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Nov 18, 2009

by Peter Dwyer

in ACAS Review (Bulletin), Bulletin 84

Scoring an own-goal

South Africa is revolting. Since May 2009 there has been a wave of uninterrupted township as police clash on an almost weekly basis with unemployed protestors and striking workers. A recent estimate counts 63 major ‘service delivery’ protests since January 2009 with 24 percent of protests taking place in Guateng and 19 percent in the Western Cape and Mpumalanga. As the protests continue, increasing strain is being put on the Tripartite Alliance as some African National Congress (ANC) leaders in national and provincial government have accused the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) of being behind violent protests.

What are misleadingly called ‘service delivery’ protests have been about a wide range of issues and have included the working poor, the unemployed and students protesting about increased student fees at campuses across the country from Cape Town to Johannesburg. In October in Gugulethu up to 2000 people protested about the lack of jobs being created for local people at a new Square Mall that recently opened. To the far north in Nelspruit people protested outside the 2010 Mbombela stadium at 6am demanding that the government build them a school they were promised when they were relocated to make way for the World Cup stadium. And still the protests erupt and spread. During the past several weeks Sakhile informal settlement in Standerton has been rocked by violent protests culminating in an incredible 10,000 people marching to hand over a memorandum to the local council.

What is in part fascinating about this wave of protests and strikes is that they come just months after the April re-election of the African National Congress (ANC) and the new President Jacob Zuma. He was seen by many, particularly his supporters in COSATU the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the Soh Africsn Communist Party (SACP) as representing a new start for the ANC government after 12 years of neoliberal polices imposed by former President Thabo Mbeki. The belief in Zuma as a fresh start has not been missed. One protestor Sandile Mahlangu claimed “President Zuma promised to rid government of corruption and lazy officials”.

The township protests coincided with an outbreak of national strikes. These latest strikes followed the month long strike in June 2007 that was the longest and largest public-sector strike in the history of South Africa and included over 700,000 workers on strike and another 300,000, for whom it was illegal to strike, taking part in militant marches, pickets and other forms of protest. In August 2008 another general strike brought the economy to a standstill when COSATU called its two million members out on a one-day strike in protest of rising prices of food and fuel. This strike followed an announcement that electricity prices would increase by 27.5 percent. Since the start of 2009 there have been 24 officially recorded major protests across the country and government officials believe that the rate of protests this year will exceed those for 2007 and 2008.

Although South Africa is Africa’s most successful economy (it contributes a third of all sub-Saharan Africa’s 48 countries), not everyone has benefitted equally. Since the late 1990s South Africa’s economy has grown at 6 percent each year and inflation has been reduced to around 6 per cent, on a par with other similar economies. Yet this has been done through introducing neoliberal policies with tight control over public spending and service delivery, that has hit the poorest hardest as money has been diverted from public spending into tax cuts for the rich and middle class. Increases in government budget allocations have come not through some fundamental shift in macroeconomic policy but through emphasising fiscal efficiency. Such ‘efficiency savings’, argue COSATU and others, are at the expense of social spending for the working class.

Yet the ANC government has found the money to line the pockets of big business through billions of pounds of tax cuts as they have reduced corporation tax from 50 percent in the early 1990s to less than 30 percent today. The growth in the economy in the last few years is linked to the growth in global demand, particularly from China, for South African manufacturing and primary commodities. As elsewhere in the world this coincided with a financial and speculative boom resulting in property prices rocketing by 400 per cent – higher than the rise in property prices in the USA and Ireland. Whilst there has been investment in infrastructure, this has been money based on Private Finance Initiatives similar those in the UK, with money ploughed into tourist projects such as the football stadiums for the 2010 World Cup, the controversial World Bank backed Lesoto Highlands Water Project and an elitist fast rail service (that avoids Soweto) between Johannesburg and Pretoria that will largely service rich and middle class commuters.

Although the proportion of people living below the poverty line dropped from 58 percent in 2000 to 48 percent in 2005 and many families have access to social grants and other poverty alleviation programmes, many households and communities remain trapped in poverty. Some 75 percent of African children lived in income poverty in 2007, compared to 43 percent of ‘coloured’ children, 14 percent of Indian children and 5 percent of white children. Little wonder that South Africa is a country in turmoil as the anger and bitterness of shattered dreams of liberation eats away at the very fabric of society. It is an anger that is also expressed in the average of 50 people a day murdered and high levels of child abuse and rape. Although crime figures have fallen over the past several years, they are still high by international standards

The government claims to have built over two million new houses but there are still 2000 informal settlements across South Africa, in which people live without sanitation and electricity in shacks made of corrugated iron and waste materials. On average there are 10 shack fires a day killing several hundred people a year. These disasters devastate the lives of all concerned, putting young children, the old and disabled people particularly at risk and making the poor and vulnerable destitute. Life in the shacks is one of permanent drudgery as one shackdweller Funake Mkhwambi told how ‘My shack gets flooded every year. I have to move every winter to stay with my cousins elsewhere. We are a family of 8, including 5 children who often get sick because of the cold and dirty water’.

Two sets of figures released in October 2009 reveal much about South Africa one of the most unequal countries one earth. The Sunday Times annual rich list shows that despite the recession ‘… executives are pocketing all sorts of additional bonuses and making mega-profits on unacceptably generous share options. This is in addition to huge basic salaries and performance bonuses, with bonuses still being earned by many despite the nonperformance of their companies’. At the same time the Labour Force Survey shows that 1 million jobs have been lost in the last year with official unemployment put at 24.5 per cent but many in civil society put the figure at over 40 percent. A figure that will continue to rise as the global economic crisis starts to bite in a country whose recent economic fortunes have been built on demand for commodities such as coal, gold and platinum.

Little wonder that the demand for jobs and decent wages is at the heart of calls from township protestors and striking workers alike and a growing unemployed peoples movement organises mass thefts of basic foodstuffs in cites such as Durban. This is a country in which one worker feeds on average another 5 members of the family. In a country in which the every other 18-24 year old is unemployed a cursory glance at the media coverage reveals poor, hungry, angry faces. Yet having promised to create 500,000 jobs in a recent state of the nation address, President Zuma retracted and stated that ‘These are not the permanent jobs the economy should create but opportunities that should help our people survive in the short term’. And already analysts are already talking of, when it comes, a jobless recovery.

To understand today’s protests and strikes it is important to understand the significance of the election of Jacob Zuma and the expectations he unleashed. But it was an earlier rising tide of worker and township militancy that he deftly rode so enabling him to win the presidency of the ANC. By 2006 there were on average approximately 6,000 township and community protests a year across the country. These were largely local-based revolts against the failure of the ANC government to satisfy ‘service delivery’ demands. These revolts occurred at a greater rate then any other country in the world. But important in which have also been the independent ‘social movements’ typified by the Anti-Privatization Forum who have emerged since 1999 largely as an attempt to coordinate struggles against the ANC’s relentless commodification and privatization of basic services and produced the first cracks in the ANC monolith, proving that you can challenge the ANC’s commitment to neo-liberalism. But it was the recent strikes that destroyed Mbeki that breathed new life into the left inside the Alliance.

Despite being written off by many commentators on the left as ‘bought off’ or ‘tied to the apron strings of the ANC’ there has been a revival of the organised working class. A significant turning point was the 2006 violent security guard and cleaners strike that in some cases went beyond the control of the trade union leaders and began, however falteringly, to show signs of independent rank and file action.

Between 2003 and 2006, the number of days lost to strikes rose from 500,000 to 2, 6 million, most of which took place in 2006. June 2007 witnessed the largest strike in South Africa history. It lasted four weeks, with 11 million strike days lost as public sector workers marched and struck and an underlying current of which was a growing antipathy towards the ANC leadership.

Paradoxically, it was during this period that COSATU’s role in the Alliance led some activists on the left to discount the role of the working class – some even repeating the 1970s theory about the unionised representing a ‘labour aristocracy’. If this was the case, what sense could possibly be made of the strikes at the level of political analysis, let along political engagement?

