mozambique
gangisa
Undated:
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.
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.
