It takes a special sense of irony to appreciate the Hobson Hall Women’s Day challenge. This annual celebration brings the houses in our university hall together in friendly competition over all things sporty. The rifle challenge is my particular favourite.
In this event a row of inflated condoms is strung in a line, where they blow picturesquely in the breeze. About five metres away, two girls crouch low over their rifles, eyes squinting through the rear sight lenses. It doesn’t take much imagination to hear the whirl of choppers overhead and see the combat gear and the camouflage mud smeared under their eyes. But I digress. There is no need for Hollywood padding, this is dramatic enough as it is.
”Why are they using condoms?”
”Because it’s Women’s Day.”
The assertion is sagely accepted and unquestioned.
The games begin and each of the four houses in the hall must find two girls to represent it in the rifle challenge.
”How are we going to burst the condoms?” asks one innocent bystander, oblivious to the phallic leather cases and their grim contents lying on the grass nearby.
”Maybe we have to sit on them,” suggests another.
”I still don’t get why we are using condoms, who would want to burst a condom?” asks the first girl.
”Do we have any Catholics in our house?” I ask hopefully. No one gets it.
The girls selected to participate take their positions and the onlookers begin those activities common to crowds at sporting events. Vuvuzelas are raised to lips and dull, farting mononotes forced from them. The one next to me sounds more like a nose being blown. Girls from different houses begin various chants: R! E! D-D-D! H! O! T-T-T! Reeeed hot! Reeeed hot! Every time a condom is blasted into oblivion the crowd erupts into cheers and ululations. ”Heee-lililililileeee!” shout the girls’ team-mates as they break out of their ranks to toyi-toyi briefly around the rifle-toting heroine, arms outstretched like jet planes as they run in a circle with heads bowed.
It’s amusing, this joy over the destruction of government hand-outs — the careful aim, the brief phiff of the air rifle, the pop of the air-filled condom and the sound of masses of girls bursting into manic celebration.
Insignificant bits of rubber, these condoms are the difference between life and death, health and infection. And they are gleefully destroyed with all the subliminal rage of a gender that has never had complete control over their lives. There is something seductive about the masculine way in which the bullet chamber is wrenched back, the clips stuffed in and the case slammed back into place.
A group of girls starts singing our generic, nation-building anthem:
”Shaaaaaaaaaaw, sholoza.”
”Shosholoza,” kicks in the bass harmony.
”Kuleeeeeeeee zontaba.”
”Stimela siphume South Africa.”
The girls falter over the last two words, realising they should have said Dingemans or Hobson, in support of their house. Too late now, the rifle challenge is almost over and the marksmen (women?) start counting the now shrivelled bits of dangling white rubber to determine which team has won.
The ubiquitous African sun beats down on the square patch of grass. Its unforgiving rays are usually described and adored in profound poetry and prose, but today it serves only to penetrate the remaining white orbs, casting ethereal shadows on the wall behind. They are incandescent for a moment: convoluted symbols of freedom and necessity, protection and subjugation in a country with one of the highest rates of HIV/Aids and rape in the world. A country where, in 1956, 20 000 women marched to the Union Buildings to demand justice, equality and, most of all, freedom — freedom to roam their land without fear of harassment, intimidation and violence. Sadly, 50 years on, the enemy has only gotten bigger.
Verashni Pillay is a journalism student at Rhodes University who lives in the residence system