The normalisation of GBV in isiXhosa language and literature

It was when Silulundi Coki arrived at the University of Cape Town (UCT) that she finally found the language to express the violence she had witnessed growing up. She said her experiences and curiosity in calling it by its name is what inspired her master’s research. 

This September, her work looking into language and the normalisation of gender-based violence (GBV) in male-selected isiXhosa literature, supervised by Associate Professor Rethabile Possa, has reached its pinnacle: earning her latest qualification, while also pursuing her PhD.

“As a mother to Asiphulutho and Soyama Coki, I have my children at the back of my mind, while also answering questions that I, as a mother, have. I was raised by my grandmother, Novulile Rala-rala, and that is when I got to witness GBV manifest itself within a household while the village was watching. During my research, I was always trying to find the language to articulate what I witnessed as a child. The experiences that kept me silent and isolated in the village were GBV. Trying to find the language has been exciting, but at the same time, traumatic, because as a child, you often normalise the conditions of your home and the lessons you are taught. For a long time, acts of violence around me were normalised, until I arrived at UCT to find that these acts have names,” Silulundi reflected.

“Some other literature speaks about the idea that women are constructed to be invisible in society.”

“I started questioning everything, starting from a cultural perspective. I found that there is a language that identifies all of this. The language then presents healing in a way that makes you realise that you were not wrong when you were frustrated at acts of violence.”

Healing came in the form of therapy, and she met with social workers and engaged a lot of people in the community of care. This is also because she had to start “thinking about my own personal relationship with my partner and having to process the fact that this is the same black man who I grew up around”.

“I have also experienced violence … during my last year of school. I have found the language in the literature through works like Iingceba Zegazi by Simphiwe Nolutshungu, written by a black Xhosa man, which meant it came from someone who knows the representation of what he was writing about,” said Silulundi. Her research, however, was not only focused on literature written by men, enabling her to juxtapose different perspectives, unpack ideas and advance her own work.

Perpetuation of violence

“I think of the works of Pumla Gqola when in her book Rape she mentions the internalisation of shame. She uses shame as a system that we get to carry, and it reminded me of how I had to navigate life and what it meant growing up. Some other literature speaks about the idea that women are constructed to be invisible in society. The core aim of my paper was never to segregate men, women and the LGBTQIA community; hence the use of African feminism as the theoretical framework. I’d like to understand everyone as people.”

She added: “At the end of my study, I was very angry and scared of all black men. This was due to the processing of women and children’s experiences while I was engaging with GBV – their experiences became real. I was left with an empty shell, and I could not figure out how to move forward. I paused. I later found out I was pregnant with a child [who] is a boy. And now I am left with questions of how I will raise my son in a world where black men are dominant in the perpetuation of violence, and the normalisation thereof through generations.”

As Silulundi continues her PhD journey, new themes and questions have emerged, including how she can heal and learn to love a black man. “It is something I am looking at now: African/black masculinity and the language used to construct it. I think about it through the lenses of ubuntu, because there was gender segregation during my master’s research, on being conscious of the legacies of colonialism and the structural violence in narratives of gender within the African context. Therefore, I continue my PhD journey thinking about investigating the grammar of violence through examining language of violence, masculinity and gender in literature – specifically in isiXhosa. This is about redirection while acknowledging the experiences of survivors and not excusing the perpetrators. It however seeks to understand the healing and becoming within gender-based violence.”