LAING DE VILLIERS

Traffic signs en-route to the Mighty Men conference create a sense of officialness. But I drive feeling quite lonely in the moment to my own personal unravelings. The arrival at the event came with discomfort and feeling quite unsure. I sensed my own fear of how religious dogma has influenced my life in the past and how it percolates into my states of thinking and feeling. The “who knows the truth” versus finding “my own inner truth”.

I arrive at around 4 ‘o clock in the afternoon at a busy parking lot, thinking I might still be able to witness a lot of the conference speakers and ambience of the event. As I approach the stadium, notebook under my arm, I hear the distinct drone of what is clearly Mr. Buchan’s voice (who I assumed correctly would be the closing act). My further assumption is I am a third or almost half-way into his speech, which really is a sermon.

As soon as I find a seat in the stands it is clear that people who are there are all mainly Christian believers and have buy-in into what that message would mean to them. It’s not so much about converting or persuading anyone, in my opinion, as more a show of solidarity (ironically the name of a rightwing Afrikaans political group).

Words start to have a particular meaning in our current age (on this stage); who or what are you devoted to? Who do I support? All of it is related to how people make sense of their worlds and lived realities. And very clear from the gathering is that worldviews of people are isolated and narrated by specific ideologies. If we are what we eat, then clearly our consumption of uncontrolled, unregulated and often biased media (whether online or not) makes people…people these days.

Angus is going about a very typical sermon route of bringing in stories of his life and combining it with Biblical texts. From my theological teaching I know this can be quite treacherous ground to be on when listening or receiving the information, because the speaker can literally substantiate anything they want in the moment, based on a potentially irrelevant biblical text. Angus does that same exercise quite haphazardly in comparing his lived reality to the majority of Kaaps “Coloured”men in attendance at the stadium.

It might have been advertised as a 30 000-men-strong following to be expected for the gathering, but the stadium in my guess is about a tenth filled, maybe even less. I still roughly count about a couple of thousand people which is very impressive when thinking about conference, interventions and public events related to masculinity and in this case, crime and violence afflicted by gang activity and involvement.

Angus praises “Coloured” people for the beautiful and talented people they are, which leaves a slight distaste in my mouth. A white farmer from KZN, dropping Zulu quoted pieces from his friends, employees and locals back home; seems like a way to show that he is relevant to this audience. In my honest opinion I don’t think he is. I’m sad that I missed the prayer earlier that went with the honouring of the mayor, Gordon Hill-Lewis, and the praise and worship and speeches by particular men of colour who might have more direct experience in gang-related violence.

It does feel always strange to have at the head of the evangelical movement a white male’s face.

The Wayde van Niekerks, rugby players and Miss Universe are stated by Buchan as proud examples of “Coloured” people’s successes. Again, the messaging seems to fall flat to me, but there’s nothing that a collective “Amen” call-and-response can’t do to enlighten the interest and attention.

The Christian messaging about this gathering is by no means new to me and it reminds me of the charismatic churches I visited as a spectator at varsity; the Shofars and Every Nations. All with a particular approach and recipe to finding people to join their cause and offering themselves to a clearly patriarchal deity, often people who are vulnerable and potentially affected by the momentary call-to-action. I feel the soft pulse of that evangelical beast here, but can’t put my finger on it throughout most of it, until the big reveal moment happens, the conversion moment. Basically, the whole stadium is called to the general standing area, which just about fills it up, and the collective and universal prayer goes out, with the right-noted church piano drone in the background to really pull at the heart strings of the men there.

I am convinced that most men there are already converted Christians and not actually still involved in gang activity. But, in honest reflection, I have no idea who these men are and why they are attending. My best guess is that these are a majority amount of churches in the area that have pulled their audiences and perhaps one or two “lost sheep” men who landed here, looking for some kind of support and care they have been longing for, for likely, most of their lives. My judgements, my opinions. So, I sit on the further-most stand, where I moved to from my earlier spot; which made me feel quite uncomfortable and imposed upon to raise my hands in religious honour, responding with “Amen” as some social expected reaction. Here I have the permission in my heart to be an onlooker. And I witness what seemed vague initially, but became clear later, as a moment of conversion and prayer in the back of the general standing area. A group of men wearing yellow/orange bibs, laying hands on and praying to a young man, who seems clearly distressed.