What is clear is that political transformations have followed from labour struggles. So the last important event came in December 2007 at the ANC Polokwane congress. The writing was on the wall for Mbeki, the coup against him only a matter of time. In short these events, notably the uprisings and strikes – represented a revolt against Mbeki’s neo-liberalism. A revolt that catapulted Zuma to the head of the ANC. Some on the left missed how the rising militancy reverberated inside the ANC and argued that Mbeki was replaced as president due to the internal conflicts. But the conflicts inside the ANC reflect the anger and frustration with ANC neoliberal policies and Mbeki’s fate was not sealed by internal party manoeuvres but by general strikes and protests in recent years that Zuma cleverly latched on to with help from the SACP and COSATU. By seeming to victimise Zuma, Mbeki enhanced his popularity and created a new leader for millions of disaffected people.

Zuma unlike Mbeki is seen as a ‘man of the people’ and a friend of the workers who is willing to listen to the trade unions. Touted as a leftist by his supporters, he sounds more like a US Republican, said one newspaper columnist, as he calls for tougher action against crime and freer markets. Prior to his election as president one of Zuma’s closest advisers, former trade union leader Gwede Mantashe, met with investors in Cape Town and stressed the ways to accelerate South Africa’s rate of investment, fight crime and provide a progressive social safety net. He said that under President Zuma’s leadership ‘this isn’t about business versus the poor, it’s about creating an environment for business while tending to the needs of the poor.’ At one point prior to his election Zuma talked of establishing a ‘pact’ between businesses, government and unions to address low wages, strikes and inflation. Yet this has already been shattered by the strikes and protests and instead of bringing social peace, the Financial Times has noted ‘There is an ugly, unpredictable mood among South Africa’s poor’.

It is this mood of militancy; militant strikes and the township protests over the last few years that have had the cumulative effect of blowing apart the neo-liberal consensus in the Alliance. With the election of Jacob Zuma as president many hoped that this would usher in a new period of social stability. 15 years of ANC rule have seen South Africa become the most unequal country in the world but also the protest capital of the world. In May 2008 government and police figures noted that between 1997 and 2008 there had been 8695 violent or unrest?related crowd management incidents and 84, 487 peaceful demonstrations or peaceful crowd management incidents.

The difference this time is that whilst previous protests have focused on issues such as lack of water and housing, the recent protests have been more generalised and more violent. As protestor Mzonke Poni told reporters ‘Whenever the ANC government fails to deliver, it comes up with excuses and blames it on individuals. It’s true that its councillors lack commitment and skills, but it is the national leadership that is also to blame – and meanwhile people have to suffer. The only way the government notices us is when we express our anger and rage. Then they understand how we feel.’ The protests and strikes caught many people by surprise with some commentators expressing disbelief at the level of political anger at a government elected just three months before with 66 per cent of the vote. As one commentator said about South Africa ‘They just don’t vote they throw bricks as well’. Unless something drastic is done then the bricks look set to be thrown in the future as residents involved in the latest out break of protests in Eldorado Park in Johannesburg threatened “We will protest at the stadiums (of the 2010 World Cup) so the tourists can see how bad we have it here” said Hilton Cannell a member of the resident’s housing committee. By focusing much of its capital infrastructure spending on the World Cup in the hope that it would trickle down to the unemployed and working poor the government increasingly looks like it has scored an own-goal.

About the author

Peter Dwyer teaches Political Economy at Ruskin College, Oxford. Prior to this he worked in South Africa for 4 years in research and popular education.

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Nov 18, 2009

by Suren Pillay

in ACAS Review (Bulletin), Bulletin 84

Presidentialism and its Pitfalls: Towards a theory of how not to understand the Zuma Presidency

It was an unthinkable for many. That Jacob Zuma would become President of post-Apartheid South Africa. Or rather it was unthinkable for many in the West, and for many of the elites in the postcolonial world. At some point South Africa possessed one of the neatest narratives in the history of national liberation movements. A globally condemned problem- racism, and a globally revered leader- Nelson Mandela. A history of violence that was transcended through forgiveness and reconciliation. That was a much consumed version of the story in most of the world. The untidiness of historical actualities is of course a different matter. And yet it seems that the untidiness of actuality always struggles to find voice when it doesn’t seem to tell the story that is required. Perhaps that is because we grasp the world through genres of understanding. Our historical-political events, like our economic fates, are told through classificatory systems, concept repertoires, metaphors, and idioms that allow us to make the specificity of a moment both commensurate with other specific moments in other places at other times. Specificity is therefore inserted and dissolved into historical Time and space so that we can tell a story who’s dimensions, characters, and plot we are roughly already familiar with. We have good stories, and bad stories. There are the inspirational stories, the tragedies, dramas, and the farces, perhaps too much farce. Political life in liberal democracies, totalitarian states and other forms of centralized authority embodied in a person has a genre of its own, through which we seek to make sense of it all. Yet in making sense of the individual leader, the genre that governs plot, character and narrative in political journalism and much political science literature, has already predetermined what it looks for, even if it can’t always govern the timing of events, as the epics of Greek political tragedy demonstrate.

In Africa we perhaps suffer the worse forms of this genre of understanding political life and leadership, since we have to live with cardboard cut-out caricatures, such as a ‘Big Man’ theory of African politics, still very much alive in African Studies it seems, given the glut of B-movie ‘analyses’ of Robert Mugabe we have seen over the last decade. It would however be unfair to castigate scholars in and of African political life alone for mobilizing this heuristic device. It is a mode of understanding political life that exceeds us and is often taken from elsewhere and travels like a global cookie cutter in the sky, landing on a sovereign territory, and forcing its template onto the ground so that what emerges in relief are things like ‘The President’ and ‘the Masses’. All eyes are put on the leader if we want to understand what’s going on, and what’s going to happen. My point is not that this is necessarily wrong in some places at some times. Its just that this mode of analyses might not apply so well everywhere all of the time. And one place it doesn’t apply to very well too is in the analysis of the rise to power, and the practices of political power, the policies and futures we are going to have under the Presidency of Jacob Zuma. That is because while we might refer to him as President Zuma, and whilst we have a very complex institutional machinery designed around him, called the “Presidency”, it would be an analytical mistake to understand Jacob Zuma’s occupation of the presidency in the way that we might understand the rise to power of a political leader in a Presidential system, where an electorate votes directly for the president who is required to spell out an individualized vision and policy agenda.

Jacob Zuma might rather be understood as an ‘empty signifier’, as the name that marks something to be contested over, to be filled in, and to be discursively managed. The rise of Jacob Zuma to the presidency is quite distinct to the individual who went into exile, who spent a month locked in the same jail cell with his comrade Thabo Mbeki in Swaziland in the 1980’s, who became head of ANC intelligence in exile, and who became Deputy President of the ANC, and of the country. Whilst Mr. Zuma is not reducible to any one of these, his public persona is a compound of all these facets. To understand the “Zuma Presidency” I would argue requires studying two dimensions. Firstly, it requires a historical analysis of the ANC in exile, the transformation of the liberation movement into a political party, and an understanding of the local effects of a post-political techno-administrative rationality of governance in a specific global economic context after the Cold War .[1] Jacob Zuma is the name of a confluence of different forces, interests and pasts that intersect to name him, as it were, and that come together in a movement that translates into a displacement of a sitting President who represents another countervailing movement. I prefer then to think of events as marking confluences, of ruptures, of congealing and of dissolving, of a multiplicity of things that are constantly coming together and coming apart. Secondly, I would view the figure of Jacob Zuma-as-President as a person within the webs that have been spun around him that congealed into the ‘political tsunami’ [2], but who’s fragile unity is scattered all over the shores. That movement which produced that spectacular but now spent wave is drawing its parts together to find and maintain a post-tsunami coherency. Witness the struggles over where the center of gravity for dealing with economic policy lies today: is it with the newly created Planning Commission, headed by a senior figure of the past executive responsible for overseeing what was seen as conservative neo-liberal fiscal policy that hurt the poor, or does it lie with the new ministry for Economic Development, headed by a deployee of the labour movement who is not tainted by being part of the previous political administration? The ‘constitutive outside’, to invoke a concept from Ernesto Laclau, of the forces that congealed around Jacob Zuma- the figure of Thabo Mbeki and what he stood for — has largely been vanquished at the top and its remnants are slowly being rooted out throughout the bureaucracy. The struggle now is within the diverse unity that cohered around a particular set of grievances, and that found a groundswell in the form of Jacob Zuma as the agent of change.

