ENL 159: “Married or Single: Marriage as a Means of Instigating Environmental Change”

Jolene Patricia Brown

Word Count: 3092

Dr. J. Marx

ENL 159: Global City Fiction

12 March 2010

Married or Single:

Marriage as a Means of Instigating Environmental Change

In Zakes Mda’s novel Ways of Dying there is a constant emphasis on the relationships between people, men and women in particular, as being integral to the state of their surroundings. “I believe the salvation of the settlement lies in the hands of women” says Toloki on page 176. This observation is striking because one realizes the disjoint in the balance between the sexes that must be remedied in order to fix the social problems the characters endure. The roles of the sexes are changing dramatically in African cultures and people struggle to care for themselves and their families in an increasing competitive world with less access to ever fewer resources. Since traditional gender roles can no longer supply families with what is needed for survival, a new unification and understanding must occur at a cultural level which can, in turn, affect the whole of society. Personal relationships are an important tool to use in order to bring change to large-scale social networks and by involving oneself in society a person can do more in instigating change than if they were to take a more independent, self-involved approach. This change, however, must begin at the individual level as people must take it upon themselves to become actively involved in their communities and change their own role, setting an example for those around them, much like Noria and Toloki in Ways of Dying.

Toloki begins the novel as an outsider. Though he is well-known in his neighborhood and within funerary circles, he still isolates himself from others because he "decided to follow a new path that involved sacrifice, self-denial and spiritual flagellation" (Mda 119). When he is reunited with Noria, however, he quickly reintegrates himself into society by integrating himself into Noria’s settlement. Toloki was not born in the city, he came into it later after he left his village to escape his father and the ill-treatment of other young people in his village. At first in the city he manages to get a place in a settlement, much like what Noria has, but he ends up leaving it to live in the waiting room at the train station when his house is burned down. Toloki elects at first to deprive himself of interpersonal connections by leaving his village, then by doing the same thing in the city, choosing instead a life of solitude in the name of the “holy” profession of mourning. Life in the settlement is hard, and he leaves because a perceived lack of unity:

It is strange how things don’t change in these shanty towns or squatter camps or informal settlements or whatever you choose to call them...The situation is even more complicated these days...But today people are strongly united. None of these groups are ever able to gain any lasting foothold in the settlements and in the townships. People fight back. (147)

The difference in the current settlement is that people overcome the oppressors, so Toloki no longer needed to “eschew forever the company of men. And of women” (147).

In meeting up with Noria, Toloki slowly reintegrates himself back into society. At the outset of the novel Toloki has no personal connections but by the end of the novel he manages to become, along with Noria, a central figure within the settlement. The example of companionship that Toloki and Noria show to the settlement impacts dramatically the face of the settlement. This is an important move for Toloki and for the settlement itself because by choosing to be a part of Noria’s home, Toloki chooses to belong to the settlement. In the article “Spatial Stories: Photographic Practices and Urban Belonging” by Carol Magee, she describes what she calls “elective belonging”:

…one may be born into that community, or one may move to it, but in either case, when one chooses to stay, one elects to belong. This belonging does not depend on formalized recognition by the community, even if it engages with the community…elective belonging does not depend upon one’s acceptance by one’s elected community: instead…one uses the visual to assert and represent belonging. (110)

Though Toloki still imagines himself an outsider he still moves his material possessions into Noria’s shack and into the settlement. Immediately afterwards people see this as a link between Noria and Toloki, assuming of course they are lovers. This move and recognition, however, is more than nosiness: it is symbolic of the link that is being forged between Toloki and the community. The transition from outsider to member of the community can be slow process unless one becomes active within the community. Toloki is not active at first, and it is only through Noria that he is able to assert himself and contribute to the community.

His role as a “professional mourner” seems to give Toloki a sexless status at the beginning of the novel. He represses his sexuality for the sake of his profession because he intends to emulate a holy man but this isolation and repression allows him access to a perspective that is unique: “[Toloki] attributes his keen sense of observation to the fact that he has not lived with other human beings for many years. He therefore sees things with a fresh eye” (176). The perspective he gains in this practice is important later in the novel when Toloki watches the men and women of the village, especially when he goes with Noria to inform the community about the strike. Toloki notices the “women are never still...always on the move...always on the go” (175), in sharp contrast to the men who “sit all day and dispense wide-ranging philosophies on how things should be...then at night they demand to be given food” (175). The division of work between the men and women is notably unfair as women are expect to cook, clean, and care for the children while the men seem to not have jobs and do not do their share of the housework. The roles at home mirror the roles in community action: it is the women who go out into the communities and rally for change while the men only philosophize their “empty theories” (176). The division in these gender roles within the community is in contrast to the relationship between Toloki and Noria who have a balanced relationship, and who support one another equally. It is not beneath Toloki to meet Noria’s women friends, or to assist the women with cooking or setting up for the community meeting (171).

