To Speak In Two Tongues

In Zambia, Western feminist frameworks struggle to capture the complex interactions between women, animals, and meat

While Western feminist frameworks struggle to capture the complex interactions between women, animals, and meat in the Global South, looking at meat production and consumption in Zambia illuminates how power is negotiated between genders more broadly.

By Mwinji Nakamba Siame | Premium subscribers have access to an audio reading of this piece on our podcast.

At my cousin’s wedding send-off the drums begin. They throb with something like pain and longing but also desire. I catch my mother smiling at me or rather, at us. “Us” is  a troupe of my female cousins and her closest friends who dance with aplomb in our colourful chitenge dresses — dresses made of cotton or sometimes wax fabric also known and worn as a “wrapper” or “maZambia”  with various, often colourful prints like drum patterns or geometric shapes. In Namwanga culture, very little of importance in spiritual and social life happens without a collective of women deciding upon it and moving, sometimes literally, to make it happen. 

Our Namwanga people are a Bantu ethnic group that hails from the northern part of Zambia, and in our communities, the highest seat of power is occupied by a woman. The first woman Chief (or Chieftainess) of the Namwanga tribe in Zambia came to power when the border between Tanzania and Zambia was drawn in 1890. Since then, the Namwanga people in Zambia have been led by a woman, who rules in tandem with a male chief (usually her brother by blood or someone who shares some other form of kinship) on the other side of the border.¹ Bemba² cultural thinker Mulenga Kapwepwe describes this dynamic as the continued practice of “power-sharing” between men and women. The Chieftainess presides over social and economic matters such as addressing child marriage and economic development in her area in Zambia, while occasionally meeting with her counterpart, the Mukoma (the Chief of the Namwanga people in Tanzania) to discuss important matters and strengthen diplomatic ties across borders. 

Power sharing is a feature of cultural, social, and religious life beyond the Chieftaincy too. Our belief in an equal distribution of labour and thus power can be seen reflected in our relationships to gender and food, including animals, and it’s on display at my cousin’s send-off. After we hand our sister over to her future groom, we return to our dainty chairs at linen-covered tables. We watch as our aunts prostrate to the future groom's family, turning from side to side on the ground as if trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in. When they have done this bidding of the Creator — to thank him, thank the family of the groom, and to bless the marriage with harmony and longevity through this supplication — a handful of goats are brought out and taken to my uncle. Animals are often an important part of Namwanga cultural and religious rites, including premarital and marital ceremonies. The goats are a token of appreciation from the groom's family to the bride’s for nurturing her. As the handover takes place, one of the goats flees from a handler, causing a raucous scene that fills the ceremony area with laughter.

There is a school of Western feminist thought that might read this seeming exchange of a bride for livestock as confirmation of the equation of women with meat. But this would be a gross misreading. As Chandra Talpade Mohanty argues, Western feminist scholarship and discourse distort the experiences of Global South women and their culture because their methodology fails to account for individual experiences. Their methodologies tend to miss the cultural or personal meaning behind practices, failing to see these practices through the eyes of women who participate in them. 

According to Mohanty, any discourse around patriarchy needs context, specificity, and nuance. I would add historical context. Each cultural practice or belief system — including those regarding women and meat — has a different history behind it, and the methodologies used to research and analyze these systems of oppression must be salient to this reality. Adopting this lens on many of the cultural practices of pre- and post-colonial Zambian communities like mine challenges some of the assumptions by key Western feminist scholars regarding both meat and gender.

Illustration by Zoë Johnson.

***

In her book, The Sexual Politics of Meat, Carol J. Adams makes an argument about the “absent referent”, drawing parallels between the objectification of both animals (as meat) and women. In Adam’s opinion, both are made invisible through their consumption — the consumption of meat on the one hand, and the consumption of cultural images of sex, on the other. This objectification grants the consumer the freedom to imagine them as unfeeling, or not imagine them at all. This suggests that women do not, at least symbolically, have an egalitarian role in society.