Political events in South Africa understood as a Zuma-Mbeki personality struggle, as much as the Tsvangarai-Mugabe affair in Zimbabwe is told this way, do not encourage us to understand our politics as structurally shaped and historically grounded. We are encouraged rather to construct personality archetypes which become turn-keys to unravel the mystery in the drama. Yes, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma lend themselves to stark contrasts — the urban sophisticated intellectual who is thoughtful and reticent versus the formally uneducated goat herder who is warm and approachable. We may even find in the person of Thabo Mbeki that story we are looking for, of a seemingly deliberate individualized rise to power that appears less constituency based- he is quoted as saying when he came back from exile that he had ‘no constituencies’, where rivals like Chris Hani at Mafikeng in1991, Cyril Ramaphosa at the negotiations in Kempton Park, Tokyo Sexwale later on — potential rivals that might have eclipsed him, are outmaneuvered in one way or another. We might find in Mbeki who participated in the secret talks with the apartheid regime whilst simultaneously drafting resolutions for the South African Communist Party demanding mass insurrection, a certain double-speaking tendency driven by a larger vision, in that case the realization that an armed struggle was unlikely to conquer power and that negotiations were the only viable route. To that extent, we could argue that Mbeki possessed a discernable ‘vision’ which was stamped onto the Presidency, spelt out in his ‘I am an African’ speech, in the commitment to peacekeeping in the continent, in the style of dealing with the political events in Zimbabwe, in the stance on HIV/Aids, in the style of appointments and of dealing with critics of the vision that emerged from the Presidency, either through what it said or refused to say.

On the other hand, it would be difficult to find a policy quarrel between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma; the latter was a cooperative part of the executive that made policy under the former’s presidency. What then is at stake in the divisive question of ‘succession’ in the ANC and of the country that brought Jacob Zuma to power? How then did Jacob Zuma emerge as the symbolic figure that represents ‘the Left’ of the tripartite alliance partners, as well as a popular figure who’s increasing legal woes only endeared him more and more to grassroots sympathy? Even if they possess very distinct personalities, why is it that the traits of the one resonated with the mass base of the ANC at this point in time rather than the traits of the other?

Post-apartheid South Africa has contended with two main legacies. The first is the legacy of the exclusion of the majority of those who resided in it from the political community of citizens. Transforming all who lived in it into full legal citizens defines its ‘democratic imperative’. The second legacy it confronts is the effects of economic exclusion and marginalization, which impoverished the majority of its residents at the gain of its few citizens. Improving the basic conditions of life for the majority therefore defines the state’s ‘developmental imperative’. The relationship between representing ‘the will of the people’ — the democratic imperative — and making ‘a better life for all’ — the developmental imperative — is however not a seamless one.

The presidency under Mandela and Mbeki read its mandate- the ‘delivery’ of basic services and the improvement of the welfare of the majority of citizens lives — as an administrative matter to be resolved by expertise. Its criteria for success or failure is to be able quantify its achievements with regard to delivery. There is a remarkable moment at the ANC conference at Polokwane in 2007 where Mbeki and Zuma squared off against in each in the vote for leadership of the ANC. Mbeki is met with open hostility by a pro-Zuma audience of delegates, whom the chairperson struggles to reign in. Mbeki’s advisers suggested to him that he use the opportunity to make a speech that was emotive, and that spoke to the hearts of delegates, that ‘looked people in the eye’, as Ronnie Kasrils said. Mbeki however, consistently technocratic, looked down and read the text of a speech crowded with facts and figures about the achievements of the Presidency. The audience was visibly bored and yawned through it. The technocratic and the popular seemed worlds apart in that moment.

Another dimension to the story is that citizenship in South Africa, which was racially and ethnically exclusive, seeks to create a legal subject of the political in a context where the Law still lacks legitimacy in the eyes of many South Africans, particularly its punitive side. Its important to note that the more Zuma became a subject of punitive law, as an accused of either corruption or rape, the greater the public displays of popular support were. Jacob Zuma, as a victim of Law, resonated with the political disposition of many black South Africans towards law, as a codification of injustice towards them, and therefore lacking legitimacy and authority. In a recent piece, Slavoj Zizek notes that “the key fact here is that pure post-politics (a regime whose self legitimization would have been thoroughly ‘technocratic’, presenting itself as competent administration) is inherently impossible: any political regime needs a supplementary ‘populist’ level of self-legitimization”.[3] The contrast of Zuma to Mbeki as a ‘populist’ leader to a centralizing one, in this context is both misleading and simultaneously useful. What is misleading is the view that Zuma in his person represents a ‘populist’ leader, in the mould of figures like Argentina’s Juan Peron. I would argue rather that the campaign around Zuma takes on populist forms which are projected onto Zuma, whilst we are likely to see that in practice his governance imperatives will force him to manage the relationship between technocratic problem solving, and popular approval, necessary elements of all democratic regimes and their leaders. Zuma has already shown himself willing to criticize the constituency that brought him to power.[4] The challenge is going to be how he manages and is managed by the contending forces at work on the Presidency once they start criticizing what he actually begins to stands for.

About the author

Suren Pillay is a Senior Researcher in Democracy and Governance at the Human Science Research Council in South Africa

Notes

1. For one of the more thoughtful analyses of the confluence of local socio-economic shifts, the rise of Jacob Zuma and ‘Zuluness’ as an idiom of populism in Kwazulu Natal, see Ari Sitas’s discussion document, ‘Populism and the NDR in South Africa’ 2007, http://iolsresearch.ukzn.ac.za/FullVersionPopulismandNDRinSouthAfrica12070.aspx, accessed on 28 October 2009.

2. The general secretary of the country’s largest trade union federation, Zwelinzima Vavi, described Zuma’s bid for the Presidency as an ‘unstoppable tsunami’.

3. Slavoj Zizek, ‘Against the Populist Temptation’, http://www.lacan.com/zizpopulism.htm, accessed on 20 October 2009.

4. According to a newspaper account, addressing workers debating to go on strike, he remarked ‘There is no pandering to the unions. Asked if he felt indebted to unions, Zuma said: ‘Not at all’. James Macharia ‘There is no Pandering to Unions’, Mail and Guardian, 12 August 2009. Also August this year Zuma paid a surprise visit to the town of Balfour, which had experienced protests, to check in on local government officials. The Mayor was apparently off sick, but rushed to the office when he heard of his visitor. Karabo Keepile ‘The day the President came knocking’, Mail and Guardian, 26 August 2009. There have been similar visits elsewhere in the country, not only by himself, but by other ministers, who have been vocal in the criticisms of perceived incompetence.

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Nov 18, 2009

by Sean Jacobs

in ACAS Review (Bulletin), Bulletin 84

Comment (1)

Introduction: The Politics of Jacob Zuma

Jacob Zuma, the President of Africa’s most powerful democracy since April 2009, and the recently chosen ‘African President of the Year’ (Sapa 2009), arouses strong passions from his supporters and detractors.

A longtime ANC official from a humble peasant background in what is now Kwazulu-Natal province, Zuma was picked by the ANC to be the country’s deputy president under Thabo Mbeki in 1999.

The men, close colleagues during exile (and during the early years of negotiating with the Apartheid government), appeared to only enjoy a friendly rivalry at that point.

So when it came to predicting who would lead South Africa when Mbeki departed the national stage, most observers did not think of Zuma as a serious contender. He hardly featured in the daily cut and thrust of national politics, save for spearheading a ‘moral regeneration’ effort and co-chairing a national body to coordinate the government’s AIDS prevention and treatment effort with NGOs. No one took the focus on morals seriously and Mbeki was really in charge of AIDS policy.

Then in 2004 Shabir Shaik, a close associate of Zuma, was tried on charges of corruption and fraud relating to a controversial $5 billion government arms deal. During the trial it emerged that Shaik managed Zuma’s finances and that Zuma was probably embroiled in a corrupt relationship with Shaik (he was accused of procuring bribes for Zuma from arms manufacturers).

In June 2005, President Mbeki — alluding to possible corruption charges against Zuma — decided to relieve Zuma of his duties as deputy president. A few months later Zuma was charged with raping the HIV-positive daughter of his former cellmate on Robben Island.

