Weaves, braids, locks and fros: The politics of hair in Africa

A story is told in the 2012 Kevin MacDonald documentary Marley of a not-so-well-known love affair between Pascaline Bongo, daughter of the first Gabonese President Omar Bongo, and the late Jamaican music legend Bob Marley.

In it, Pascaline says that the first time she met the singer backstage after an electric concert in the US, he took one look at her and told her she was ugly.

However, he was quick to clarify that he did not mean it in the literal sense. Rather, he really disliked her straightened hair. It turns out Rastafarians are not fans of unnatural hair.

Bob might not have known it, but hair is not an apolitical subject for the black folk, whether in Africa or in the diaspora; its texture, how to style it, how to wear it, long, short, wavy, bone-straight, braided or even woven, hair isn’t just hair.

It is a statement.

At least for most African women.

Many will remember how, during the 2013 Olympics, an online conversation about 16-year-old African American Olympian Gabby Douglas turned from being about her stellar performances into an absurd debate about her ‘unkempt’ hair.

TRESS POLICE

The tress police do not spare children either.

The same criticism has been levelled on actress Angelina Jolie’s Ethiopian-born daughter Zahara and Beyonce’s daughter Blue Ivy, with fashion police patrolling the social media telling the famous mothers to ‘tame’ their daughters’ wild locks.

So, what is this fascination with the mounds on women’s heads all about?

On a recent trip to South Africa, I made an interesting observation.

Almost all the Southern African women I came across wore their hair natural, either as dreadlocks or combed fros, something that you don’t see too often in Nairobi, or even in Lagos.

It is interesting to note the varying attitudes towards hair in urban areas across different parts of Africa.

In Southern African countries, women prefer to keep it simple.

In Eastern Africa, the trends vary between chemically straightened, weaved, and everything in between. And in the very cosmopolitan Nigerian cities, you’ll be lucky to catch a glimpse of a woman’s natural hair.

Is how a woman decides to wear her hair the litmus test for African pride? The answer, it seems, may depend on where, on the continent, you pose the question.

According to Luso Mnthali, a Malawian freelance writer educated in the US and South Africa, South African women do love their hair natural. She says, however, that it also depends on what part of the country they are from.

“Jo’burg women aren’t really into keeping natural hair,” she says, “they relax a lot, and put in weaves. This is seen as part of being successful or following certain trends”

Hair preference may also have a lot to do with age, she says, adding that women can now be feminine without having to fit into others’ manufactured ideas of what they should look like.

After years of braiding her big and ultra-curly feminine hair, Luso decided to shave it all off.

“I love expressing myself now without that need to be ‘pretty’,” she says. “I am not pretty, I do not have a conventional look. I am the woman who doesn’t stand out, but then stands out because she is bald.”

So, would she ever consider a weave?

“I happen to think weaves are part of a global culture of white supremacy. I’ve only ever worn one once and I have a photo of it. I look abnormal. My own naturally curly African hair, when I grow it, is what makes me stand out, or even look halfway beautiful. I love its texture, colour, even the parts that went prematurely grey.”

In Lagos, however, the script is slightly different.

The preference for most women seems to be weaves.

From watching their movies — in which you will almost never see a Nigerian actress with her natural hair — one would be forgiven for thinking that it’s taboo to be seen sporting your natural African hair here.

However, not all weaves are equal. Jennifer Joel-Obado, a Nigerian research policy analyst, opines that in her country, natural, kinky hair is just not fashionable.

“Weaves are a comfortable and cheap way to look cool… but there is a status to the quality of the weaves. ‘Big girls’ go for Peruvian, Brazilian, and Indian weaves, while the low income group make do with indigenous and Chinese weaves such as ‘Yaki’ and ‘Expressions’.”

Despite this, she chooses to wear her hair natural because it’s more convenient and less of a fuss. She however adds that there needs to be a discourse on neo-imperialism and what she considers ‘self-loathing’.

“I believe people should wear what is comfortable for them. But please do not attempt to replicate the Barbie look!”