Adam's argument might be salient in highly-capitalist and industrialized communities where meat is simply a product and not a part of ritual or social life, However, it clashes with the realities of many Global South cultures, by neglecting the ways that the natural world — and by extension, meat and animals — carry different meanings in different contexts. 

In Zambian culture, it is not uncommon to find that animals are dealt with by consumers — not just as meat, but as animals. In this sense, they are very present in the experience of meat consumption. This consumption can take place at a premarital ceremony, wedding send-off, thanks-giving for the husband (matebeto), or even at less formal events like barbecues, where farming families like mine prepare animals that we have reared and slaughtered nearby. The inclusion of animals in these events suggests that they are more than just food, and they are treated as such. In Bemba cosmology, relationships between humans and all of creation — not only relationships between human beings — are considered among the most important elements of life created by God.³ 

Animals also contribute to important dimensions of gender equity, including power-sharing. Unlike in other African cultures — and even non-ceremonial social events in Zambia — where men tend to take the lead on preparing meat, Namwanga women from all class groups are often permitted to be active participants in indigenous rites that involve the preparation of meat. At events like my cousin’s send-off, one might enjoy freshly slaughtered meat that women have prepared. Even in circumstances where women may not be permitted to eat certain parts of an animal, they are allowed to prepare these parts. For example, in the Bemba knowledge system, women are not supposed to eat the back of the chicken because this part is said to represent the physical efforts of a man during intimacy with his wife. In this case, the woman is expected to use her physical body to prepare (but not eat)  the meat, while the man uses his physical body to nourish the woman by sexually satisfying her. This reflects the Namwanga belief that there is supposed to be give and take in relationships: even when women are excluded in one way, there is another way in which they are uplifted through a system of complementary roles. 

In this way, meat articulates ideas of justice. It can also be a vehicle for empowerment and community. In a market near my house, the smell of goat meat floats in the air as women vendors jab at the thick pieces of meat and fan pillows of smoke from their faces. Drunk passersby and labourers pull out matted notes from muddy-hemmed pants and set profits apace for these enterprising women. Many of them work with women farmers, who rely on them to distribute their products.

Two-thirds of Zambia’s population is engaged in farming: 78 percent are women, and 18 percent of those are directly engaged in livestock farming. One of the largest quail producers in sub-Saharan Africa is managed by a Zambian woman. By asserting themselves as producers and not simply consumers, women’s local ownership and production within the meat industry allows them to not only feed their communities at an affordable rate but to produce meat in a way that is less destructive to themselves and the environment. In this way, they resist the form of neocolonialism that comes with multinational corporations taking over our food system and often exploiting both male and female workers. 

***

Earlier I spoke of scholar Chandra Talpade Mohanty and her critique of Western methodologies as distorting and misunderstanding contexts of Global South women. This argument is important to me because as a non-meat-eating woman in a meat-eating culture, I too have had to be considerate of context and methodology. How I “do” vegetarianism, as someone who values and respects my culture and its people, is perhaps different from how someone who is outside my cultural and personal context might. 

I first became a vegetarian in Cape Town, South Africa, in my late teens. I more or less sustained this until I was in my third year of university — twenty years old and percolating in invitations to social gatherings that often involved braais. I became vegetarian again just a year after my cousin’s wedding send-off, two years into my return to Zambia. Maybe it was the immersion in matriarchal cultures that year that gave me a new appreciation for the fact that I had choices over my body: I did not have to be beholden to prolific meat-eating. Maybe I felt a renewed tenderness for the natural world, waking up once more to the sweet scent of fallen moringa and the melody of birds and goats that accompany farm life here. Whatever the case, I would even go as far as saying that having to consume meat while feeling some mystical connection to animals was damaging to my emotional well-being. It required a lot of deep denial and closing off parts of me. Simply acknowledging the “absent referent” was not enough for me. And so, I became vegetarian again — this time with a little more thought about my personal context, culture, and beliefs. 