Though Zuma was acquitted of the rape charge, during the trial he claimed to have showered after sex to prevent possible infection and also suggested that his alleged victim invited sex by dressing provocatively. His supporters — who held marches and rallies outside the court — also threatened his accuser with death. She eventually sough asylum in the Netherlands.

By most accounts, Zuma would have been set for certain political isolation. Instead, a combination of factors resurrected his political career.

Zuma’s warm personality contrasted sharply with Mbeki’s cold, secretive and paranoid character (Mbeki at one point had the Minister of Police investigate three of his rivals for ANC President). Zuma’s poor background — he is from a peasant family; his single mother was a domestic to white Durban families — also differed from Mbeki’s status as an ANC insider (Mbeki’s father was a rival of Mandela and served more than two decades on Robben Island; in fact, Mbeki was sent out of South Africa to prepare him for leadership).

Mbeki’s government also became associated with crony corruption and loyalty to non-performing ministers and senior government officials, AIDS deaths (and denialism) as well as other negative social indicators (massive unemployment and growing class fissures among blacks, among others).

Mbeki’s critics inside the ANC and its allies (the trade union movement and communists) found in Jacob Zuma — ‘the 100% Percent Zulu Boy’ — an ambitious politician and willing accomplice.

For Mbeki’s opponents ground zero would be the party’s national conference in December 2007 — where the ANC usually anoints its leaders and, since 1990, when it was unbanned, its presidential candidates.

Publicly Mbeki — who by now could not conceal his open disdain for Zuma, denied that he wanted to change the country’s constitution and serve a third term, leaving it to his surrogates to publicly promote the idea. When his proposal of a third-term was rejected by the ANC, Mbeki instead offered to remain only as party president.

No one could predict what followed next: Zuma trounced Mbeki in elections for party leader (he won nearly twice the number of voters Mbeki got).

With Mbeki now controlling the state and Zuma the party, something had to give. It was clear Zuma’s camp held the upper hand and in September 2008 Mbeki resigned his post as the country’s president. This plunged the ANC into its first serious crisis since the 1970s (then a group of rabid African nationalists were expelled because of their views of whites and communists). Some party leaders close to Mbeki eventually broke away to form the Congress of the People (COPE) in October 2008. Though the ANC appointed the party secretary-general, Kgalema Montlante, as President of South Africa, it was clear that the preferred candidate of those who had ousted Mbeki, was Zuma. In early 2009 the corruption charges against Zuma was dismissed. Soon after he was declared the ANC’s candidate for President. Zuma, contrary to elite opinion, especially foreign and domestic media, emerged as a capable leader, rallying the ANC’s core supporters and running a smooth, tight election campaign to be elected as South Africa’s third democratic president.

Zuma had campaigned with the promise that he would only serve one term, but in June 2009 he announced that he wants to serve the maximum allowed two presidential terms. This means Zuma will now certainly dominate South African politics for the next decade.

Unlike his predecessors as South Africa’s democratic presidents — Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki — Zuma is a relatively close book. He is also not known to write things down.

But Zuma, like Mbeki before him, is considered a polarizing figure in mainstream accounts. Journalist Mark Gevisser (2007), who authored a 900-odd page biography of Thabo Mbeki, later declared that he is not a fan of Zuma. Gevisser later wrote an article for the British Prospect Magazine to declare that he would not vote for the ANC with Zuma as leader (Gevisser 2009). Former ANC member of parliament, Andrew Feinstein, in his book about the arms deal, described Jacob Zuma as morally compromised. Some, like journalist Alec Russell, hedge their bets on Zuma. In his recent book on South Africa, Russell (who was a fan of Mbeki’s rightwing economic policies) speculates on what kind of leader Jacob Zuma will be: ‘If South Africa is lucky, Zuma will be its Ronald Reagan’. That is if Zuma leaves the governing to technocrats, while working to ‘make the country feel good about itself’. At the same time Zuma could develop into a ‘Big Man personality cult’ and a ‘charismatic populist,’ according to Russell (2009). But with the exception of Russell, none of the other books claim to be about Zuma specifically.

To shed light on the politics and ideology of Jacob Zuma, we approached a number of experts (among them historians, political scientists, and sociologists) based inside and outside South Africa, to shed led on Zuma’s politics and biography. In these essays, the contributors attempt to get beyond the headlines to explore aspects of Zuma’s political identity, his class politics, biography (Robben Island, his Zuluness), his political alliances, style of government, gender politics, among others.

Essays are by Suren Pillay, Peter Dwyer, Raymond Suttner, Ari Sitas, Hlonipha Mokoena, Thembisa Waetjen and Gerhard Mare and Fran Buntman. There is also an essay by an Anonymous contributor. Rather than summarize them here, we have decided to let them speak for themselves.

Layout and additional editing for this issue was done by Jacob Mundy, my fellow editor of the Bulletin.

About the author

Sean Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of Media and Culture in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School, New York.

References

Gevisser, M. 2007. Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred. Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball

Gevisser, M. 2009. Why I didn’t vote for the ANC, Prospect Magazine, May, pp.19-20, http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/05/whyididntvoteanc/

Russell, A. 2009. Bring Me My Machine Gun: The Battle for the Soul of South Africa, from Mandela to Zuma. New York, Public Affairs.

South African Press Agency (SAPA). 2009. ‘Zuma Crowned African President of the Year’, Mail & Guardian online, 11 November 2009, http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-11-11-zuma-crowned-african-president-of-the-year.

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Oct 05, 2009

by ACAS

in Events

Zimbabwe: Healing, Reconciliation and Reconstruction (Symposium)

The Africa Initiative and Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University are pleased to announce a two-day symposium on October 29 and 30, on the theme of healing, reconciliation and reconstruction in Zimbabwe. This meeting brings together key figures from Africa and the United States to deliberate on the question of Zimbabwe’s future, the role of healing in socio-political reconstruction, and the role of democratic institutions and an informed citizenry in a peace process that goes beyond partisan proclivities.

Conference participants will include:
* MP Sekai Holland, Zimbabwean Minister for Healing and National Cohesion
* Gertrude Hambira, General Agriculture And Plantation Workers Union Of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ) ,
* Brian Raftopoulos, Distinguished historian, author of Becoming Zimbabwe: A History of Zimbabwe from the pre-colonial period to 2008, Weaver Press, Harare, 2009
* Machivenyika Mapuranga , Zimbabwean ambassador to the United States
* Elinor Sisulu, author of Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime
* Mmatshilo Motsei, Author, The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court: Reflections of the Rape Trial of Jacob Zuma,
* Tawanda Mutasah, Lawyer, Human Rights activist
* Esau Mavindidze, Zimbabwean activist and organizer
* Horace Campbell, author, Reclaiming Zimbabwe: the Exhaustion of the patriarchal Model of Liberation

At the Africa Initiative, we are aware that under the articles of the Global Political Agreement, the members of both ZANU-PF and MDC are committed to promoting equality, national healing, cohesion and unity. It is challenging to work towards healing in a way that does not begin with a desire for revenge. In the words of Albert Einstein, “You cannot solve a problem by using the mindset that caused the problem in the first place.” Thus, we believe that healing and reconciliation are processes (not events), that arise out of new ways of societal thinking. While a legal basis for healing is impossible, a legal framework to protect people and institutions against future criminal acts and impunity is possible.

Consistent with Syracuse University’s on-going commitment to Scholarship in Action, we invite all members of the general public, the local community, and university students to attend this event. The Symposium will take place at the Herg Auditorium, on the Campus of Syracuse University in New York. It is co-sponsored by the Africa Initiative, Newhouse School of Public Communications, and the Department of African Studies, and Pan African Committee of New York

For further information contact
Africa Initiative
Syracuse University
orwamike@yahoo.com
nyasa09@syr.edu

Sep 26, 2009

by ACAS

in Announcements

Call for Nominations Bud Day Award: Due October 1

Each year, in memory of Warren Bud Day, ACAS honors activist scholarship on Africa with the Bud Day Award. The call for nominations is now open. ACAS asks its current members to submit names and brief bios to Frank Holmquist (fholmquist@hampshire.edu), the award committee chair. The 2009 award will be presented during the ACAS and African Studies Association meetings scheduled for November 19-22, 2009 in New Orleans.

