Centre black women's voices and expertise in sexual violence discourse

Mail & Guardian

a day ago

People joined the One in Nine Campaign march in support of Khwezi - Fezekile Kuzwayo- who accused the then president, Jacob Zuma, of raping her. Photo: FIle
Almost 20 years ago, a black lesbian activist named Fezekile Kuzwayo (then only known by the pseudonym 'Khwezi)' accused then South African deputy president (later president) Jacob Zuma of rape. Zuma claimed that he believed he had consensual sex with the complainant, based on his cultural interpretation that what she was wearing was a sign of her sexual desire.
He asserted that his Zulu culture dictated that he could not leave a woman sexually unfulfilled. The court case revealed racial, gender and class fissures in the country. As a popular anti-apartheid figure, who went on to be the fourth black president of a black majority-ruled democratic South Africa, Zuma had crowds of predominantly black men and women supporters. The verbally attacked and physically threatened Kuzwayo had a dramatically smaller support base.
In their respective books on rape in South Africa, African feminists
On one hand, black activists who had mobilised much of Kuzwayo's support did not necessarily have the qualifications and education to have 'gravitas' in the case itself, because of their race-based socio-economic and cultural marginalisation. On the other hand, mainly white activists did have the kind of qualifications and professional experience that made them eligible to apply to be amici curiae ('friends of the court').
At issue was the epistemic privileging of white women to speak on behalf of a black woman and, beyond the case, the privileging of white women in conceptualising sexual violence and in formulating strategies against it.
Twenty years later, the South African public is watching the unfolding of the Mbenenge Judicial Conduct Tribunal. There, another prominent office-bearing black man, Judge President Selby Mbenenge of the Eastern Cape Division of the high court, stands accused of sexually harassing clerk Andiswa Mengo.
As the details of the case have been documented in depth elsewhere, I merely summarise them here. Mengo has alleged that Mbenenge propositioned her sexually via WhatsApp texts. The case that her legal counsel has made is to the effect that, in responding to these texts, Mengo was unable to directly refuse Mbenenge because of his position as her superior. Mbenenge claims Mengo entertained his texts because they were involved in a mutual flirtation and courtship on which his status as her boss had no bearing.
While the atmosphere around the tribunal is more subdued than that of the Zuma trial, members of the public have used social media to subject Mengo to name-calling and to question her moral integrity. Mengo's legal counsel called on soon-to-be Dr Lisa Vetten, a renowned and experienced white gender-based violence expert, who argued that Mengo's responses to Mbenenge were consistent with the unequal power relations between them.
Judge Mbengenge's defence counsel attacked Vetten's analysis based (among other things) on what the defence argued was her bias and lack of knowledge of the nuances of Xhosa cultural courtship and the Xhosa language.
In the aftermath of Vetten's cross-examination, I participated in informal conversations with two groups of black women about the implications of her expert testimony. One group, of which I am a member, is a South African-based, cross-disciplinary collective of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers called the Red Gown Stokvel, a reference to the red doctoral graduation gowns and the group's purpose as a space for intellectual — rather than monetary — exchanges.
The other group comprises lawyers and others doing gender-based violence research, who met through contact with the Institute for Strategic Litigation in Africa, a pan-African and feminist human rights organisation.
Three interlinked key concerns have come to the fore from these conversations and my doctoral research on the different ways in which black women have been excluded from rape law reform. The first concern is that there is a possible overlooking of black women's expertise when authoritative insights are sought on cases of rape, sexual harassment and other misconduct. The second concern is the framing of black men and women in black anti-racist rhetoric around sexual violence. The third concern is the use of African cultures as a trump card to mask or justify abusive behaviours.
Who/where are the black women experts?
The historical dominance of white women in discourse on sexual harassment and violence can be linked to the theories on gender-based violence which arose during the second wave of feminism between the late 1960s and 1980s and the growth of women-focused international human rights regimes from the 1970s.
These developments started during the apartheid era, a time when black women's (especially black African women's) participation in academia was restricted and civic engagement with the state was not an option for them. The post-1994 democratic dispensation provided the constitutional framework that gave all citizens the right to participate in the making and reform of polices and laws. However, the anti-rape and sexual harassment law and policy wheel was already in motion by the time that black women activists and researchers had a place at the metaphorical negotiating table.
While some black women were already using black feminist socialist and intersectional lenses to explain convergences of sexual and other violence in black women's lives, many ordinary black women were on the back foot regarding the major debates and processes around these issues. They also continued to face socio-economic and cultural barriers (such as the language barrier) to participation.
I, and some of the black women I engaged with, largely agreed with the analysis that Vetten provided. But more than three decades into democracy in a black majority country, why are decision-makers not calling on black women experts to explain black women's experiences and circumstances of violence, specifically black African women experts in closer cultural and experiential proximity to black African opposing parties or research subjects?
