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Abstract
This paper calls attention to how “the black lesbian”—as a figure and an idea—is emerging as a model of the ideal postapartheid citizen. I argue that this figure is both instituted and undermined at the point at which the nation becomes vexed by its own limits. Within this symbolic politics, “the black lesbian” is staged as a traumatized victim. To track how black lesbians have become enmeshed in debates about defining citizenship, I revisit the rape trial that was initiated when the pseudonymous “Khwezi” made a rape complaint against Jacob Zuma. I examine how “Khwezi” and Zuma came to represent competing ideas about citizenship. Drawing on Berlant’s analysis of the crucial role that “official sexual underclasses” play in the production of “national symbolic and political coherence,” I argue that the trial evidences how “the black lesbian,” a simultaneously abjected and idealized figure, is produced and mobilized as a political resource in South Africa’s citizenship politics.
Keywords:
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the reviewers for their astute suggestions. I am indebted to the late Colin Richards, and to Cynthia Kros, who were both unfailingly supportive, and provocative, interlocutors. Helen Park read a draft and Feeya Asmal provided research assistance at a crucial moment. The preparation of this article has also benefited from Ruth Lipschitz’s intellectual kinship and moral support. Some of the research that informs this article was funded by: a National Research Foundation Thuthuka Grant, a Wits University Faculty of Humanities Publication Promotion Grant, and a WISER Doctoral Summer School Fellowship. The views rendered herein do not reflect on any of these bodies.
Notes
1 Khwezi, “Now I Am Angry and Ready to Speak,” Sunday Times, 14 May, 2006, emphases added.
2 Berlant, The Queen, 221, emphases added.
3 McKaiser, “Know What,” (online).
4 Van Zyl, “Beyond the Constitution,” 372. See Reddy et al., “Corrective Rape” and Mkhize et al., The Country. For analysis of postapartheid citizenship politics refer to Gouws, (Un)Thinking Citizenship. While those debates cannot detain me here, it should be noted that citizenship frameworks can be contentious in queer, postcolonial, and feminist discourse communities.
5 I am indebted to Ruth Lipschitz for this formulation. See also Lake, “Black Lesbian Bodies.”
6 Berlant, The Queen, 6.
7 Ibid., 1.
8 Ibid., 6.
9 Wieringa, “Postcolonial Amnesia,” 219.
10 Berlant, The Queen, 6.
11 See de Robillard, “Brides, Really Fake Virgins.”
12 Berlant, The Queen, 221.
13 Berlant and Duggan, Our Monica, 4.
14 Ibid., 4.
15 Berlant, The Queen, 20.
16 Ibid., 221.
17 Ibid., 21.
18 Details of the trial have passed into national mythology and they have been documented elsewhere. See Mahlangu, “Exile for Zuma”; Hassim, “Democracy’s Shadows”; Hunter, Love in The Time; Gunkel, Cultural Politics; Ratele, “Ruling Masculinity”; Robins, “Sexual Politics”; Robins, “Sexual Rights”; Hunter, “Cultural Politics”; Suttner, “Jacob Zuma”; Reddy and Potgieter, “Real Men”; Motsei, The Kanga; Mkhwanazi, “Miniskirts and Kangas.”
19 Berlant, The Queen, 10.
20 Hassim,“Democracy’s Shadows,” 58. In an influential paper. See Posel, “Getting the Nation Talking.”
21 See Berlant and Warner, “Sex in Public,” 311.
22 Berlant, The Queen, 221.
23 After the trial, “Khwezi” was effectively forced into exile. Mahlangu et al. reported that in preparation for the election that ushered Zuma into the Union Buildings, “the ANC leadership” attempted to offer “Khwezi” and her mother “safe passage” from the Netherlands and “security at home,” but that “in return she was to apologise publicly for accusing [Zuma] of rape” (“Exile for Zuma’s”). “Khwezi” rejected this offer and in 2007 was said to have told a Dutch newspaper that “she wished Zuma were dead,” and that she “would like him to no longer exist, to be spared seeing his face popping up in the newspapers” (quoted in Malefane, “Zuma Accuser,” 1).
24 I must thank one of the reviewers for pointing out that although the judge had ordered all parties to preserve “Khwezi’s” anonymity, he breached his own instructions when using her father’s initials in the judgement. Therefore, “Khwezi’s” identity would have been revealed to members of the ANC-led government.