The award honors activist work in the tradition of Bud Day, whose life work exemplifies a concerned activist scholar of Africa. Bud was committed to anti-racist activism, national liberation struggles, the global fight against war and militarism, ending U.S. destablization policies, and to bringing clean water, sanitation, and affordable health care to those in need. He worked in India, Bangladesh, and across Southern Africa, Central America, the Middle East, and the United States.

The recipient of the Bud Day Award should be an individual who is:

1) working in the U.S. for Africa/Africans
2) involved in ongoing work for Africa/Africans
3) doing work that spotlights a neglected group or problem or critical situation for Africa/Africans
4) doing work that relates to U.S.-Africa policy

Previous recipients of the Bud Day Award are:

2008: Prexy Nesbitt, a long-time activist for African liberation and progressive causes on the continent. He was and is an educator, writer, frequent speaker, and leader of activist organizations at the national and local levels. He was a catalyst of nation-wide agitation against apartheid and for divestment from South Africa. More recently he has been speaking on war and militarism issues. He has also worked for the World Council of Churches and the MacArthur Foundation.

2007: Imani Countess, who for more than two decades has promoted U.S. policies supporting sustainable development, economic equality, and participatory democracy in Africa. She has worked for a number of social justice organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee, Jubilee USA Network, Shared Interest, Africa Policy Information Center, and the Washington Office on Africa.

2006: Bill Minter, an ACAS Board member and editor of the AfricaFocus Bulletin, who has worked as an independent scholar and activist on Africa since the mid-1960s.

2005: Kassahun Checole, publisher and editor of Africa World Press and Red Sea Press. The press exemplifies the famous African proverb: *Until the lions have their historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.*

I am looking forward to receiving your nominations. Thank you.

Frank Holmquist
Professor of Politics
School of Social Science
Hampshire College
Amherst, MA 01002

by Sasha Gear

From ACAS Bulletin 83: Sexual and gender based violence in Africa

Comment (1)

Manhood, violence and coercive sexualities in men’s prisons: dynamics and consequences behind bars and beyond

Over the last few years the CSVR in Johannesburg has conducted research on sexual violence in men’s prisons. One striking feature of this work, which initially jolted my assumptions, has been the relative readiness of perpetrators of male same-sex rape in prison to report this violence to us as compared to the bashfulness of victims.

It’s the context of the situation where perpetrators seem more willing to talk about their violence than victims – that I’ll consider in this article, showing how it is actually well explained by the social place that sexual violence occupies in prison. This focus which has pertinence far beyond prison walls as well, sheds light on particular notions of gender and sexuality and their relations to violence.

The ways in which sexual violence in men’s prisons is understood and lived is largely framed by dominant inmate culture – the behaviours and understandings considered normal in that context and which are upheld by those wielding most power. Sexual violence in prison is interwoven into the workings of dominant inmate culture, which in South Africa is strongly influenced by prison gangsterism. So for example, sexual violence is structured into gang hierarchies and features in the classification processes of new members into these hierarchies. But while it is so embedded in this culture, the many ways in which the culture normalizes this violence, simultaneously make it invisible.

One way in which this happens is that parties in the violence are conceptually disappeared. Male victims of prison sexual violence are no longer even acknowledged as men, but are commonly believed to have been turned into “women”. In the words of one of our respondents,

“If … sex [is done to you], … you are now a woman … There is nothing we can do … and we don’t care … When [you] walk past people want to touch [you] or threaten to rape [you].”

Another aspect of this is that sexual violence is normalized through forced partnerings which are often referred to as prison “marriages”. The majority of rape victims end up being taken as “wives” or “wyfies” in forced marriage relationships by the perpetrators, whom the dominant inmate culture identify as “men”. In these forced marriages the wyfies (who have had the feminized identity imposed on them) are seen as the means to the “men’s” sexual gratification and, in the vast majority of cases, “marriages” become the place of ongoing sexual abuse.

While “marriages” are abruptly and brutally brought about through rape, in more than a few ways they also mimic the dominant heterosexual marriages that we’re all familiar with in dominant heterosexual relations outside. This resemblance is regularly drawn on to legitimize them, with inmates saying things like, “But prison wives are treated just like women outside”. Ultimately “marriages” smooth over the anxiety-provoking issue of violence by disappearing its protagonists: they turn victims into “wives” and perpetrators into “men”.

In contrast, other powerful and prevalent discourses bring very specific unwanted attention on the victim, blaming him for what has happened to him and building the perception that rape is the victim’s fault and the perpetrator has done nothing wrong.

While in these ways, sexual violence is minimized and obscured at the same time that there’s a profound stigmatization of victims, in contrast other forms of violence in prison are seen as central to establishing identities that are desirable and validated in inmate culture. The meaning of “manhood” in prison relies on an ability both to use and withstand violence (along with qualities like manipulation skills and self-sufficiency.) Violence is so wrapped up with “manhood” that if someone who has been made into a “woman” wants to escape the abuse and be promoted to “manhood” he’ll have to commit violence to prove his worthiness.

This way in which different forms of violence function to establish different gendered identities strongly resonates with Whitehead’s (2005) analysis of masculinity and violence. He identifies two categories of violence employed by men (in contexts of “masculine anxiety”) to assert manhood amongst their peers. The first which relates to the reliance of the notion of prison manhood on particular forms of violence, is violence that supports the masculinity of both men in that it’s seen as men fighting against each other (they’re viewed as “worthy rivals”). But the second, which regularly involves sexual humiliation, is violence which functions to exclude victims from the category “man”. To become victim of this sort of violence is seen as a signal that one is unworthy of a masculine status, turning him into a “non-man” (Whitehead, 2005, p411). Male rape in prison, seen as destroying the victims masculinity while endorsing that of the perpetrator, is clearly an example of such violence.

In the fundamentally misogynist environment of the prison, the feminine status imposed on victims represents the demolition of respect and identity amongst peers. The notion that ‘real men’ cannot be raped – and that if they were real men they would have managed to fight off attackers is widespread in society generally. So there’s very minimal if any room in prevalent understandings of masculinity for experiences of victimization amongst men.

Regarding the official states of affairs, practices of the Department of Correctional Services (DCS), like the dominant inmate culture make prison rape invisible. Quite literally rape is disappeared in the prison records of violence where there’s no category of rape / sexual assault. So if someone is raped, this is captured under the general category of “assault”. The policies also do not state just what it is and what is not allowed regarding sex and sexual violence. This leads to much confusion and ultimately assists in keeping sexual violence hidden for not naming it for what it is – at the same time that it contributes to homophobia. DCS’s lack of services and capacity to deal with sexual violence mirrors this absence. The official systems then, like the inmate culture, provide no space for male rape victims.

It’s also pertinent to consider an emerging discourse which tries to oppose these dominant currents. It’s employed by some activists attempting to address the situation and to get recognition for victims of prison rape. In doing so they’ve highlighted the potential for male rape victims to themselves become violent in the future. So, in its bluntest form, a regularly stated argument is that unless we pay victims the attention they deserve, they will become rapists on the outside in attempt to regain their manhood.

But it’s certainly not a given that aggression and violence follow sexual victimization – and in terms of how prison rape may generate future violence, it seems noteworthy that in these well-intentioned discourses, the victims are singled out as potential perpetrators while those doing the raping and coercing – the prison “men” – are ignored (that’s not to say that they’re not sometimes the same people). It is however perhaps more likely that prison “men” will, on release, continue their abusive ways and in relation to ‘outside’ women as well.

There is certainly strategic mileage in this approach where it draws much-needed attention to male rape victims, but this argument can itself be damaging. By foregrounding victims as future rapists, activists risk stigmatizing them further. They get seen not as victims or survivors but as dangerous potential perpetrators, with the implied message being that we should pay prison rape victims attention to stop them from violating others and not because they’re worthy of our attention simply because they’ve been harmed and violated.

Unintentionally, this sort of message leaves male victims as few options as they are offered by the brutal notions of “masculinity” which have such a hold on the inmate culture. These notions make recognition and respect conditional on a capacity for violence – and the activist discourse ends up doing the same thing by saying the reason we need to pay them attention is the danger that they’ll become violent. The vulnerability of men is an area that society apparently refuses to acknowledge unless we feel frightened by what our ongoing disregard may bring. Therefore, certain attempts to start addressing male vulnerability end up uncritically assuming automatic links between men and violence – and run the risk of endorsing the very beliefs we seek to debunk.