As the Bemba proverb goes: “A visitor ate the nice guinea fowl”. In other words, the best meat is given to visitors. How could I weigh my compassion for animals with the desire to not offend those around me? This was a major consideration that I contemplated. Creating and consuming meat is packed with meaning for some of my friends and families, even those outside Zambian culture. Food is an important part of bonding; accepting food generally denotes respect for the other person and allows one to maintain good relationships. 

So, I’ve decided to abstain from meat most of the time — except for important social occasions related to my Namwanga culture. To you, this might not be “vegetarianism” at all, and I have come to terms with that. To me, isolation from my culture and community would be as painful as having to fully deny my moral qualms about eating meat. I think my experience as an African meat-avoider has also shown me that in reality there are no simple answers to how to build a truly humane and egalitarian society for both humans and animals. Indeed, removing culture from the discourse on feminism and imposing what “best practices” are to avoid the harm of animals only flattens our context. As one Bemba proverb might suggest, it is “necessary to sit close with those who eat the monitor”, meaning, put yourself in the other person's shoes before judging their culture.

Over time, cultures might evolve to be more compatible with vegetarianism — but this change needs to happen naturally. Discourses and ideas on meat production and abstinence should originate from the context in which they are being discussed, rather than be imposed. This is in the same way that Mohanty suggests discourse, practice, and ideas around feminism and gender equity should also be based on the self-archived experiences of women in the Global South rather than the imagination of the Western academy. 

In a dietary discourse largely dominated by the West, I have felt lonely in trying to navigate vegetarianism intellectually as an African who still draws a lot of my solutions philosophy and perspective from Africanist thought and experience. I’ve endeavoured to use Bemba proverbs in this section, for this reason. Proverbs often contain stories and hints about pre-colonial beliefs and societies, while giving us glaring insight into how these beliefs may or may not be relevant today. I see these proverbs as a form of context-specific knowledge that can help us deconstruct issues in less globally dominant cultures. Perhaps they can even give us the language to make new meanings of what it means to abstain and indulge in meat.

***

At the end of my cousin’s wedding send-off, I am greeted by an aunt. She asks if I remember her. She does so in Namwanga, which I do not speak very well. A smile spreads across her face as she probes my eyes like a soothsayer. I like to think an aunty always knows the truth; just a little wrinkle on your forehead, or a tapping of your foot, can give you away. She knows I do not remember her. She also likely knows that I have only just started learning Namwanga. 

We understand each other nonetheless and hug; me tipsy from a little pink cocktail and her ecstatic from the power of her seniority as an older woman at such an occasion. 

I believe there are two tongues that we all speak; one of vowels and consonants and one that comes from the heart. The latter is what might result in empathy. As feminist scholarship and popular discourse continue to touch on the variety of our experiences as women, we must contemplate how we can build solidarity and community without erasing those differences. We must acknowledge and explore the histories of colonialism that have attempted to erase African and Global South voices. One way we can do this work is by handling each other’s cultures with empathy from wherever we think and write. But the ultimate act of empathy is to know that every woman has the ability and often the desire to speak from their context. African women are not just objects; we are alive and we use our tongues to speak, to sing, to shun, to kiss, to bless, and to devour.

Mwinji Nakamba Siame is a writer and budding visual artist with an interest in sharing and understanding African women’s experiences. Her nonfiction has most recently appeared in Art Dusseldorf where she wrote about the Women’s History Museum of Zambia. Her fiction is forthcoming in Chapbook format via Dancing Girl Press (US). 

1. In contrast, the Namwanga people in Tanzania are led by a man who is considered the sacral chief.

2. Another of the Bantu ethnic groups and one of the largest in Zambia.

3. Namwanga people are especially diligent about celebrating harvest through a ceremony called Mutomolo, which involves giving thanks to nature because it sustains us.