There are very few African novels that openly proclaim their feminism in the manner that Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter does.
Sindiwe Magona’s Chasing the Tails of My Father’s Cattle (2015) is one such novel that openly claims its feminist identity.
In this novel, the writer declares her conviction about the need to respect women and accord them the space to exercise their right to live as human beings.
Chasing the Tails of My Father’s Cattle is set in rural South Africa in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
It tells the story of Shumikazi, a young girl who has to surmount hurdles placed on her way by the culture of the community she is born in.
Shumikazi is born as the tenth of her parents’ children but all the nine before her die young, causing untold pain to her parents, especially her mother who the society considers “barren” and cursed for having buried so many infants.
Unfortunately for Shumikazi, her mother dies during childbirth leading the very superstitious society to see the young girl as having “eaten” her own mother so that she could live.
The novel is really about the vulnerability of women especially in conservative societies whose customs and traditions alienate girls.
Shumikazi is an only child, a daughter, and although her father loves her a lot, his relatives feel that it would be better if he remarried and got a son.
However, Jojo, Shumikazi’s father, has no need for a son and makes it very clear that his only interest is in raising his daughter and educating her as she desires.
Jojo becomes the symbol of change in a culturally rigid society. During his wife’s funeral, he slaughters an ox, a practice that is the reserve of departed kings and chiefs.
He defies tradition and ignores the snide remarks of his brothers, who believe he has lost his mind, to show his love for his wife.
Later, he does the unthinkable when he leaves his job in the mines to work on his farm at home so that he could raise his motherless daughter.
Other men are shocked by his action since leaving the mines means earning less yet he still has to pay poll tax.
When other men are making plans to receive bride price for their daughters, Jojo takes Shumikazi to secondary school. His brothers are scandalised — how dare he spend so much money on a girl’s education instead of marrying her off “to be a good wife and bear children for her husband?”
When Jojo realises that he is suffering from a lung infection and having seen his brothers’ objection to his love and support for his daughter, he signs off all his wealth (livestock) to Shumikazi, an act that has the whole village talking since it is unheard of for a man to leave his wealth to a daughter.
When his sister is physically abused by her husband, Jojo goes against his elder brothers’ wishes and brings their sister back to her birth home.
Divorce is almost taboo in this society and once a girl is married, she really has no claims on her birth home any more. If anything, families are not supportive of “returnees” since it would mean sharing land with them.
In Chasing the Tails of My Father’s Cattle, Magona is clearly suggesting that education is the best strategy for ensuring that women rise above the cultural restrictions that often disadvantage them.
Shumikazi desires to attain the highest level of education and even when she is engaged to be married, the only condition she and her father give to the suitor is to allow her to complete school.
This writer’s simple but tried and proven argument is that no society progresses until girls are given a decent education.
The novel also addresses the human traits of greed and betrayal and presents them as some of the hurdles that women face in their journey to progress.
When her father dies, Shumikazi’s uncles refuse to take her to school and even conceal the fact that the missionaries at her school have offered her a full scholarship.
Shumikazi has to get married and in her noble character she gives all her wealth to her eldest uncle since, according to her, she should not take her clan’s wealth to her husband’s clan.
Shumikazi’s husband dies in the mines and, being a true daughter to her father, she defies tradition by returning to her father’s home to rebuild it and raise her children there.
She refuses to be “inherited” by her dead husband’s brother and opts to raise her children on her own.
However, when she goes to seek her uncle’s help to rebuild her life in her father’s compound, the uncle refuses despite the fact that she had given him all her livestock.
However, with her industry and the little education she had acquired at school, Shumikazi is able to prosper once again.
All that women need is support from the men in their immediate circles and a chance to cultivate their potential. Unfortunately, there are plenty of men, like Shumikazi’s uncle, who view women as threats to their own progress.
Magona seems to be criticising how the economic system in apartheid South Africa — on which much of the country’s economic progress was based — destroyed the lives of Africans.
As the men left to work in the mines, women remained behind to raise families on their own. In effect, they were “mine widows” since they would be together with their husbands for only a few weeks in a year. The children hardly knew their fathers.
Chasing the Tails of My Father’s Cattle is a call to women not to be cowed by restrictive traditions, or to conform to societal expectations.
At the same time, it shows that women do not have to be spiteful or gravely opposed to men for them to find their footing.
This story sounds familiar today, to the extent of being a cliché. However, the moral of the story remains relevant today as it was when women, and sympathetic men, started fighting for women’s rights.
The girl child remains largely disadvantaged and it is only when women realise their full rights as human beings that the society will be whole.