There are more black South African women involved in sexual violence research than there were in the past, although the proportion might still be far from ideal. I also acknowledge Dr Zakeera Docrat's expert witness testimony as a forensic and legal linguist in this case. But are black African women experts still largely unknown, or are they being overlooked? Are black women not availing themselves to provide expert testimony? If so, why? Is the problem in how we identify what constitutes 'real' knowledge?
Among those I interviewed in my doctoral research were black women who shared that they were overlooked as expert contributors to law and policymaking/reform because they were not involved in producing published research and opinion editorials. Donors, state representatives and other decision-makers did not view their provision of counselling, information, education and other support services for black victims in historically disadvantaged areas as a basis for their consideration as knowledgeable people or knowledge producers.
Are black African women's voices then only valued insofar as they articulate experiences of suffering — but not their ability to provide authoritative interpretations thereof?
Black anti-racist rhetoric on sexual violence
While racist laws around sexual offences have been repealed, there has never been a national dialogue on the damage done to black communities by the laws' racial and gendered prejudices and discrimination against black people. Black (especially African and coloured) men were constructed as hypersexual and predisposed to being rapists or sex pests. Black women were constructed as innately promiscuous and therefore, in the words of Gqola, 'unrapable'.
Black anti-racist rhetoric on sexual violence remembers the discrimination and victimisation inflicted on black men but is mostly silent on the sexual victimisation and discrimination inflicted on black women across and within racial and class divides. In 2016, Judge Mabel Jansen reportedly made statements on social media to the effect that black cultures condoned black men's raping of women and children and that black women accepted this. The black anti-racist rhetoric tended to magnify what Jansen's statements meant in terms of unfair discrimination against black men rape defendants and to treat as secondary the implications of the judge's statements for discrimination against black women rape complainants.
Sexual violence research's focus on black communities has historically reinforced racial stereotypes. The black women I interviewed also elaborated that black women are often portrayed in contradictory ways as helpless victims and as complicit in the violence perpetrated against them, rather than as resistors and change initiators.
Some suggest that black women are happy to play the role of victim. A recent example of this comes from an opinion editorial authored by another well-known white woman writer, Gillian Schutte. Schutte suggested that Mengo subverted the power imbalance between herself and Mbenenge by flirting with him. Mengo was framed as allowing herself to be seen as a victim under a Western 'liberal feminist' lens.
The editorial implies that all feminists who see merit in Mengo's complaint are analysing it through this Western liberal feminist lens. It both conflates a broad spectrum of Western feminist thought and fails to fathom black women's indigenous African and decolonial feminist explanations of the relationship between sexual violence and abuses of power.
In contrast, the editorial framed Judge Mbengene as an Africanist decolonial hero.
My intention is not to suggest that black women are victims in every situation. Just as political columnist Malaika Mahlatsi argued in another opinion editorial this year, the problem I want to highlight here is that there is a belief among many in black communities that prominent black men are accused of sexual violence as part of conspiracies to bring their leadership and achievements into disrepute. Many are unwilling to consider that at least some of these accusations might be warranted. This is something that black communities must confront and work against.
The use of culture as a trump
The use of cultural claims to deflect accusations of sexual coercion and violence is not a novel strategy. Mbenenge's counsel's use of culture to argue that there was consent in the interactions between him and Mengo was thus something that her counsel could have foreseen. It could have been planned for by involving black gender-based violence experts with the appropriate experience and skill set.
Not every black gender-based violence expert is necessarily an expert on African languages and cultures. However, as documented by African philosopher
Phola Mabizela Mabaso, a Red Gown Stokvel member whose Nguni heritage has given her some knowledge and experience of Xhosa culture, also educated us that it is taboo in Xhosa culture for a man to sexually proposition a person young enough to be his child. Atonement may be required for the transgression.
It is more often black women who suffer the negative attributes of African customs and who seek to build on its positive aspects. It thus falls to black women and people to address the oppressive aspects of their cultures. Unfortunately, adversarial court and tribunal proceedings restrict constructive engagement. Furthermore, black women have sometimes suffered dire professional and personal consequences for publicly challenging patriarchal interpretations of African cultures.
This and the other mentioned concerns underscore the importance of centring black women's voices and knowledge in national discourses on sexual violence, highlighting the need for black women to be supported when sharing their knowledge and experiences.
Nompumelelo Motlafi Francis is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg.