I turned 45 this year, although strangers frequently tell me I do not look a day over 35. They intend it as a compliment. I have learnt to receive it with a smile. The truth is it irritates me. I have lived every one of those 45 years. Why should I be pleased when 10 of them are removed from my face?
Looking young seems to be genetic. Both my parents looked younger than people expected.
Yes, I understand the compliment. The trouble begins when people mistake a youthful face for a youthful life.
They assume less experience, less authority and fewer years carrying responsibility. But my face is not my biography. It does not display motherhood, study, professional practice, grief, divorce, leadership, disappointment, recovery or all the times I have had to begin again.
Sometimes people do not merely subtract years from my appearance. They also subtract experience from my authority.
Perhaps this is why forms of address affect me so much.
Here in Gqeberha, everybody is apparently chomi. I do not know when the meeting was held but a decision was clearly taken.
You arrive at a supermarket till to buy bread and milk.
“Anything else, chomi?”
No, chomi. This friendship was not on my shopping list.
Then there is ”my dear:”
“My dear, that till is closed.”
“My dear, do you have a rewards card?”
Yho. I have known you for 11 seconds. When did I become yours? And dear?
Surely there is a space between coldness and turning every adult woman into your friend or dear. Sometimes “hello” is enough.
The longer I sit with this pet peeve, the more I think heritage lies beneath it.
During Heritage Month, we wear traditional clothing, prepare food, sing, dance and speak about ceremonies. But heritage is also a way of recognising people.
In many African societies, age was never merely the number of years since birth. People moved through recognised stages of life and into relationships and responsibilities. African rites of passage marked changes in a person’s standing within family and community.
Among amaMpondo, terms such as intombi, inkwenkwe, indlavini, umkhwetha, indoda, umfazi, umakoti, umkhwenyana, umama, utata and udadobawo locate a person within a network of relationships.
They are not rungs on one ladder. A woman may be a daughter in her parental home, an aunt to one person, a mother to another and umakoti within her marital family. African identity is relational. The question is not only: How old are you? It is also: Who have you become in relation to others?
That system was not perfect. Age and status can silence younger people, while cultural titles can confine women to marriage and motherhood. I am not suggesting that we resurrect every inherited hierarchy and call it heritage.
But something important was damaged by colonialism.
An African man could be recognised as indoda in his community: a husband, father or person entrusted with responsibility. Yet in a white workplace, he became “boy”. An African woman could be umama, umfazi, umakoti or udadobawo at home and become “girl” or “maid” in somebody else’s house.
The adults worked, married, raised children and supported families. They were adult enough to labour, pay taxes and be punished but never considered adult enough to exercise authority over themselves.
The practice began before apartheid, although apartheid turned the control of black life into an administrative project. Historical scholarship describes “boy” for adult African male workers as combining servitude with a denial of adulthood and manhood.
Whatever status your community conferred upon you could be removed at the workplace door.
“Boy” was a political demotion. Even the supposedly affectionate “my boy” contained the arrangement: my worker, my servant, somebody under my control.
Colonialism did not only take land and labour. It interfered with Africans’ authority to recognise one another.
Being called “chomi” at the pay point is not equivalent to the colonial use of “boy”. But forms of address are not empty. They reveal what we think the relationship is and who we believe the person before us to be.
I also have mixed feelings about mam. In many black communities, it respectfully recognises an adult woman of educational or professional standing. But sometimes it places one into a broad category without consultation: older black woman of status.
Now I am stuck.
“Chomi” gives me a friendship I did not request. “My dear” gives me an intimacy I did not consent to. “Mam” sometimes gives me an age I was not ready to discuss at the till.
Yho. Trauma everywhere.
Yet I want to be recognised as 45. I do not want to be treated as old before my time but neither do I want my years to disappear because my face has not displayed them according to schedule.
And schedule is the other part of the problem.
Complete a PhD at 35 and somebody wonders whether you have lived enough. Complete it at 50 and somebody wonders what took so long. Lead while young and people suspect you moved too quickly. Arrive later and institutions invest in “young, emerging talent”.
There is apparently a perfect age for achievement. Nobody can say what it is but gatekeepers know when you are not it.
The insistence that lives reach milestones according to an approved timetable is called chrononormativity. It turns one constructed life course into the standard against which everyone is judged.
I recognise it in myself. When somebody completes a PhD at 35 or 38, I sometimes wonder: “But did this person live?”
Then I must speak to myself.
Busie, please!
People do not receive the same amount of life in each calendar year. Some carry enormous responsibilities young. Others take longer to find their intellectual direction. A doctorate demonstrates research capability; it does not confer wisdom. But age does not confer wisdom either. We all know an elder who has declined every invitation to become wise.
My parents’ generation complicates the timetable. They were among earlier black South Africans entering professions from which apartheid had excluded previous generations. By my age, they had carried extraordinary responsibilities. Their achievements were personal, familial and political.
My generation has greater formal access but institutions decide when a black person is sufficiently seasoned to exercise authority.
Nobody has to say: “You cannot lead because you are a black woman.” They can say: “You are young”, “you need more exposure”, “you are promising” and “your time will come”.
Sometimes these are honest developmental observations. Sometimes they are beautifully mannered ways of keeping the gate closed. Ageism and gatekeeping are documented among black early-career academics in South African higher education.
Perhaps this is the Heritage Month conversation I want us to have.
Can we recognise experience without worshipping age? Respect authority without silencing younger people? Acknowledge African relational identities without imprisoning women inside marriage and motherhood? Allow people to arrive at achievement through different routes and times?
Heritage should not only tell us what our ancestors wore. It should help us think about how they understood growth, responsibility, relationship and recognition and decide which parts of that inheritance serve us.
And if we have never met, perhaps let us reconsider “my dear”.
Let us begin with “hello”.
If the relationship develops, I will let you know.
Busisiwe Madikizela-Theu is a lecturer in the department of social development professions at Nelson Mandela University and a PhD candidate in social work at the University of Fort Hare.