Prison represents a key socializing institution in South Africa like in many other countries with scores of our young men entering as well as exiting it everyday. The impact of prison experiences on those experiencing them is suggested in the findings of a survey we conducted in a youth correctional facility (Gear 2007). We asked the young men about different kinds of processes that they’d been through that they felt had turned them from boys into men. The emphasis was on their feelings, and they were told to include formal and informal processes, as well socially acceptable and frowned-upon processes where relevant. We found that as they’d spent longer in prison, processes that had taken place during their incarcerations became more and more of a feature. The periods of imprisonment were however relatively short. For example, amongst those who’d served 2 – 3 years of their sentences, 52 % had participated in processes inside prison which they felt had turned them from a boy into a man. At the same time, manhood processes taking place inside prison were having an impact even soon after inmates’ arrivals – so they didn’t have to be there long to have these formative experiences. Similarly, we found that they’d gotten much of what they knew about sex from their in-prison experiences.

Clearly prison experiences play a critical role in these young inmates’ sense of themselves as well as in their approaches to sexuality and gender.

Deeply destructive notions of what it means to be a “man” are entrenched in prison and include ones that see victims of prison sexual violence going unrecognized or receiving only stigmatized and humiliating attention while perpetrators go unchallenged and even garner respect as a result. But while these harmful ideas about manhood may be particularly exaggerated in prison, the discourses that support them are powerful outside prison as well. They are also the same ones feeding South Africa’s extreme levels of gender based violence more broadly, solutions to which are only going to come about with the celebration of alternative ideas of manhood that do not link respect with violence. Fundamentally alternative notions of masculinity need also to acknowledge male vulnerability. These are two sides of the same masculinity coin.

About the author
Sasha Gear works at the Centre for the Study of Violence in Johannesburg where she was first involved in researching ex-combatants’ experiences of transitional South Africa. Since late 2001 she has coordinated the Sexual Violence in Prison Project, producing qualitative and quantitative research to gain understanding on the nature and circumstances of sexual violence and coercion happening in men’s prisons. In addition she is involved in awareness-raising and capacity-building initiatives for prison staff and others working in prison to promote sexual health and to develop strategies to prevent and respond to sexual violence behind bars. She has published on the ways in which violence plays out in the socio-cultural world of prisons and on the gendered dimensions of male rape. Her primary interest is in masculinities and how different understandings of manhood feed into and shape experiences of violence. sgear@csvr.

This is a shortened version of a presentation given at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) Forum, July 2009 in Johannesburg.

References

Whitehead, A. (2005). ‘Man to Man Violence’,The Howard Journal, 44(4): 411-422.

Gear, S. (2007b) Doing Time in a Gauteng Juvenile Correctional Centre for Males. Briefing Report No.01, Johannesburg: CSVR.

Other CSVR sources on sex and sexual violence in South African men’s prisons are available at http://www.csvr.org.za

Gear, S. 2007. ‘Behind the Bars of Masculiinity: Male Rape and Homophobia in and about South Africa Men’s Prisons. Sexualities. Vol10 (2):209-227.

Gear, S. (2007a) Fear, Violence & Sexual Violence in a Gauteng Juvenile Correctional Centre for Males. Briefing Report No.02, Johannesburg: CSVR.

Gear, S. (2005) ‘Rules of engagement: Structuring sex and damage in men’s prisons and beyond’, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 7(3): 195-208.

Gear,S. & Ngubeni, K. (2003). Your brother, my wife: sex and gender behind bars. SA Crime Quarterly, June.

Gear, S. and Ngubeni, K. (2002). Daai Ding: Sex, Sexual Violence & Coercion in Men’s Prisons, Johannesburg: CSVR.

by Liesl Theron

From ACAS Bulletin 83: Sexual and gender based violence in Africa

Comments (32)

Trans-hate at the core of gender based violence?

Gender DynamiX is a human rights organisation, the only in South Africa focussing its work on the transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming sector. The organisation was originally founded to work on a referring database system, collecting and archiving information from and about transgender people by transgender people to disseminate useful information (on request to other transgender people). Stealth living is in many trans[1] people in South Africa’s viewpoint the ultimate goal, hence the lack of information and silence around the prevalence and visibility of transgender role models. What was initially seen as the goal of Gender DynamiX was quickly exceeded and we were contacted by trans people from all areas in the country, indicating a much greater need than collecting and disseminating information. Soon after its inception Gender DynamiX initiated workshops, seminars, participated in the larger LGBTI sector in activism and contributed to the local and regional ‘pool of knowledge’ about transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming information. Most importantly Gender DynamiX hosts a very informative website which serves in many trans people’s lives as the first touch point to obtain information about medical and legal procedures.

South Africa is internationally acclaimed for its progressive constitution when it enshrined sexual orientation in it’s’ constitution in 1996. Many other important rights were celebrated for gay and lesbian people such as same-sex adoption rights and joint beneficiary on medical schemes and policies. South Africa became the fifth country in the world to celebrate same-sex marriages.

All these liberal and progressive rights are acknowledged amidst an undertone of extreme violence against women, minority groups and LGBTI[2] people. One in three South African women can expect to be raped in her lifetime – at least once. (Moffett, 2009) In documents and research reports one reads that a woman in South Africa is raped every 20 seconds. Vanessa Ludwig opened her keynote address at a fundraiser event (in aid to the End Hate[3] campaign) in March 2008 with a very dramatic but high impact message. She stood in front of the microphone in silence for a few minutes, with a spotlight on her and a djembe[4] drum beating every 20 seconds. After working up to a point where one started to feel very uncomfortable, her first words to the audience were: ‘Each time you hear the drum, another woman is being raped’ and challenged the audience to shift their discomfort to anger.

We hear these shocking and powerful speeches, according to the numerous research reports from credible organisations such as the Medical Research Council, the Human Sciences Research Council and many more (Moffett, 2009) echoing the same astounding statistics.

In post apartheid South Africa with its freedom of speech more powerful presentations, NGO’s mobilizing constituencies, ongoing workshops and awareness raising, campaigns such as the One-in-Nine, the Rose has Thorns Campaign, Take the Night Back, 16 Days of Activism, 070707 Campaign and many more events encourage women to ‘come out’ . This has lead to building a momentum where women initially courageously told their stories. Kwezi[6] , a HIV activist, felt no different in laying charges when she was raped. She exercised her (well informed) constitutional right. The justice she was hoping for turned on her. The system failed her dismally as she was silenced and, for her own safety, she now lives outside South Africa in exile. She does not feel safe in her own democratic country with all its newly gained freedom anymore. Was it because she challenged in court the same Jacob Zuma, who is now our President? The situation Kwezi finds herself in illuminates the ‘victim who became victimized’ discourse. As Moffett states: ‘The 2006 rape trial of Jacob Zuma [7] … provided a clear demonstration of the shortfall between the rights women are guaranteed under the 1996 Constitution and the cultural, political, judicial and social backlash women risk should they lay claim to these rights’.

Illuminated above are clearly contradictions to the rights women are able to exercise and claim in South Africa against the rights written in the constitution. LGBTI people experience similar contradictions between written law and experienced life. Trans people find themselves even more on the fringe, rejected to a very isolated space on the far side of the boundaries of society where they are many times rejected from ‘mainstream’ society, yet not included in LGBTI groups or settings. Similar to how many lesbian and gay people’s lived experience is in contradiction with our constitution, trans people find themselves in a liminal space where they are not included in heterosexual or homosexual spaces, and prejudiced against – yet our constitution makes provision for everyone in the Rainbow Nation.

On the evening of 2 June 2008 Daisy Dube, who proudly self identified as a drag queen was shot and died on the scene. A close friend, who was out the evening with Daisy confirmed the motivation for the killing was their gender identity and that they were not willing to subject themselves to ridicule. The shooting resulted after Daisy and her three friends challenged three homophobic men to refrain from calling them ‘isitabane’.[8]

Not all hate crimes and gender based violence against transgender people results in murder. Not all hate crimes and gender based violence against transgender people in South Africa are reported. Many fear secondary victimisation from the police. A trans woman who was raped by a gang of six guys said she could not report the case at the police due to her fear of the police and the terrible things she heard about the police. Not only is police response humiliating, it is also extremely traumatic (Reid and Dirsuweit, 2009).

