Contextualizing group rape in post‐apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Collective male sexual violence is part of a continuum of sexual coercion in South Africa. This paper is based on long‐term ethnographic work in an urban township in the former Transkei region. Drawing on intensive participant observation and interviews with young men in particular, it attempts to make sense of emergent narratives relating to streamlining, a local term for a not uncommon form of collective sexual coercion involving a group of male friends and one or more women. The paper begins with an overview of existing anthropological literature on collective male sexual violence, going onto elaborate the different scenarios associated with group sexual violence in the fieldsite. It seeks to provide a multi‐layered contextualization of the phenomenon by considering prevailing gender discourses, subcultural issues pertaining to the urban tsotsi phenomenon, the rural practice of ukuthwala (bride capture), young working‐class Africans' experiences of marginalization, and the complex links between political economy and violence in this setting.

Keywords:

• Gang rape
• rape
• sexual violence
• gender
• ethnography
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

The doctoral study on which this paper draws was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK. Particular thanks are due to Helen Lambert, Rachel Jewkes and Peter Aggleton. This work was made possible by the study's research assistants Nwabisa Jama and Litha Maqoma, and by the many young people and their families who participated.