders did, of presenting young women bare breasted and quite possibly in very skimpy loin coverings, the message this carries forth can be none other than one of patriarchal power, of worship of the mighty attachment and denial of the potential and promise of those others who do not possess such an attachment. This goes even further, as it is CULTURE that after all dictates that a president of a country can wish to see those without an attachment prostate themselves on the ground at his feet, while those with an attachment will never dare be asked to do the same lest their attachment touch the dust.

The “abuse of cultural practices” as the Ministry of Women and the Disabled (notice the conflation: all those without necessary attachments?!) bemoaned the regrettable situation, is laughable. Regrettable? I save that word for milk on the floor, or bumping over someone’s food in Pick ‘n Pay. That’s regrettable. Serving up a 23 year old girl bare breasted, serving up her future in marketing and retail, her potential as an individual, to become some un-qualified over-paid culture-worshiper possession is far from regrettable. I have a word for that, actually several – it’s abhorrent, debase, repulsive, disgusting, vile. What is more, the message it carries to young girls throughout South Africa and the young men that would become their possessors, is no matter how hard you study to get a Matric, how hard you work to become more than just a child-creating machine without an attachment, you are at any given time ‘disabled’ and of such low quality that your chest measurement and your ability to produce those with attachments is all that counts.

Despite the lip service afforded by the appointment of women of stature to parliament, despite the hail mary’s called for, despite the work of Mandela and all those after him, this unquestioning slavish pursuit of culture over what is morally RIGHT will be the downfall of our society.