Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Kwaito: Sexual semiotics and representation of women in the media

As a media analyst and consultant, I have been keen on understanding how media covers and represents certain societal issues. On top of my list has been how the media represents identity, particularly gender issues. Owing to the fact that there are real power relations, in terms of gender, that define social order in both ancient and modern societies, we have seen patterns that seem to perpetrate the notion of patriarchy and the male domination being reinforced.

Due to the fact that the media, at least to some extent, simply reflects what society is, it has not escaped the reinforcement of gender stereotypes in its modes of address (how the media invites viewers into particular viewing habits) through kwaito music. The media is one of the most powerful forces for influencing societal attitudes and perceptions. It has therefore become subject to many criticism and studies.

Most interventions addressing the gender gap, particularly the under representation of women in the media, have mainly focused on news. Although news events represent reality, media effects cannot simply be measured in terms of news. Even when reading news, audiences carry with them texts from different media, channels and programmes (intertextuality).

There is increasing global popularity of music as a popular culture. In South Africa, special reference can be made to Kwaito music which is dramatically shaping the urban youth culture. It has been argued that women are represented in Kwaito music through the lyrics and the use of signs (signifiers and signifieds) to create a narrative that portrays them as submissive and sexual objects of the ‘unseen man’s gaze’.

Often the lyrics are normally sung by the male and women respond to the male voice while dancing in a sexually explicit manner. The emerging female artists that contest this male dominated “Kwaito space” also seem to perpetrate this trend through their lyrics and dancing. It is important therefore to consider the extent at which this popular culture represents women in an attempt to address the gendered construction of power and the perpetuation of stereotypes about women through the media. With Kwaito increasingly becoming popular and celebrated in the SADC region, it might be a very subtle way of legitimizing gendered stereotypes.

But what really is Kwaito?

According to Simon Stephens, Kwaito music is a contemporary black dance music that has emerged over the past decade and become intensively popular in South Africa. It is an evolution of music known as “bubblegum” or South African disco and other international sounds thrown in. The music is created in the studio using synthesizers and computers and is performed live using CD backing tracks. Many of the producers of Kwaito are DJs, either from radio or clubs, and they are exclusively male. The music usually consists of a male rapper with mostly female singing, and generally it is rapped and sung in tsotsitaal, a township slung that combines various South African languages.

DJ Diplo described kwaito as poor South African kids’ form of slowed-down garage music."Kwaito's lyrics are usually in indigenous South African languages or in English, although several languages can be found in the same song. The name kwaito itself is derived from the Afrikaans word Kwaai, meaning "angry". This Afrikaans word is derived from the Isicamtho, South African township slang, word amakwaitosi, meaning "gangster".

Arthur Mafokate, one of the founding fathers of kwaito describes the relationship between kwaito and "gangster" being because it is "all about the ghetto music". Kwaito was born in Soweto, one of the townships where blacks were forced to live during the time of apartheid. Similarly, kwaito has been referred to as the "sound of the ghetto", and emerged from the most economically depressed areas of South Africa.

Kwaito is the music associated with the black youth of post-apartheid South Africa. Essentially a form of dance music, in its most common form kwaito is intentionally apolitical and represents music "after the struggle". However, the term "kwaito" also has recently refered to a whole youth culture complete with the vernacular and fashion norms. Various competing opinions debate the origin of the word Kwaito.

From Isicamtho; the South African township slang, composed of different indigenous languages integrated with the languages of colonial English and Afrikaans, comes the word amakwaitosi, meaning “gangster”, driven from Afrikaans’ “kwaai”, which means strict or angry. M’du, one of the pioneering Kwaito artists says the word derived from the Afrikaans slang word “kwaai” which is parallel to our slang English words "cool" or "hot." However, Stephens’s translation of the Afrikaans word ‘kwaai’ means excellent.

Party Music
Kwaito is therefore seen as party music however, its lyrics and live performances are renowned for sexual explicitness of the dancing. In a research conducted by Stephens, most male respondents insisted that the lyrics in Kwaito are irrelevant and many claimed that they only listen to Kwaito for the beat and the instrument. This is something I must agree with because it reminds me of my first head-on encounter with Kwaito in Botswana, at a famous place in Gaborone called Kofifi. This was my first outing in Gaborone after my friend Aldo, a Kenyan of Somali origin, offered to buy me a couple of drinks and some roasted meat.

In Botswana, people normally have a culture of driving and gathering around a small trading centre next to a butchery and a liquor store to refill their stomachs when they are short of meat or beer respectively. This happens amidst a hectic musical noise of a number of kwaito songs, mostly imported from South Africa, from the parked vehicles with plenty of female company who always dance in a sexual manner next to the flashy cars. On that occasion, I recall, the only thing I enjoyed was the beat or the instrumental and I must confess, the female dances. However, this could have been due to the fact that I did not understand the language combination that forms Kwaito.

Kwaito songs often take the form of a dialogue between a man and a woman, where a man says certain sexually explicit words and the women respond to those male voices in agreement. A good example is the DJ Cleo’s song Sis Nghamba Nawe. In this song, the video shows a scene in a bar with DJ Cleo trying to convince one of the ladies he has just met to come home with him after a couple of drinks and identifying other girls for his friends to go home with too. The irony in this song is that the friend to the lady DJ Cleo wants to go home with is quick to respond ‘that she’s coming with him too’ without being asked. She does this with a sexy desperate voice.

