Breaking Cultural Stereotypes
Breaking Cultural Stereotypes: Durban hosts the first ever transgender umemulo ceremony
The Director of Transhope and Activist for the rights of transgender people, Sazi Jali shares her excitement and fulfilment in finally celebrating her umemulo.
South Africa has a rich history and a diverse traditional and cultural heritage that is displayed through ceremonies and rituals. Ceremonies are simply rituals to which, through our culture or religion, we’ve attached a certain feeling of significance.
The Director of Transhope and the Activist for the rights of the transgender people, Sazi Jali shares her excitement and fulfilment in finally celebrating her umemulo. Sazi’s dream was to celebrate her transition from being a girl to womxn hood a long time ago, but she couldn’t just do it for herself because of the specific processes that needed to be followed as per her culture.
“In my culture umemulo is being organised by your parents, a ceremony where a young girl is formally transitioning to womxnhood. When my mother told me that she is ready to introduce me as a womxn to my ancestors, I was shocked. For me being re-introduced to the spiritual life and being accepted as a full womxn ready to get married was a dream come true. It gave me hope that my life will shift to a positive direction and served as a sign of a breakthrough after experiencing life’s hardships,” says Sazi.
In the Zulu culture, a ceremony that comes before umemulo is called umhlonyane which is celebrated when a girl hits puberty. Normally, this falls between her 13th and 14th birthdays. Once she reaches this age, the countdown for her umemulo begins.
For Sazi it was a different experience as her gender identity was not recognised and she never had menstruation. None the less this did not deter Sazi’s mother from fulfilling this Zulu culture as a sign to fully accept her daughter and showing her off to the public as a proud Mother.
“I always knew that my child was not a boy because from a young age, Sazi used to cry for dolls and other things which we would refuse to buy for her, but she managed to get them for herself. At some point I thought it was a phase until she started medical transitioning. From there, I had to accept that my child was turning into a young womxn and she has proven over and over that she is a womxn like any other womxn. Deciding on staging umemulo for her was then not a difficult thing for me to do,” said Sazi’s Mother.
Sazi says the support she received from her mother and Professor Zanele Muholi, whom she regards as a father figure in her life was overwhelming. She says there’s is no amount of hate speech, misgendering, derogatory statements, misconceptions and misjudging received from Isolezwe through their journalist Mbali Khanyile, that will dampen her pride and joy of being a woman that she is.
“I am forever indebted to Prof. Zanele Muholi for being there giving my mother support to ensure that I have a beautiful and meaningful ceremony. To me the ceremony taught me that as human beings, we have the ability to look at our own very unique life paths and create our own rituals and ceremonies, based on what we need. We all have the resources within us to create ceremonies that fit our order of existence. Trust in your abilities to know what is right for you and block the noise,” says Sazi.
Here is how Sazi’s ceremony went down as per her family’s unique way of doing things for her:
Conventionally, chastity is a highly valued virtue for those undergoing the umemulo ceremony. However, it is not mandatory. Luckily for Sazi this process of cleansing was not a difficult phase for her as she was not sexually active with her partner due to challenges, they had in their relationship.
Narrating the process to UNIQ Magazine SA, Sazi said, a month before the ceremony, she visited Gogo Mthethwa who has a group of girls that undergo virginity testing, she asked for her to come and be part of the ceremony. Gogo Mthethwa was instrumental in guiding Sazi and the family on how things should be done and agreed to be part of the ceremony. During that month Sazi and the girls would gather and rehearse songs and dance moves for the big day. Sazi says because she is a queer person, she asked her friend who is also a queer Le Sishi to be one of her maidens (izimpelesi). She further said in her eyes it was only befitting for her to choose trans womxn and cisgender womxn to be her maidens as her gesture to display and encourage diversity of womxn within the transgender community.
During the 11th week they started to invite people in a cultural way – door to door. Then the process of collecting umkhonto kwaMalume followed. The week of umgonqo took place where they isolated themselves from everyone. During this week anyone who wants to speak to them had to pay some money to get them talking.
On a Thursday the same week, the goat was slaughtered to formally inform the ancestors of the coming ceremony day. On Friday the cow was slaughtered to give Sazi the permission to get out of umgonqo and mingle with people. Instead, she found herself going straight back to umgonqo which she found very funny considering that she was earlier frustrated by being confined in the room for days.
Then there was an over-night camp with the girls. Boys came in and broke umgoqo as part of the procedure where people can come and talk to the girls freely to avoid falling asleep. At 3am they went to the river after burning all the clothes they were wearing, to go bath and remove ibomvu. She says running naked was really scary, but they did it anyway. They went back home and stayed outside until midday at 12h00 when they went in to collect umkhonto and she wore umhlwehle. By then it was time to go to esigcawini for the actual celebration.
Catering was provided by Transhope while décor was stunningly done by Onella Events.
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