The roles of men and women in Africa are important to the establishment of local government. Marriage itself is a tool people can, and do, use to establish themselves within the community and to gain access to material or money. For example, there was a custom in the 1920s- 1960s called “The Hats” where young women and young men would enter themselves into a marriage “lottery”:

While the women waited outside, the men were instructed to remove their hats, and leave the room. The hats were lined up on a table, and the women filed in. Each [woman] selected a hat, and was married, there and then, to its owner...This...entitled the newlyweds, together with their dependants, to occupy a township ‘family house’...the official permission to inhabit this cramped and inhospitable space offered a stake in the life of the city which many were desperate to seize. (Posel 57)

As the quote suggests, the people who chose to participate in this seemingly absurd marriage ritual were desperate to participate in the life of the city even at the cost of marrying someone they know nothing about. The article calls this the “logic of partnership” where the emphasis is not on marriage for the sake of love but instead to gain access to life within the city, reserved only for people who were married (58). By participating in marriage people were granted access to a luxury not everyone could have: the links created in marriage became an incentive to participate even at the cost of marrying someone who is entirely a mystery and may not be the best match. This participation in the social structure of marriage that is important for the evolution of communities because marriage, whether done for love or other reasons, is a form of participation in social structures that enables people to become more aware of their own social conditions. By marrying, people choose to participate in their communities thereby linking themselves to it in an intimate way and building ties that allow them more access to material and personal freedoms. The decision to marry under the custom of “The Hats” is then not so absurd and instead takes on a more important role as a form of social participation: sacrificing individuality for the sake of social connectivity, with the promise of easier access to urban luxuries.

The status of single women, and the children who are often with them, is one of poverty in Africa. Building a society that includes women who are not married, especially those who have children, has proven challenging. Cities come bundled with a variety of social problems that are not as easily solved in reality as they are on paper. Cities themselves are almost a paradox of wealth and poverty, as they seem to harbor both equally but also as degrees that mirror one another:

While cities are centers of wealth, they are also the focus of intense poverty...there are high concentrations of poverty within particular cities, making poor urban areas...the highest concentrations of poverty in the country. Moreover, the generally accepted notion that women and children are more vulnerable to poverty holds equally well for urban areas...in fact African women and children make up the bulk of the total urban populations. (Parnell 26)

It is a telling statistic that women and children are the “bulk of the urban populations” and not families or, specifically, male-headed households. Cities are centers of wealth, which is part of the lure to people who are on the other side of the spectrum, the poorest of the people. To be close to those people who have money and to attempt to claim some of that wealth for themselves. Women, however, do not have the same opportunities as men do in the work force: there is an obvious disadvantage for women who are unmarried especially if they have children because they cannot find jobs that pay enough for them to care for themselves and their children. Women are thereby encouraged to marry in order to find security for themselves and their (future) children and men become a woman’s only way to find security within communities.

The emphasis of the novel, however, is not that only one sex embodies the desirable characteristics that enable a community to thrive. Instead the argument is for cooperation and cohesion of the sexes to create a more unified community through the strengths of women and men working together, beginning with individual people, to families, to large-scale community projects. This political identity that is built by the unity of the sexes can be seen as an “effect of belonging” which Aimee Rowe discusses as an aspect of the politics of relation:

A politics of relation is...to tip the concept of “subjectivity” away from “individuality”...rather something called “subjectivity” may be thought as an effect of belonging--of the affective, passionate, and political ties that bind us to others. (18)

As Rowe says, there should be a distinction between the idea of “individuality” and “subjectivity,” and this distinction can be seen in Ways of Dying. At the beginning of the novel Toloki was a single individual who had little impact on his environment and he preferred to keep it that way:

...[Toloki’s] role had been to mourn, and only to mourn. He must keep his priorities straight... The work of the Professional Mourner was to mourn, and not to intervene in any of the proceedings of the funeral. It would lower the dignity of the profession to be involved in human quarrels. (Mda 24-25)

Toloki in the beginning is an individual: he does not concern himself with the living community in any way and is more concerned about the dead. In fact, he is so far outside the social realm he does not consider himself “human.” He is not selfish, and in fact seems quite generous, but his material generosity is countered by a political individuality. Politics for him are an inconvenience, only for humans, and should not interfere with Toloki’s “inspired mourning” (24).