This song has been criticized, mostly by women for portraying them as cheap, promiscuous and ready to sleep with a man they just met after a few rounds of alcohol. Another song by Mandoza called Sigelekeke meaning ‘cutting the cake’ was banned out from the airwaves due to its sexually explicit nature. ‘Cutting the cake’ here referred to “f*****g” and the video was composed of women dressed in a sexy manner showing sexually explicit dances on top of the bed. Arthur Mafokate‘s song Vuvuzela is also ranked in the same league of sexually explicit lyrics.


Club and radio DJs are the popular men behind Kwaito. DJ Cleo started composing albums in 1995 and has since used his composing skills to make hits for artists like Mandoza, Brown Dash and others. One interesting thing is that his song Sis Nghamba Nawe has been a hit to both women and men and it has helped him renew his confidence with kwaito fans as the savior of kwaito music, which, according to him, is dying.

On the other hand, kwaito star Arthur Mafokate is seen to be one of the pioneers of the Kwaito music genre. He is credited with creating the first kwaito hit with his 1995 song Kaffir. While the song itself is notable musically for spearheading a new genre of music, its lyrics reflect the new freedoms that emerged after the political changes of 1994, including the implementation of a new constitution and democratic election system. The title, "Kaffir," is a derogatory term used mostly in South Africa as a racial slur to refer to black people. In his song, Mafokate protests against the use of the word "kaffir,” The song sold in excess of 150,000 copies and largely influenced the state of kwaito today.


With such popular Kwaito producers and artists perpetrating gender stereotypes through their music videos and lyrical content, and they still enjoy popularity through the media that boosts their record sales, there is a danger that they could just be legitimizing certain stereotypes about women and their sexuality through their songs.

The sad thing is that the women who emerged to contest this male dominated space such as the late Brenda Fassie and Lebo Mathosa, and most recently Kelly Khumalo and Chomie have also been caught up with the idea of ‘sex sells’ for the sake of profit and therefore, have done little in freeing the female body from sexual objectification by men. They seem to have their own version of portraying sexuality which seems to reinforce what their male counterparts are preaching and seem to find majority support from the male audiences.

Blessed Ngwenya, a junior lecturer in media studies at UNISA and a close friend agrees that “music should consider contemporary cultural issues”. In the case of kwaito, there is an urban youth culture that identify with the sexual expression and body politic that symbolises a greater degree of freedom in post apartheid South Africa. He says furthermore, “the album has to sell, try not to consider the sexual content and the lyrics and see how much you can sell”.

He adds that “kwaito, as a product, has been caught up in the market (music business), just like other brands and it is simply trying to survive through strategies that will appeal to its target audience”. Ngwenya argues that “we cannot be singing about ethics all the time if they don’t appeal to the target audience”. He suggests that perhaps the ethical work should be left for gospel music, which is also gaining popularity amongst the youth in South Africa. “Perhaps gospel music counter and capitalise on the ethical gap created by kwaito”, he suggests.

Some Kwaito ingredients in the media
It is obvious that the media gives popularity to certain artists and songs. Just like kwaito, the media can sacrifice ethical content for the sake of profit. Urban youth radio stations, and magazines, many of which have been founded and influenced through kwaito as a youth culture, depend on Kwaito as a building block for their survival. To them, Kwaito is what the listeners want to hear and the strengths of Kwaito are in their sexually explicit nature which appeal to the audiences- the two are indivisible.

There is no doubt therefore that there is very little that the media can do concerning the choice of “ethical Kwaito” music for its audiences. There cannot be gospel time slots in Y fm scheduling for instances to replace Kwaito because this will be interfering with the target market. It seems as if the entertainment media both print and broadcast has some kwaito ingredients in their very nature that determined their existence and will go a long way in shaping their destiny.

Conclusively, the society is yet to willingly accept (hegemony) the many gender stereotypes popularised and perpetrated or even born by kwaito that seem natural and acceptable because ‘the times have changed’. Through Kwaito therefore, suffice it to argue, the media invites and positions audiences into particular viewing habits as subjects of the sexually explicit content that they find acceptable beyond reasonable doubt and cannot contest.



Writers Profile: Fredrick Ogenga has a bachelors and a masters degree in Media & Journalism studies. He is an indipendent media consultant & analyst, a freelance writer, reporter for africanews.com, lecturer in Media & journalism and the founding director of Tazama media consultants closed corporate company. He is also pursuing a PHD in media studies at the University of Witwatersrand. Ogenga has published widely in the field of gender, HIV/AIDS, health and other socio-political issues and is listed in the UNAIDS database of consultants. His latest contribution on gender and HIV/AIDS can be found in the fourth issue of the 2008 media diversity journal at www.genderlinks.org.za. He also runs his own blog www.tazamamediaconsultants.blogspot.com

1 comment:

Unknown said...

i have been reading about how in south african sexual youth culture it is kind of part of the 'game' for women to play hard to get and men to use gentle 'force' to sometimes coerce women into havinge sex with them when they do not entirely verbally consent...i suppose some of kwaito's explicit sexual references to getting girls into bed in a forceful way- may actually make sense when cotnextualised in the local sexual cultural context- what do you think?