Overlapping publics and the negotiation of legitimacy in South African and Namibian sexual politics

ABSTRACT

This article explores how and why social movement organizations negotiate their presence in, and demands on, multiple public spheres. We analyse the strategies of two social movement organizations, Free Gender in Cape Town, South Africa, and Sister Namibia in Windhoek, Namibia. Free Gender elected to withdraw participation from a governmental task team convened to address the issue of homophobic violence, despite the opportunity this offered the organization to participate in national politics. Sister Namibia, by contrast, decided to maintain its public presence despite experiencing political homophobia from the ruling party, the South West African People’s Organisation. We contribute to the literature on public spheres and social movements by demonstrating the need to consider the overlapping nature of public spheres in South Africa and Namibia at the local, national, and transnational levels to account for activists’ strategic decisions.

KEYWORDS:

• Public sphere
• social movements
• Namibia
• South Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Julie Moreau is a postdoctoral fellow in women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

Ashley Currier is an associate professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Cincinnati.

Notes

1 ‘Butch’ and ‘femme’ are amorphous categorizations; butch refers roughly to a masculine gender presentation, and femme refers to a feminine gender presentation (Matebeni, 2011).

2 With the exception of Soldaat, a public figure, the first author has used pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of the members of Free Gender.

3 Silozi in an indigenous African language that is spoken by the Lozi ethnic group. Some Lozi inhabit the Caprivi region in northeastern Namibia.

4 Dry sex refers to the practice of introducing herbs, detergent, or ‘toothpaste’ into the vaginal canal to reduce vaginal lubrication during penetrative penile-vaginal intercourse; this practice can lead to intravaginal abrasions that render women more susceptible to HIV infection (Edwards, 2007, p. 233).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Funding from the National Science Foundation [SES-0601767], Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and the University of Pittsburgh.