Another trans woman was in a house where the police performed a random drug raid, in July 2008. All the house mates were taken to the police station and upon being discovered as transsexual she was kept in the holding cells much longer than the others. She was ‘body searched’ by just about every police officer in the station and she also mentioned assault. She was never found guilty of drugs nor was any charge made against her. In 2007 an intersex woman was taken into a police station for a traffic offence. She was being body searched by every police officer in the station, assaulted and ended up with bruises. She reported the incident to Gender DynamiX; she did not want to lay a charge, neither wanted counselling as she said she just want to block out the ordeal.

Trans people also suffer abuse and violence at the hand of family members, due to their trans identity. One trans woman related how her dad and other male family members raped and assaulted her repeatedly in her early childhood as result of her ‘effeminate behaviour’ and called her moffie. [9] She was also forced to perform sexual acts with a dog to ‘teach her a lesson’.

One trans woman told of a series of incidents which started four months after her gender reassignment surgery. Her house burnt down one night, while she was asleep inside, she fortunately woke up in time to save her own life, but the house burnt completely to the ground. Two months later her business was petrol-bombed and six months after that she was assaulted with a pick handle by her ex wife’s lover. She suspected all these attempts on her life came from them.

25 December 2007 a trans woman reported she wanted to commit suicide as a result of rejection by her community and family. She was severely beaten up by her (then) wife’s family members. At that stage doctors feared that she has lost partial eyesight in her right eye due to damage to her face.

Bullying and teasing at school is something many trans people can relate to. In some cases trans people told me teachers would ‘join in’ ridiculing them for the way they present themselves. One trans woman referred to an incident where a group of boys assaulted her one afternoon after school in the cloak rooms. Incidents like this lead to depression and underperformance. Many trans youth drop out from school at a young age due to intimidation, ridicule and ostracising.

Partners of transgender persons are also subject to transphobic violence and are equally vulnerable, yet are in some cases more invisible. Inasmuch as adequate statistics, information, structures and support for victims of gender based violence are not in existence in South Africa, for lesbian, gay and transgender people, it is even more premature to ask if partners or any SOFFA[10] of transgender people will be recognised and supported, or being counted in transphobic violent acts in hate crime statistics (Cook-Daniels, 2007).

Prevalence of gender based violence amongst any community is harmful. Many incidents in our resent past can be described in the words of Antje Schuhmann as ‘violent statements of claiming control over women’s bodies and their right of expression.’(2009). I want to argue that the violence that gays, lesbians and women in general face are mostly gender based and not sexual orientation based. The transgender community are directly exposed to this threat because of gender non-conformance[11] or cross gender behaviour and expression. It is therefore essential to advocate against this evil and to fight for the protection and rights of all citizens and especially so for LGBTI individuals.

About the author

Liesl Theron is the founder of Gender DynamiX, a human rights organisation promoting freedom of expression of gender identity, focussing on transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming persons. Being a gender activist she is actively involved in the organised LGBT sector of South Africa. Her work focuses on the intersectionality of gender and Other bodies. Her research as part of her Honours degree at the University of Cape Town explores the struggles, support and forming of identity of SOFFA’s (Significant Others, family, Friends and Allies) of trans people.

She was selected by the African Regional Sexuality Resource Centre (ARSRC) based in Lagos, Nigeria for the 4th annual Sexuality Leadership Development Fellowship in July 2007, which included post-fellowship research. Her chosen research topic, [Un]accessible shelters for LGT people in Cape Town was, completed in December 2007 and was accepted by the Resource Centre for publication later this year (2009).

References

Cook-Daniels, Loree. 2007. Social Change and Justice for All: The Role of SOFFAs in the Trans Community. http://www.forge-forward.org/handouts/CLAGS_SOFFA.pdf (Last visited: 7 July 2009).

Moffett, Helen. 2009. Sexual Violence, Civil society and the New Constitution, pp 155-184. In Hannah Britten, Jennifer Fish and Shiela Meintjies (eds), Women’s Activism in South Africa: Working Across Divides. Durban: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

Reid, Graeme and Dirsuweit, Teresa. 2009. Understanding systematic violence: homophobic attacks in Johannesburg and its surrounds, pp 5-30. In Wendy Isaack (ed), POWA’s State Accountability for Homophobic Violence. People Opposing Women abuse (POWA) as part of the 070707 Campaign.

Schuhmann, Antje. 2009. Battling hate crimes against black lesbians in the rainbow nation. Discussing the limitations of a US American concept and exploring the political horizon beyond law reform, pp 31-45. In Wendy Isaack (ed), POWA’s State Accountability for Homophobic Violence. People Opposing Women abuse (POWA) as part of the 070707 Campaign.

Notes

1. I use the word trans freely in my writing, indicating and respecting trans includes transgender, transsexual, transvestite and gender non-conforming.

2. Most LGB(TI) organisations in South Africa claim they are LGBTI organisations, serving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and their needs. According to Gender DynamiX a very small number of those organisations cater adequately (or at all) for trans and intersex people to the level of information and services they need.

3. The End Hate campaign focuses on hate crimes against LGBTI people

4. African drum.

5. ‘Coming out’ regarding HIV status, rape or being lesbian.

6.Her pseudonym throughout the rape trial and since, to protect her identity

7. Since the rape trial in 2006Jacob Zuma was voted in to become South Africa’s 3rd president since Democracy, April 2009.

8. Originally from the isiZulu term ‘isitabane’ which means hermaphrodite and is usually used in a derogatory way to refer to LGBT people in townships.

9. Moffie – An Afrikaans derogatory term for a gay male that has been borrowed into South African English. Similar to the English equivalent ‘faggot’ , first used as a derogatory term and now in the process of being reclaimed in certain communities.

10. Significant Other, Family, Friends and Allies.

11. Taking for example the woman from Umlazi who was stripped naked and men in the village burned her shack down – because she was wearing trousers. She was not a lesbian. This form of oppression took place because she was not conforming to cultural expected norms.

by Sariane Leigh

From ACAS Bulletin 83: Sexual and gender based violence in Africa

Post conflict recovery in Sierra Leone: the spiritual self and the transformational state

“We need to get back to the old time mobilization of our grandmothers”, said Regina Amadi, Regional Director for Africa, of the International Labor Organization (ILO), May 8 at the 2009 African Women Changing the Global Outlook Empowerment Conference in Washington D.C. As she spoke before Somali intellectuals, Ugandan business women, Nigerian journalists, and Tanzanian political leaders, she and other global leaders shared their concerns about Africa’s political, economic and environmental and health condition. The British Embassy and National Geographic sponsored the conference by bringing together noted international panelists to respond to audience questions. While the usual suspects brought up age old hot topics such as good governance, the role of Ngo’s, and male political power structures, participants challenged female panel members on what they are doing to empower those who do not have the privilege to attend the conference. American Journalist, Makeda Crane asked, “What are we doing NOW to help the women in the Congo?” Makeda’s overarching question brought to light the complicated tier of injustices that make women’s goal to “help” and “improve” Africa a task bound by time, space, and resources.

What are women doing “now”? The journalist’s urgent demand for change in the Congo is not the first and likely not the last time the international community has called for an intervention on behalf those who cannot seemingly fend for themselves. But what about the women who are fending for themselves while waiting for high powered intellectuals to lobby for an action plan. How do we understand the emotional resources and coping skills of women staring into the face of immediate danger? Ten years ago, in Sierra Leone, the world faced the same challenges as a civil war resulted in violent and humiliating acts along the countryside of Kenema and into the city of Freetown. The devastations were massive, unpredictable and in most cases unpreventable by even well-equipped European military fleets. In the context of conflict and trauma, immediacy is a haunting fog that forces one to think and act in survival mode. While organizations descended to assist villages and communities with their most pressing needs, the women who survived the ten-year ordeal were forced to address their emotional state with the resources that were readily available.

