Source of all Evil

Mineke Schipper

I remember I once wanted to get this as a wedding present for a friend. What was I thinking? Wedding presents and irony are not well matched. Still, it's an interesting book and very funny. It's basically a reference. There are a few pages of scholarship - the history and function of proverbs - but the remaining 90 or so pages are divided into sections covering such themes as Wife, Mother, Widow, Sex, Sterility, Work, Childbirth etc, and for each section there are dozens of proverbs listed.

Many are universal such as "Who will not marry a talkative woman stays a bachelor". But my favourites are the ones which have a stronger whiff of Africa; the proverbs which talk about the kola nut or the phuumbu yam or the cooking pot. A couple of examples: "Woman is not a cassava to be valued by roasting and tasting" and "A woman is like a mimosa tree that yields gum all day long". I supposed this second one was a compliment but I needed the author's confirmation: "The image arises from the Xhosa fondness for chewing gum, [i.e.] she makes you profit all the time".

I've said it's a funny book but, of course, there is also grim evidence here of the second-class status of an entire sex. While the proverbs are a celebration of wisdom and inventiveness at work in the language a large number of them are rather shocking - especially those which reveal a relaxed attitude towards beatings and bigamy. You have to hope that an equally full and lively book will one day be written in which African women get the chance to describe the virtues but also the laziness, impotence and ugliness of their men, through proverbs.