Toloki gains “subjectivity” later when he begins to see the impact that Noria has on her community through personal interaction and outreach. Toloki is still maintains his individuality but through Noria he begins to build interpersonal relationships throughout the community, based on those Noria already has. Their relationship itself begins to shape each of them in different ways, as Noria and Toloki both realize. On page 151 Noria tells Toloki that she wants him to teach her how to live and forgive; later Toloki comes to the conclusion that is it Noria who knows how to live (169). Noria and Toloki share a mutual respect that is not seen among others of their peers, and each one learns from the other ways of living that would not have been apparent without the other. Noria does know how to live just as Toloki knows how to die. This dynamic between them seems odd, however, because Noria has experienced death first hand--such as the tragedy of her two sons--while Toloki seems to draw in all people living with his charisma, despite his awful smell. The importance is not is not what Noria and Toloki have experienced as much as it is the connection between them that brings forth the “effect of belonging” (Rowe)--the connection they form as homeboy and homegirl, and then cohabitating creates a dynamic of respect between men and women that permeates the community in subtle ways. The effects on the neighborhood become evident in the novel when Shadrack acknowledges the partnership between Toloki and Noria:

[Shadrack] had heard from Noria’s homeboys and homegirls of the power she used to have back in the village, and he had never believed the stories. But what he has seen with his own eyes this afternoon has left him dumbfounded. He has never had to much good feeling swelling in his chest before.

‘I cannot spoil things between you two. Yours is a creative partnership.’ (200)

The relationship between Toloki and Noria is more than friendship: it is a connection of artistic inspiration that manages to bring together the community at the end of the novel. The women and children gather around the two of them to marvel at Noria’s singing and Toloki’s pictures.

This community gathering at the end of the novel coincides with the new year’s celebration giving an element of rebirth to the characters and to the community. This rebirth consists of the cohabitation of Noria and Toloki, which links them to the community around them, but also the shared artistic link between them that allows Toloki to draw faces--something he could not do before. In the article “Writing the World from an African Metropolis,” Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nutall discuss the problem with presenting Africa in written form:

To write...is the same thing as to form. To a large extent, to write is to bring to the surface something that is not yet there or that is there only as latent, as potential...the ongoing negotiation...between what is and what could be. (348)

Mda’s novel is a perfect example of this negotiation of potentialities because he creates a world that is fiction, of course, but also manages to capture the struggles of a people who teeter between life and death. The art of Toloki and Noria also captures this negotiation as it manages to “bring to the surface” the question of existence within their urban unit--their art is as much a form as the writing of the novel itself. Even the figurines of Jwara capture the joy of the neighborhood, especially that of the children:

Everyone is absorbed in the figurines. The children are falling into such paroxysms of laughter that they roll around on the ground. Toloki is amazed to see that the figurines give pleasure to the children in the same way that Noria gave pleasure to the whole community back in the village. (210)

Existence, in the case of Noria’s neighborhood, is one that consists of walking that line between “between what is and what could be” (Mbembe 348) precisely because these are a people who live on the outside of the city life, and who are working their way into it. By giving pleasure to these people Toloki and Noria allow them access to a luxury: the ability laugh despite their condition, and the opportunity to laugh whenever one feels like it, which is why it is significant that Toloki and Noria choose to keep the figurines at the end of the novel. In setting up a place where the “children could come and laugh whenever they felt like it” (211) Noria and Toloki bring luxury into the settlement--a luxury made possible only by the unification of Noria and Toloki.

To conclude, personal relationships might seem self-serving as they tend to give people more reasons to care about themselves, but they do serve the communities. When people unite with others they create for themselves networks within the community that communities can use to combat oppression and bring forth large scale change. The unity between people can be a powerful tool in petitioning for change: governments find it easy to ignore small-scale movements but it is hard to ignore larger-scale movements that can often begin with small family units banding together. Individuals have little power without support from others, and that support often arises from the immediate networks people have, beginning with families and moving outward through ever-expanding familial groups. Basically, families provide easy access to large-scale mobilization and this is most easily accessible through establishment of still more families with marriage. Toloki and Noria are successful in their community precisely because they unite--man with woman--forming a family structure that links them to each other and to their community. As individuals they were helpless, but with each other their power to create change increases dramatically. Singularly a person is at the mercy of their environment, but with even one link to a person that changes and suddenly people have more control over everything around them.

Works Cited

Magee, Carol. “Spatial Stories: Photographic Practices and Urban Belonging.” Africa Today, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Winter 2007), pps 109-129. Project Muse. Web. 25 February 2010.

Mbembe, Achille and Sarah Nuttall. “Writing the World from an African Metropolis.” Public Culture, Vol. 16, No. 3, pps 347-372. Project Muse. Web. 28 February 2010.

Mda, Zakes. Ways of Dying. South Africa: Oxford University Press, 1995. Print.

Posel, Deborah. “Marriage at the Drop of a Hat: Housing and Partnership in South Africa’s Urban African Townships, 1920s-1960s.” History Workshop Journal, 61 (2006), pps 57-76. Oxford University Press. Web. 25 February 2010.

Parnell, Susan. “Constructing a developmental nation--the challenge of including the poor in the post-apartheid city.” Transformation, Vol. 58 (2005), pps 20-44. Project Muse. Web. 25 February 2010.

Rowe, Aimee Carrillo. “Be Longing: Toward a Feminist Politics of Relation.” NWSA Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer), pps 15-46. Project Muse. Web. 28 February 2010.