Going Home - Doris May Lessing [74]
And now this powerful woman, secure in her place in the fabric of the tribe, with all her responsibilities and duties well marked out for her, and understood by everybody—this woman comes into town, and she is nothing. She is nothing. She is only a wife, only a mother. All her other roles have gone. She sits at home, under the wing of her husband, and no wonder she is restless and bad-tempered.
(At this point there was a stir of agreement among the listening men.)
And her husband is restless and dissatisfied and bad-tempered.
‘But the fabric of the tribe is broken, gentlemen, the fabric of the community is destroyed; and it is you who must rebuild it. It is your task, gentlemen, to create the new feeling of cohesion. I don’t know how. By clubs, perhaps? Somehow you must find a way. Otherwise you cannot keep your feeling as a people.’
And now, said Dr Holleman, he wanted to discuss the question of ‘spares’. ‘Spares’ is the word among Africans for those women in the towns who did not marry, who lived with a man for a time before moving on to another. ‘And how critical you men are,’ said Dr Holleman, ‘of these women! How insulting! And whose fault is it that these women exist? Why, it is your fault, gentlemen. If they did not minister to your convenience, then they would not be with us in so great a number.’
And he went on to say that among the ‘spares’ were to be found the most independent and fearless of the women; and from them they, the welfare workers, should take the best for teaching the others. It was no use, he said, criticizing these women and offering them nothing better. ‘Give them responsibility! Give them trust! And set them to uplifting the level of the other, more passive women. It is for you to do this, for you to help them…’
Dr Holleman spoke on these lines for over an hour; and when he had finished, there were questions. A man whose voice was like a deep swarm of bees asked about some point of tribal law; and another spoke very crisply about the insolence of the ‘spares’.
But what I was thinking about was how once I heard a violent feminist lecturing a group of English trade unionists about how the British working-man treated his wife. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘how you expect your wives not only to run after you day and night as if you were so many helpless babies; but half the time they have jobs as well, and children to bring up, and even so you don’t lift a finger to help them. Why, your wives work twice as hard as you do; there is no more exploited creature in the world,’ she concluded, ‘than the British working-class wife.’
On the faces of these African welfare workers I saw exactly the same look of stubborn resistance as I saw then on the faces of those English trade unionists.
Later, I met a group of Superintendents for the Locations and Townships of Bulawayo in another office, with Dr Holleman. The difference between the old type Native Department official and the new was clearly seen in the way they spoke of the Africans—one paternal, having no nonsense; one half-proud, half-apprehensive, the New Deal spirit.
We again discussed the women in the cities.
One official said how the men were dissatisfied with the women: always quarrelling, always visiting, always complaining. ‘If only I had time to cook for myself I wouldn’t bother with a wife.’
Another said husbands were continually coming to him asking for his support in matrimonial quarrels: ‘I say to them, it’s your job to keep your women in order, not mine.’
Because married accommodation is much better than single, men marry ‘spares’ so as to get a marriage certificate. But they