Immediate Healing and Long Term Recovery

This impulsivity for immediate action comes at a historical nexus for rebuilding in Rwanda and Sierra Leone while overlapping with the political unrest in Congo-Kinshasa, the Sudan, and Zimbabwe. We know that women are simultaneously recovering while others are living through unspeakable crimes. We know that they go on to forgive, forget or suppress what they have witnessed. However, what curiously reoccurs in women’s war testimonies are references to spirituality. Sierra Leonean women’s use of spirituality offers psychological clues as to how women continue to press forward and emotionally sustain themselves in the face of trauma. Spirituality aids in women’s ability to transcend their immediate experience and redefine themselves, creating a new world based on a self-tested transformation. Women uphold spiritual relationships as a core component for managing their emotional recovery. Women use spirituality as a self-affirming, personal, and private vehicle for recuperation in areas where organized religion can not sufficiently address the deep interpersonal areas of their lives. Spirituality functions as a regenerative force for individual empowerment by offering the individual an internal source of hope to overcome difficult circumstances. By first developing herself, a woman can then take her strength to catalyze others in similar situations. Spirituality as a healing mechanism is not a new concept. However, spirituality as a tool for African women’s “self then state” transformation is an under-explored topic of post-conflict gender studies.

Me, then We

Western psychology focuses on treating trauma within the frameworks of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) emphasizing individualism and self reliance.[1]1 Though post conflict nations such as Sierra Leone have collectivist attributes, collectivist psychological assumptions ignore the dichotomous nature of individualism and collectivism during traumatic recovery. Individualistic recovery is not limited to a western theoretical psychological outlook. Woman, as an individual in a post conflict setting often are socially mandated to sustain communal relationships. Women are the first ones expected to forgive the sons, brothers, fathers and husbands who carried out heinous crimes. These same women create self-development tools to remind themselves of their purpose and a connection to the “whole”. Gendered spirituality serves as a core component in the overall communities’ capacity to recover and transform after extreme trauma. Anthropologist Dr. Chris Coulter’s (2008)[2]2 reflects upon witnessing a Kuranko girl’s initiation ceremony three years after Sierra Leone’s peace declaration. She ultimately concludes that the gendered ceremony is an opportunity for the Kuranko to reinstitute normalcy. Coulter says,

“The social significance of the ritual is particularly emphasized; the ceremony is not only a social event but has become a key event in reconfiguring social relations after a decade of civil war.” (433)

Similarly, University of Sierra Leone’s Dr. Aisha Fofana Ibrahim’s (2006)[3] 3 research revealed that most of the women she contacted participated in or desired some form of cleansing ceremony, because rituals are “an important catharsis”,

“In Sierra Leone, cleansing ceremonies can last from a day to a month depending on the physical and emotional state of the person seeking a “cure” and the amount of money they can afford to spend. Such ceremonies often include ritual baths in which people are bathed by herbalists with a mixture of herbs and then given herbal and/or lasmami potions to drink. Lasmami is a kind of holy water made in two different ways. A wooden slate inscribed with a specific Quranic verse is hung over a container then washed clean or pieces of paper with the Quarnic inscriptions are soaked in the water- the water collected in these processes is what is called. Lasmami. (Fofana 188)

More so, in a post-colonial, post conflict atmosphere, women’s spiritual self-care alludes to a larger national liberation and transformation movement that demands her participation in a self-reflective process in order to move the nation toward healing. Dr. Philomena Okeke-Ihejirika (2008) [4]4 credits spirituality as source of stability amidst the rise of rapid global movements requiring that people hold onto to something steadfast and reliable.

“Movements of spiritual revival have become global phenomena in response to the contemporary ontological insecurity fostered by rapid shifts, uncertainties and extreme fluidity” (87)

What appears as a spiritual “revival” also represents an external manifestation of women’s inner orientation toward transformation giving birth to a new post-conflict social movement.

Rhetoric and Politics of Recovery

Social healing during and after post – conflict arise out of an individual’s will to inflict change functions as form of recovery that taps into longing for connectedness in a fractured community. However, a forced social healing program urging communities to recover so the nation can “move on” undermines the inner work that must happen first. The rhetoric of post conflict recovery in Africa is often painted with a broad brush of reconciliation, forgiveness and national healing. These concepts appear abstract in the face of most women’s immediate reality. Her life is lumped together with overall national healing. Her personal experiences are simply one of many who survived to tell their story. Religious leaders are complicit in this umbrella approach by promoting healing in a package of confession and apology performances. Should these techniques automatically act as a catalyst for healing across all countries and conflicts? Dr. John Hatch’s essay (2006) [5] on religion and reconciliation in South Africa rightly criticizes how formal religion pollutes recovery because of its unregulated influence in politics.

Hatch’s assessment of reconciliation highlights the blurred lines of religion and politics. Here collective healing trumps individual recovery. Women’s personal transformation challenges the definition of recovery and healing by circumventing traditional patriarchal spiritual guidelines.

Prescribed Healing and Personal Recuperation

Like South Africa, Sierra Leone’s reconciliation process was put in place under the hands of religious leaders and political enforcement. For example, during Sierra Leone’s truth commission, participants were urged to “forgive the rebels” (Schroven 17).[6]6 Recovery and healing are more than a harmonious prescribed notion of forgiveness. Recovery and healing operate on a spectrum of living conditions that make life easier for women. Again the outsider’s gaze and longing for immediate recovery is bound in its own form of neocolonialism. Expecting a community to recuperate via force in a government mandated healing process suppresses the true healing work and pushes recovery further away from the nation’s grasp. Women out of post-conflict nations are moving away from the controlled psychological healing by designing personal pathways toward emotional recovery. Women’s transformation occurs at multiple points along the continuum of trauma. Personal transformation within this socio-cultural context indicates that women are positioned to change their well-being by using their personal networks and resources. Transformation as a spiritual ideology symbolizes the power and plasticity of spiritual beliefs as an easily accessible tool for coping and recovery.

Spirituality alone does not adequately answer how women recover. Spirituality is still mired in patriarchy and gender roles that limit an introspective process toward self- transformation and self re-connection. Yet, when one asks what can we do now, we must also ask what are women living in conflict doing now for themselves? We must always consider how they resolve their own problems and what resources they access to do so. As we in the west draft our action plans and brainstorm for solutions, we must be mindful of the dynamic psycho-spiritual process that each woman must experience in order to rebuild. If we expect our well thought out plans to take root, we need to learn more about the psychological evolutions that are currently underway. Who are the new generation of women who grew up only knowing a country of conflict, how do they rationalize their self in relation to the state? Can Regina Amadi’s theoretical recommendation to follow the “way of our grandmothers” address the mutli-layered challenges of a new era of the self-empowered, self transformed “African Woman”? These questions can only be answered by positioning women to speak for themselves in spaces that can mindfully transform their thoughts into action. As new global female leaders emerge out of Africa, we must not forgo individual development with hopes of a mass healing movement. Post-conflict nations are entering a new era of identity. Women’s individual and collective psychosocial state are critical to long term stability and set the rhythm to which the country will march. Spirituality is currently operating in the places where think tanks, political leaders, non-profit organizations cannot… the inner working of women’s will and commitment to herself and thus the state.

About the author
Sariane Leigh recently completed the Master of Arts in Women’s Studies, George Washington University. Her work focuses on African Diaspora female responses to trauma and recovery.

Notes

1. Audergon, Arlene ‘Hot Spots: Post-conflict trauma and transformation’, Critical Half Vol. 4, No 1 (July 2006), pp.41-44. Women for Women International.

2. Coulter. C. Social Thought and Commentary: Reflections from the Field: A Girl’s Initiation Ceremony in Northern Sierra Leone Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Spring, 2005), pp. 431-441. The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research.

3. Ibrahim, Aisha Fofana. “War’s other voices:Testimonies by Sierra Leonean Women.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Illinois State University, United States — Illinois. 2006

4. Okeke-Ihejirika, Philomina E., and Chima J. Korieh (eds). Gendering global transformations: gender, culture, race, and identity. Routledge: New York, 2008.

5. Hatch, John D. Between Religious Visions and Secular Realities:(Dia)logology and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation. ‘Coming to Terms’ with Reconciliation, Working Paper Library. http://global.wisc.edu/reconciliation/library/papers_open/hatch.pdf

6. Schroven, Anita. Women after War: Gender Mainstreaming and the Social Construction of Identity in Contemporary Sierra Leone 2007.

by Salma Maoulidi