Zodwa Wabantu: Organic Feminism’s “F*ck You!” To The Male Gaze

“Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so” – Naomi Wolf

My initial reaction to Zodwa Wabantu, her being a major persona in Mzanzi’s black popular culture, was disbelief and shock. How could she display so much of herself, in such a sternly prudish society and never seem to doubt her actions or fear what others would say? As I watched more of her electrifying performances and began to look past the public outrage, the cold-hearted slut shaming and the polarizing choruses of praise, I noticed that ultimately she is having fun, in other words, authentically living her best life.

Zodwa’s courageous nudity, her unapologetic shrugs at conservative demands for modesty and her total disinterest for hypercritical public opinion, are a confident middle finger to the male gaze, which is the bedrock of respectability politics in black communities, and a much needed display of organic feminism similar to the female empowerment embodied by the likes of Brenda Fassie.

“What? Isn’t she just a money-hungry attention seeker? This sounds like some liberal BS. How does her public indecency change anything for women?”  If we forget to closely survey the historical and current social context in which Zodwa exists, we may end up reducing her actions to lucrative entertainment or even worse, shocking actions for the mere sake of shock value.

“Hhaibo! Bazothini abantu?” (Translated to English: what will other people say?). The question is loaded and many are uncomfortably familiar with its power, as it lurks in the backs of our imaginations as we weigh up and compare what this or that action will be read to mean in the public eye. This question isn’t really a question but a compelling rhetorical warning that what people see and the conclusions they derive from their perception matters. The outward expression of our authentic selves in black communities is often shackled and sometimes totally caged by a hyper-awareness of society’s judgment. “Fuck the haters” and “YOLO” don’t always feel like adequate solutions to the issue because by judgment I’m not referring to gossip (although that can also have severe consequences).

I’m referring to the collective gazes in communities equipped with the power to judge who is deserving and undeserving of respect, and therefore be able to suspend a human’s dignity in public spaces, holding it hostage until tyrannical standards of respectability are met. The world is not viewed through one singular, pristinely clear lens by all those who inhabit it. It’s partly why proclamations about “not seeing race” are laughable if not childishly dishonest. I wish prejudice didn’t exist. A world governed by impartiality sounds ideal but currently the disparities in economic opportunities, social mobility and political currency mean relationships between people are often maligned by inequality. It’s naive to think that those who occupy positions of power in various institutions and social structures will see those who sit below them as their equals.

The male gaze is propped up and relentlessly fueled by the various inequalities which pervade relationships between men and women. I’m adopting a different definition of the term and not referring to the theory which explains how the objectification of women in cinema and television occurs. Rather I’m talking about what happens when a women, simply walking down a street, is stripped of dignity by the invading eyes and vulgar tongues of men, who grope with their pupils and violate with crude words.

Why are we so familiar with these incidents, to the point where they exist as the ordinary, mundane stuff of everyday? It’s too easy to forget the so called thots, sluts and hoes, who can be liberally used and re-used by  men, then callously tossed aside and alienated into a social wasteland, their worth to men irredeemably soiled by sex with “one-too-many guys”. To try and avoid complicity by cloaking our already crooked moral compasses in lazy claims of “not all men”, is unreasonable and dangerously irresponsible – the gaze we throw upon women must be openly criticized.

Women sit as both sexual object and helpless infant in the twisted imagination of too many men. A culture has been sustained where a woman’s body, in fact the entirety of her Self, is figured to be the collective property of men. Rarely is a women, in our eyes, totally her own. Forever and always her value is tightly bound to her relation with men. Notice how the rallying war cries for men to battle against domestic abuse and sexual assault are centered on the protection of our sisters, aunts and mothers but not the unconditional cherishing of human beings. Men cannot move into action it seems until there is an appeal to our self-appointment as the protectors and custodians of women.

Following the crooked logic of the masculine gaze, because women are the delicate extensions of ourselves, their worth is rarely theirs to control and always ours to dictate. A woman’s fertility, her virginity, the shape and form of her body, the modesty of her dress – all of this and much more compounds to determine how much respect is awarded to her.  Reduced to sexual objects and children, the sovereignty women rightly have over their bodies and the choices they make, are often not respected by men.

How is this digested, regurgitated and redistributed by society at large and even women themselves? It isn’t uncommon for women to slut shame each other. The matriarchs in black families are usually pivotal to the maintenance of an aura of respectability for their nieces and daughters, through virginal testing or the vilifying of promiscuity. The church, traditional leadership, the family and media exist as indoctrinates of morality and producers of social culture. With Sunday sermons, traditional rituals and soapies we are taught to adopt metrics for unfair evaluation of a human’s respectability.

What is deliberately overlooked is that the executive realms of these institutions are dominated by men, who reproduce their gaze to fashion the staple values of such structures. Respect for an individuals dignity, in part, encompasses a thorough understanding and sincere belief that what an individual chooses to do with their body, so long as it does not harm others, should not be the concern or worry of anyone but themselves. This principle is rarely adhered to in our communities and is often actively undermined by the interests of men to see women primarily as things that serve their “need” for sexual gratification. It is then totally obliterated by women who act as agents of the male gaze, using the Bible or appeals to civility to cement the idea that basic human dignity and respect is conditional, based on ideal virtues such as modesty,  when it is in fact fashioned and tailored by the hands and hammers of power.

Zodwa Wabantu has never publicly labelled herself a feminist or associated with activists and public intellectuals of the movement. She does not quote Bell Hooks in interviews or take photos of herself on Instagram enjoying Sunday brunch with a copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Yet without complex theory and academic jargon, her struggle through and rise from poverty alongside her unrepentant celebration of her body, not for anyone but herself,  she is walking manifestation of what many women around the world have struggled for – she echoes the philosophies of feminist thinkers in her performances and public appearances.

Of course her story is the story of many women in South Africa, who seize their lives and bodies as their own from the grips of the male gaze because the economic, social and political conditions of our society make feminism more than a theory or academic study but a intuitive and inevitable development. Sadly majority of women in this country cannot secure the wealth and popularity that allows Zodwa the platforms to challenge and astonish. The material circumstances of women’s lives results in a reality where women are brutally killed, assaulted and abused for refusing to be the property and infants of men. The battle for women’s liberation has always been and will continue to be one that facilitates attempts to eradicate poverty and drastically reduce inequality.

“Women said‚ ‘sisi‚ you are inspiring us to love our meat and to be proud of our shapes and everything else. I belong to them” – Zodwa’s comments

after the reactions to her choice of dress at this years Durban July. Zodwa renders the male gaze lukewarm in its power, no longer looking towards the approval of those who seek to make her their own and instead makes some of us uncomfortable, forcing us to question why we care so intensely about what a women chooses to wear.  One can never ask for respect from those who oppress, it must be taken but I do hope that men begin to look inwards and realize the damage done by our overbearing eyes and brutal words.