Gangisa
The practice of bukhontxana, or mine marriages, seems to have emerged amongst Mozambican workers in the early twentieth century.
In 1904, the head of the C.I.D. on the Witwatersrand reported that 'unnatural
offences are very prevalent on the mines among the natives', particularly
the Shangaan. (…) In Southern Mozambique, young adolescents often
played together 'like husband and wife', a form of gender socialisation
that sometimes included the practice of external coitus, or penetration
between the thighs (inter-crural sex). Boys and girls lived in special
huts at the entrance to the homestead, and it was easy for them
to meet at night; the only proviso to gangisa was that it should
conform to local rules of exogamy and that the young couple should
not stay together until morning: full and uninhibited sexual relations
were tied to marriage.
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Thus
sexuality bound boys and girls into gender roles that were distintly
masculine and feminine and marked the passage from childhood to
adulthood. Gangisa formed part of the primary sexual imagery of
young men arriving on the mines. As they came from a society that
placed great value on children, and discouraged sexual practices
that did not lead to pregnancy, the only acceptable form of sexual
release to which they could turn, within their cultural code,
were variations of the intercrural sex practised during gangisa.
From: Work, Culture and Identity, migrant laborers in Mozambique
and South Africa, c. 1860 - 1910, Patrick Harries, UCT Cape Town.
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