Rape of body parts

| Friday April 13, 2007 00:00

'Mchana, but you are the one who found us here the other day all of us drinking our own cheerness - I mean minding our own business, and out of your frustration you started telling us  how your wife is trying to change you by accusing you of having changed. Now you look us in the face and say we are interfering in your marital affairs after talking to your wife.

 

Strue's god, I will never understand married couples! Never!'

'Kante wena Smooch, you don't know the Setswana that says that the internal kickings of the children of the same womb are not entered into?

'O tswa kae kante jy? Married couples are the most unreliable people in the world,' claims Nikita in a tone of authority.

 

'You must never tell one partner anything about the other in confidence because you don't know what they say to each other between the sheets and under the blankets!'

'Kana nna that's why I will never have an affair with a married man. I'm very clear about that, because when the chips are down, or should I say when the pants are down, he turns against you in favour of the same wife that he has been promising to leave since he first met you!' declares Walkie, coming in from the kitchen where she has been helping Ausi Maggie with the chicken livers and gizzards for the happy hour, which had been temporarily suspended by the chief executive hostess and sole proprietor of the establishment because the fellows were not up to date with their accounts. Ausi Maggie actually had to shout at them when they demanded their hot snacks, saying: 'what am I going to buy the chickens with if you don't pay your account, chicken shit?'

 

Tshini immediately took out a fifty pula note and slapped it on the oblong table, around which the fellows were congregated and declared:

'Oaitse ke eng? This whole business about married people is boring me to death! I hereby sponsor a new round of drinks so that we can start a new topic!'

 

Then one chap who seems to have seen the inside of many a shebeen, and the bottom of many a beer glass, placed his own glass on top of Tshini's money and declares to all and sundry presently in between sips; 'I am concerned about married rape!'

'Please! Please! I'm not at that stage of wild romance yet. We've only been married for 3 months!' laughs Tshini.

'I'm serious,' says the older man in a grave voice quite befitting his stated concern. 'I dread going home because I know my wife is going to demand that we have sex. If I refuse she forces me.'

'Hei monna, what's wrong with you? I thought you were the man of the house!' Smooch says, looking at him sideways.

 

'I am the man of the house, but she is the one who wears the big blue bloomers into which she puts the wallet! I think she punishes me in that way because I drink her money in shebeens. What she doesn't realise is that I do it because I'm really frustrated by being unemployed and stressed by her treating me like a small boy. I don't mind telling you that what she does is so humiliating and belittling. I feel like I have no self-esteem, no manhood! Every time she forces herself on me I feel helpless. I feel castrated, literally...'

 At that point the old fellow's voice sort of faded off and it wasn't clear whether he was sniffing or sipping from his half empty glass.

'Why don't you report her to the police?' enquires Ausi Maggie quite concerned.

 

'What? And be the laughing stock of the nation? Never! Besides, how do you convince anybody that you've been raped by your spouse when Batswana have this thing about dikobo - conjugal rights in marriage. When the marriage itself is nowhere to be seen, all that remains are the blankets.'

'Hei, but this thing ya rape has reached epidemic proportions, man! All the news headlines are screaming RAPE, but it goes on unabated. And it's not just here, it's all over the region. They even rape little babies now!'

'It's like this thing ya ritual murders for body parts. All of a sudden there are ritual murders all over the space. In Botswana, Swaziland and South Africa, Zimbabwe, all over the show.'

'I don't think it's all of a sudden. I think it's been happening for a long time. It's just that now more and more people are speaking out against it. Just as they are speaking out against sexual abuse and rape;' says Ausi Maggie.

 

'Kana nna I'm always telling you that these are the symptoms of the pressures of modernity. It is a study in the psychology of the modern African individual who cannot cope with the assumptions and demands of industrialisation, commercialisation and urbanisation of the African metropole,' says Nikita, getting rather warmed up in the conversation.

'Hee, hee! Boy, boy ke Nikita yoo! The one with the Oshkosh English with the sound and fury, signifying absolutely zero.'

 

'Don't get too excited my friend,' continues Nikita, 'What I'm merely saying is that the increase in rape and in ritual killings must be directly related to the new dynamics of the modern African capitalist society and its loss of respect for human life, for botho. The new order is to get what you want at all costs!.'

'Yes, okay. I agree with you,' says Walkie. 'I suggest, therefore, that we should find new solutions to these problems.

I propose, dear fellows of the oblong table, that all rapists be castrated and that the offending parts be taken to a place duly designated by law where they can be stored and preserved and then sold to traditional doctors, wizards and witches and their agents who trade in human body parts. In this way you are solving two problems at one go.

'Oh, I see! You mean killing two nonyanes with one stone?'

'No, no, she means castrating Peter to pay Paul!'

' Well even that will soon be difficult if they pass the Bill on possession of body parts that are not part of your body!'