The coloniality of the gaze on sexual violence: a stalled attempt at a South Africa - Rwanda dialogue?

ABSTRACT

In South Africa and Rwanda, the issue of sexual violence has been catapulted into the public sphere in politically charged post-conflict contexts. This article chronicles some of the theoretical, practical and ethical dilemmas that the writer has faced while contemplating research on rape law formation and reform in Rwanda, with an acute awareness of being a Black feminist from a country known to many as one of the rape capitals of the world. Feminist discourses around sexual violence may be grounded in political convictions that this historically invisible aspect of women’s oppression should be spotlighted and included in agendas for criminal and social justice. The writer contends that while feminist scholarship in its plurality is to be commended for stressing the importance of power relations in research, scholars are still not always sensitive to how inter- and intra-group power disparities may adversely affect the interaction between the researchers and researched and the nature of the research itself. Inter-group power disparities may also adversely affect the interaction between researchers themselves. Decolonial thought may provide lenses to make these power disparities even more visible, but it is difficult to say whether decolonial approaches can establish the terms for a more equitable engagement between all the parties concerned.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual violence
• rape law reform
• coloniality
• colonial gaze
• decolonial thought

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Siphamandla Zondi, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Sheila Meintjes as well as the in-house and anonymous reviewers for their extensive and helpful comments on this article. Special thanks go to Rosemary Moeketsi, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and the Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN) for nurturing the spaces for conversations on decolonial thought to occur at the University of South Africa.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Nompumelelo Motlafi is Lecturer in African Politics at the Department of Political Sciences, University of South Africa. She is also a PhD candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research interests include political identity, political violence, the politics of gender-based violence, post-conflict justice and transformation, African feminism, and decolonial thought.