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Kenyan law scholar, Prof Makau Mutua, has been waging a war against western weaves and wigs won by African women. “If one must wear a wig,” he asks, “why not one of natural African hair?”
He has received some flak and been accused of mansplaining women’s hair. Mansplaining is the explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman on something she probably knows about, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising.
Prof Mutua is not alone. Hugh Masekela, often described as the father of South African Jazz, was also known for his love for natural African hair and intense dislike of wigs, hair extensions, chemically straightened hair and in particular, weaves.
Masekela would never allow himself to be photographed with any black person wearing a weave or wig, drawing even more ire in South Africa than Mutua in Kenya.
Irritated weave and wig wearing women asked why Masekela did not reject the money they paid to watch his shows. Masekela, however, often said: “As someone who runs a foundation that seeks to restore culture and identity, I refuse to take photos with people with weaves, and I tell them that myself.”
Masekela particularly detested blond weaves on Africans and any kind of weave on African children. Masekela often explained his position. “It was not about just hating weaves but their symbolic significance. There was history between Europeans and Africans on African hair,” he said. When Europeans encountered African hair, they said it was hard. Therefore, together with flat noses and big lips, hair became part of what Africans felt inferior about in comparison to white people.
“We were enslaved, urbanised, religionised and became the only society that imitates other cultures, with the saddest part being how far we have come in trying not to look like ourselves, buying other people’s hair yet they do not buy ours.” Masekela said western religion and urbanisation was core to the African belief that their own heritage was barbaric, savage, primitive, backwards and uncivilised.
I confess that on occasion Masekela would not have allowed me to be photographed with him. I have worn weaves, including the types sewn so tightly scratching an itch on the scalp is only possible through repeatedly hitting the part of the weave the itch lies under, as not even a finger can penetrate the mesh of stitches. I have also seen weaves give the impression one is nodding yes or no when one is not, because scratching an itch on any part of the head makes the whole weave move.
I ingested Masekela’s well-grounded arguments and continued wearing weaves. I then watched a documentary by American comedian Chris Rock, titled Good Hair. Rock interviewed black women who said they considered natural black hair as bad, unmanageable hair. I related, remembering my response to my questioning father when I came from university with chemically processed hair. “I did it to get good straight hair I could easily run a comb through”, I told him.
Rock says human hair is one of India’s biggest exports and the mostly male, white owned hair industry in the United States is worth $9 billion. Like Masekela, Rock opines weave buying is not only demeaning, but exploitative, and a billion-dollar business of black people buying other people’s hair.
Differences between people such as on “bad and good hair” were highlighted to enable a racialised system of privileged access to power and resources by a group over another. These unequal relations were over time knit into legal and political doctrine, justifying institutions such as slavery, colonialism and apartheid.
We know our brothers, Mutua, Masekela and Rock are right, however, patriarchal sensibilities such as perspectives of women looking beautiful in straight hair, heavily inform the hair industry. Huge amounts of money is spent by black people buying good straight hair.
The battle of the weaves has to be waged against men too, including those who praise and buy them for women.
With or without weaves, have a happy new year.
Wairimu Nderitu is the author of Beyond Ethnicism, Mukami Kimathi: Mau Mau Freedom Fighter and Kenya: Bridging Ethnic Divides. E-mail:
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