Shepolopolo

Shepolopolo

           
          ‘Ha ha!’ Sara hooted. ‘See how we wasted all our money, effort, agony and support trying to get Chipolopolo into the World Cup. And instead along comes Shepolopolo with an effortless smile, trounces everybody and off they go. See how they have quietly shamed all the noisy, pompous and useless men!

          ‘Shush,’ laughed Kupela, ‘We women are supposed to pretend that our men are superior. It is our job to make them feel strong and powerful. Soccer is supposed to be a man’s game, and our job is just to wash and iron their football shirts and…’

          ‘Wash their football shirts!’ Sara cackled, ‘Hardly any of them play! Ten thousand go to the stadium to watch twenty-two men kick a ball up and down. Another fifty thousand watch on television. They cheer it, pay for it, discuss it, celebrate their victories with beer, mourn their losses with beer, but they don’t play it! Most of them are too fat and unfit to play it! If the Minister of Sport had the ball at his feet, he wouldn’t even be able to see it! The plain fact is that they’re no good at it. But when we put together a team of eleven young women – off they go to the World Cup!’

          ‘It was because they had a male coach,’ I said.

          ‘What do you know about it?’ scoffed Sara. ‘I’m giving you a red card!’

          ‘The way our society works,’ said Kupela, ‘our female role is to support our men, and make them feel successful and powerful. They run the government, they are the heads of household, they take the decisions. When they secretly feel uncertain and incapable, and get in an awful mess, but try not to show it, it’s our job to believe in them, console them, and tell them they are men, strong and clever. Now along come these Shepolopolo and upset everything, showing that women are better at the man’s own game! It puts the rest of us in an awkward position! Especially if we are caught laughing!’

          ‘Don’t upset yourself,’ I sneered, ‘one football game won’t overturn our traditional patriarchy. We men are quite safe.’

          ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ snapped Sara. ‘There never was traditional patriarchy. I know from what my grandmother Sibongile told me about village life in pre-colonial days. It was the women who were in charge of the men!’

          ‘Poof,’ I laughed. ‘How did they manage that?’

          ‘They produced the food, and cooked it in the matriarchal cooking pot, and therefore they controlled the production and distribution of resources.’

          ‘But the men were bigger and stronger.’

          ‘Not when they only got their fair share from the cooking pot. They were much smaller then. Their only useful function was fertilization. Otherwise they were sent away for the useless men’s games, such as fighting each other, hunting, stealing cattle, and so on.

          ‘Huh,’ I said. ‘How exactly did the women control them?’

          ‘In those days their games were very dangerous, so there weren’t many to control. That’s how polygamy started, because men were outnumbered. Men were controlled by the matriarchal cooking pot. Herbs and special muti were used to help them provide sexual services when specially needed. But the pot also produced beer and kachasu to put them to sleep when not needed. All sorts of feasts and festivities were invented to keep them drunk most of the time, so that the women could get on with their work in peace. The women had their own nsaka, or parliament, where they could discuss the problems of men who had become a nuisance, and also agree on suitable punishment  – such as banishment to another village, or even to live alone in the forest. In those days the playful men were under control, and the village was rich and prosperous, and starvation was unheard of.’

          ‘Oh yes,’ I sneered. ‘And how did this matriarchal utopia suddenly disappear?’

          ‘A terrible catastrophe hit the land!’

          ‘Oh yes? What was that? An earthquake? Volcanic eruption? Tornado?’

          ‘Worse than that,’ said Sara solemnly. ‘The Europeans arrived.’

          ‘I heard about that,’ I said. ‘They brought development.’

          ‘They brought disaster,’ she replied grimly. ‘They came from a patriarchal society. When the Europeans saw men being ruled by women they were appalled. They vowed to stay in the country until they had changed the whole system, and the men ruled the women.’

          ‘So how did they do that?’ wondered Kupela.

          ‘They came with their own patriarchal cooking pot, to cook up a different form of government.’

          ‘And what was in the pot?’

          ‘A completely new system of social organization: Schools; wage employment; civil service; army; parliament; ministers; beer halls; soccer games. A new public domain of control. These were the essential ingredients of the patriarchal cooking pot.’

          ‘No food in the patriarchal cooking pot?’

          ‘No. It was more ideological than gastronomical.’

          ‘And the pot was only for men?’

          ‘Exactly. The public domain was only for men, and women were kept out. Women had to stay in the home and in the village, which became the domestic domain. This foreign system was called colonial government, and it’s aim was to put men in charge.’

          ‘And did the Europeans succeed?’

          ‘It took them sixty years, but they successfully disempowered and subordinated the women, and put the men in charge. Having fully established this male colonial government, they left in 1964. All record of women’s earlier dominance was expunged from the history books.’

          ‘But today, at this late stage,’ wondered Kupela, ‘can we still return to our old traditional values, our earlier prosperity, and chase these hopeless playful men out of government?’

          ‘Of course we can!’ declared Sara. ‘And the revolution has already begun with the famous victory of our brave sisters, the heroic Shepolopolo!’

          ‘And what should we call this new revolution?’ wondered Kupela.

          ‘It shall be called,’ declared Sara, ‘The Struggle for Independence’.