For Auma Njaga, a Kenyan, being a competitive swimmer in high school and college meant that relaxed hair was out of the question. Keeping it natural was simply more convenient.

“Later on, when I realised I’d be leaving Kenya for Germany, I began researching on how to take better care of my natural hair as I’d have to groom it personally. That is when I would say my true journey and appreciation for natural African hair began.”

She vividly recalls a question from a fellow male Nigerian colleague in Germany that took her aback. He asked if she maintained her natural locks for religious reasons, and that did not sit well with her.

“That he would think my preference for natural hair (over weaves) could never simply be a personal preference shocked me.”

Dermatologist Dr Nonhlanhla P Khumalo, in an article on the history of African hair care, notes that there’s no tangible information on how Africans cared for hair hundreds of years ago as there’s no written history on it.

However, from more recent pre-colonial stories passed on through the older generations, there are suggestions it may have been a comedy of errors.

“Although not written down,” she says, “fascinating stories of more recent hair care — and hair disasters — are often told by older women about straightening hair using hot stones even before hot combs became available.”

The quest for straighter, more ‘beautiful’ hair has transcended generation after generation of African women. And it gets more creative with every one; from the hair-singeing hot comb in the ’70s and ’80s to the blow-dryer and now the flat iron.

It would seem that not a lot of African women are too excited to sport their natural, tightly curled locks, except those from the Southern tip of the continent.

Could it be that South African women were proudly wearing their fros while most of Africa was patiently waiting by the coal fire for the hot comb to turn red?

POLITICS OF SOUR GRAPES

Dr Joyce Nyairo, a Kenyan cultural analyst, says it had little to do with black pride than with politics. According to her, apartheid effectively blocked black South Africans from all the developments that were going on in the world of black hair.

“In the ’70s, black South Africans never braided with raffia,” says Dr Nyairo. “In the early ’80s, they were left out of the braid and Maasai twist revolution that rocked Nairobi, Kinshasa and Kampala. And in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the chemical revolution passed them by.”

She adds that when they eventually caught up with the perm in the millennium, the hairdressers were atrocious and oftentimes over-processed clients’ hair. With few, if any treatments, the poorly maintained locks would invariably fall off, leaving behind unsightly patches.

“What better moment to pick up a political statement than when your hair has failed to catch up with the rest of the continent?” asks Dr Nyairo.

However, natural hair is becoming popular again, especially for young diasporan Africans for whom hair is a form of expression that is a big part in their identity.

Dr Nyairo is convinced that most Africans in the diaspora prefer to keep their hair natural out of convenience after they realise how expensive it is to maintain chemically straightened hair.

With many facing up to $140 (about Sh11,800) for a simple retouch, going natural seems the only sensible choice.

“I reckon most people at that point will sooner keep dreadlocks and avow Dedan Kimathi and General Mathenge as the greatest thing that ever happened to them!” she says, adding that Bob Marley also played a part in popularising dreadlocks back in the ’80s, when his sound went global.

“Once he got to Zimbabwe for the 1980 independence celebrations, the freedom-fighters of Zim found a new reason to keep the dreadlocks they had been forced to grow in the long days of their armed struggle to topple Ian Smith’s Rhodesia.”

Dreadlocks and afros back then were a symbol of black pride, a statement of black power which was embodied not just by Bob Marley, but by many afro-revolutionists from the ’60s to the ’80s.

For instance, Marcus Garvey, the prominent Jamaican black activist who created a ‘Back to Africa’ movement and inspired later civil rights activists, acknowledged that a re-centering of sense of pride was a pre-requisite for politics of resistance.

And Frantz Fanon, the French Creole philosopher who would come to influence many black revolutionaries across the world, including South Africa’s Steve Biko, regarded cultural preferences by blacks for all things white as a sign of ‘psychic inferiorisation’. This would include the straightening of black hair.

Many black revolutionaries and even prominent figures, then, incorporated their natural hair as a major part of their afro-political identity, from Bob Marley to Wangari Maathai, Yvonne Chaka Chaka and even Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka’s famous shock of white hair.

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