Iyho!
“Oh no” I thought. “This world does not need another white man.”
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I write articles, poems, short stories and create art exploring my rehumanizing journey as an unlearner and new parent. Each Monday I offer work focusing on a theme:
Ubuntu as Rehumanization - I focus on Ubuntu as a radical force for human dignity by exploring its eight dimensions: Ubuntu (humanization), Umphefumlo (breath), Umzimba (body), Ulimi (language), Umqondo (head), Inhliziyo (heart), Umoya (spirit), Amandla (power).
Unlearning My Apartheid Education - I examine what it means to unlearn my South African apartheid socialization. I write about anti-oppression: anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-capitalism, among more topics.
Childhood - Thoughts and reflections from my inner child’s eye. I talk about growing up in the afterlives of apartheid South Africa in a multi-racial family as well as boarding school life in a colonial school.
New Parenthood - Invite you into our new parenthood journey with all its chaotic beauty.
Iyho! (New Parenthood Series)
“Oh no” I thought. “This world does not need another white man.” Somehow, I anticipated my partner and I welcoming a baby girl. The thought comforted me. I felt that, as a dad, I could focus on nurturing her spirit, and partnering with my partner, and with her, to create a family that was distinctly feminine, and feminist.
Looking behind me to the past and around me in the present, I struggled to find men that embodied the characteristics congruent with a manhood that I felt I needed: empathetic, open, conscious of colonial oppression and doing the internal work to unlearn and heal out of dominating behaviors. I see my own inadequacy, complicity and overlap with white men whose masculinity has caused and continues to enable untold destruction to our earth, to its people, to our families, and to ourselves. I see fellow men across race and class who desperately cling to an identity of domination that harms us and as the place of work to heal into a better world.
It is three months until he is born. And in that time, I have time to shift my perspective from the “easier” task of being a partner and parent to a girl into the complex work of partnering to foster unlearning within our future white male child. Looking in the mirror, I face the work that I, as a male model, have ahead. How do I sever the lineage of patriarchal violence running through my veins so as not to entangle him in our ancestor’s colonial poison?
How do I unlearn, and heal through my own experiences of domination as a child, my own socialization into manhood and patriarchy, to humanize myself so that I may offer the possibility of humanizing him, and therefore our world?
The task is terrifying. I am petrified of my own work. I am afraid of his contact with other unhealed men and what that will do. I am perplexed as to how we all prepare and protect a young male body to resist the embedded violence that transforms him, and all of us into constructions rather than human beings with dignity.
“The world needs parents like you both.” They say. “We need parents to raise ‘good white men’ who understand how the world was violently built to advantage them and be prepared to find their own path of humanity within that minefield of dominant, dehumanizing, yet rewarded, ways of being.” “Iyho,” Ngicabanga, I think, as I sit in this shared responsibility.
Image Credits:SABC News - Floods KZN
‘Iyho’ is the unconscious sound our collective bodies made as kids when we saw a major bridge wash away from heavy flooding. The Zulu expression and its feelings leaped from our diverse bodies as we covered our mouths in witness to the bridge flowing out to sea like a weightless feather in a cool breeze. A few days later, that word jumped out from us again as we stood aghast at the flood’s aftermath – the mangled road on either side of the open chasm felt unreal.
Our bare feet pressed into the muddy clay soaking the gorge as we ran and played kleilat. Hardened clay was fixed to the end of a stick and flung like a missile. We hid and ducked behind buried cars and amidst the roots of a giant, overturned tree. The mangled reeds made excellent, flexible sticks, and the hoarse clay of multiple hues made perfect missiles.
My friend yelped as an edgy clump slammed into his eye. He clutched it and wailed from the pain. We ran to him, washing his eye with water. “Iyho,” relief overcame us when we saw his intact pupil stare back at us. We hugged him, holding him in support. That broken bridge, the stone-filled clay, and seeing his intact eye crystalized into a moment of humanity beyond the system. We felt, in public, with one another, without shame. Iyho.
Appreciation Time: Thank you for spending time in community with me.Through this work I hope to deepen community, connection and justice with you.
Please consider joining the waitlist for my upcoming book: Unlearning My Education: Ubuntu. Schooling. Rehumanization (expected publication in the Fall of 2027). The analytical memoir explores how Ubuntu as a rehumanizing lens can help us understand colonial education using my personal story of attending a dehumanizing former British boarding school in South Africa.
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This was truly beautiful to read, such earnest words. All the best with your parenting endeavor.
You are going to be a great dad, Warren!