I worry whether he has someone there he can feel safe with or if he is being bullied into some kind of devilish or emotional outburst in reaction to the salvation prayers. I’m curious but feel scared myself to go closer. My best assumption is that in this conversion moment they have staff members on-hand to see when men put up their hands as being ready to give their hearts to the lord (particularly men who have struggled with substances before or been involved in gangsterism and want a salvation moment for their “sins”). If it is indeed a crowd of mainly converted men, then this exercise becomes a bit futile in a way, as these are all men ‘converted’ in their truth within the Christian religion and devoted to the deity being their rule of life and redemption for the hurt, pain and suffering of ‘man’.

Buchan calls out the devil as the root cause of the heinous crimes and violent atrocities that are playing out in the Cape Flats and other previous segregated areas of “coloured” people.

Are they actually speaking to the true evil or are they merely preaching to the choir of the converted? In the first case if the evil is some kind of invisible entity, it is indeed a very fearful state to live life in. It almost feels easier to hint at some kind of external evil to try and figure out the internal workings of the psyche and mind in impacting the hurtful actions and beliefs of criminality and gang-violent activity; an internal evil.

I worry about whether the ‘how’ and ‘why’ gangs do so well is actually understood and investigated from a social phenomenon by these preachers and evangelicals.

You’ll have someone like Don Pinnock being able to narrate quite a bit of this from an anthropological perspective. Do these church leaders, when researching their sermons and beliefs, do some research on these human characteristics and patterns? It doesn’t seem like it and so the message according to me and the answer to the violence in the Cape Flats is an empty and shallow one, that merely ascribes it to sinful behaviour and evil nature. It avoids and even neglects the impact of the use of substances, of generational trauma/racism, male-based violence, fatherless sons and being born into poverty has on men’s psyche and how it all contributes to aggressive and militant masculine identities rooted in patriarchy.

Being “called to arms’ by Buchan (his words) doesn’t feel that much different to militant organisation of gang groupings. To fight for a cause, to belong. For me it seems a replacement of one a bigger problem, that men are isolated, under pressure to perform (economically, socially and physically) and lack the proper support networks of other men and their community.

We miss men being vulnerable. Safety is a massive concern for humans and specifically so for men.

From my experience men do not have many forms of easily accessible response to their inner workings. Instead, they are expected to be contained, in control and not emotionally triggered. You push a man enough and he most likely will first respond with anger from being made to feel unsafe. Instead of an ask for help, he most likely responds in an attacking way, to fend off as much attack on his nervous system, protect himself physically and ill-advise his psyche to feel supported. I narrate this as my own experience and experience from the men I have helped through their journey within the mythopoetic men’s work arena. I see so much fear and anger. Underlying that lies deep sadness. This sadness might be related to different things for different men, but inevitably could come down to feeling safe and cared for; a sense of love.

The Christian-regulated and religious response to this fear is in my opinion a further conversion of fear-mongering, to avoid our sinful nature and blame it on the impact of the devil. It really does mystify the human experience in a spiritual realm, which feels extremely hard to regulate and control. So, the ask is just to trust and believe that god will work and things will get better. And that if you do good for the sake of salvation in the afterlife, you will be blessed now. But there doesn’t seem to be any guarantee of this in the Christian narrative. Instead, you should hope, trust and believe. “Geloof, hoop and liefde” I often read on white-washed wooden boards in Afrikaans middle class homes. Love is here, indeed, but it feels like it misses depth for the men to be truly vulnerable, to love each other, to find a deep sense of love for the men still stuck in gangsterism. What it does feel like, it’s a further standing strong, holding pose and substantiating that ‘real men can hold their own’.

These heinous crimes and violent acts of men in gangs are really a serious and scary topic. But I see scared boys and men trying to find meaning, support and community. But just replacing that community with one of the church, feels temporary at best. What could it mean for men to actually look at their true pain, to uncover their fears inside and start to face that in the witnessing container of other vulnerable men? Does mythopoetic men’s work offer that? Is the church not really doing any of that? Who am I to make any judgement on all of this? Am I merely just another Buchan thinking he has the answer to these questions? A constant calling of men to arms? To weaponise the male psyche. Or should it actually be a holding of arms, standing side-by-side in vulnerability and truth of our pain? These are questions I like to ask. In a world where we’re experiencing more and more polarisation I think I want to stand more grounded within collective truths. What can a group, or different groups of people, decide together as a humane and real way of ‘being’ in this time. And I find Jung to still be very relevant in this day, where our demons and ‘shadows’ are within ourselves first and after that we can speak to collective shadows, guilt and shame. Can we, in our hearts, ask and answer the question of who we are, as deeply vulnerable beings who can speak our true story while hearing the story of “the other” and without wanting to call anything or anyone to arms.