Recasting Manhood: Hegemonic Masculinity, Crisis, and Cultural Memory in Sesotho Oral Traditions

Abstract

This article examines how masculinity is culturally produced, transmitted, and contested through Sesotho oral traditions in post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing on masculinity theory, African masculinity scholarship, and theories of orality and cultural memory, the study analyses folktales, legends, and proverbs collected from Sesotho-speaking communities in the Matatiele region. It argues that Sesotho oral narratives function as gendered pedagogical texts that historically naturalise hegemonic masculinity by privileging provision, stoicism, heroism, sexual entitlement, and bodily endurance. At the same time, these narratives reveal deep internal contradictions that expose masculinity as conditional, unstable, and historically contingent rather than fixed or innate. Through a thematic analysis of provision, emotional restraint, heroic violence, and sexual authority, the article demonstrates how inherited masculine scripts continue to shape contemporary male identities while contributing to crises marked by unemployment, gender-based violence, emotional distress, and social exclusion. Crucially, the study advances the argument that the current “crisis of masculinity” in South Africa is not a rupture from tradition, but an intensification of tensions embedded within cultural memory. By repositioning oral tradition as a living archive of masculine formation and critique, the article contributes to African masculinity studies by showing how oral narratives can be critically reinterpreted to foster more ethical, relational, and socially responsive masculinities in contemporary society.