25 Activists wearing purple t-shirts, many inscribed with the words, “Stop the war on women’s bodies,” picketed outside the court (Keepile, “One in Nine,” online). 1in9 refers to a statistic, established by a Medical Research Council project which determined that only one in nine women who are raped in South Africa report this crime to the police. The 1in9 campaign continues to link “Khwezi’s” narrative to its activism around the nature and the extent of rape in the postapartheid setting.
26 For further discussion of the gendered dimensions to these reactions refer to Hunter, Love in the Time.
27 They displayed posters outside the court that showed her face and name.
28 Keepile, “One in Nine,” (online). Hassim reminds us that some of these women also had signs that read: “Zuma rape me” (“Democracy’s Shadows,” 59). For analysis of this aspect of the event, consult Hunter, Love in The Time; Hassim, “Democracy’s Shadows.”
29 Hassim, “Democracy’s Shadows,” 60. Evaluating this feature of the trial, Lisa Vetten commented that, “[w]hat you are seeing in the Zuma case is what happens in most rape cases … In fact, it has led to a policy directive that separate waiting rooms must be set aside for the victim and her family. Otherwise they sit on a bench opposite their alleged rapist and his family and they are harassed horribly” (quoted in McGregor, “Victim Takes Lion’s,” n.p.). Hassim says that in South Africa, “violence has become a naturalized part of heterosexual relations,” and that it is “not unusual for a rape complainant to be treated as the criminal by the community, as Khwezi was, and for Khwezi to be seen as the aggressor rather than the victim of this violent act” (Ibid., 67). South Africa’s rape statistics are one measure of how far the polity has to travel to begin to achieve a just dispensation. Refer to Moffett, “These Women”; Barron, “So Many Questions”; Watson, “High Hopes”; Vetten, “DK 1,273/94” for a discussion of the scale of sexual violence in South Africa.
30 Refer to Hassim in which the Polokwane conference held in December 2007 is understood as “a landmark event, signaling a sea-change in leadership from the closed and elitist mode of Mbeki, to the charismatic and populist mode of Zuma. Although the conference was heralded, as … a breakthrough for democracy … this is superficial analysis. A different reading might suggest that what is revealed in the politics of Polokwane is the limited vision of democracy as only applying to the public sphere. Support for Zuma as the standard-bearer of grass roots popular (populist?) democracy is delinked from his social views on women’s sexual agency and on sexual rights” (“Framing Essay,” 353).
31 Quoted in Lie and Rancière, “Our Police Order,” (online).
32 Quoted in Khwezi, “Now I Am Angry and Ready to Speak,” Sunday Times, 14 May, 2006.
33 The judgment met with a very polarized reception. For more details refer to de Robillard, “Brides, Really Fake Virgins.”
34 Ehrlich, Representing Rape, 1.
35 See Hassim, “Democracy’s Shadows.”
36 A large body of research has interrogated pervasive cultural stereotypes about rape including the apparent necessity for complainants to demonstrate that they did not wear clothing that solicited sex, and that they loudly and forcefully resisted the assault. See Hassim, “Democracy’s Shadows”; Moffett, “These Women”; Ehrlich, Representing Rape; Harris, “Communicative Criterion”; Horeck, “Public Rape”; McGregor, Is it Rape?. Hassim notes that “the judge demonstrated no awareness of this research in his final judgement—'reproduc(ing) and affirm(ing) almost every rape stereotype that women have worried about, and some that we assumed had been dispensed with under our new constitutional dispensation' (Albertyn and Mills 2006; see also Albertyn et al. 2007)” (“Democracy’s Shadows,” 67). Feminist legal studies scholars, Kate Lockwood Harris among them, have called for consent itself to be reframed in the context of non-violent sexual encounters. Since acquaintance rape is the largest category of sexual assault in South Africa, the kind of remedy Harris advocates should receive urgent attention.
37 Hassim, “Democracy’s Shadows,” 65.
38 If the Sexual Offenses Bill had already “been passed into legislation with the provisions that feminist legal activists preferred, the burden of proof would not have been placed on the complainant, as it was on Khwezi. Nor would it have been as easy for the judge to admit evidence of “Khwezi’s” prior sexual history, her manner of dress or her private diaries” (Hassim, “Democracy’s Shadows,” 67).
39 Khumalo and Peacock, “Zuma Won,” n.p.
40 In an analysis of what she terms “public rape,” Tanya Horeck historicizes shifts in cultural representations of sexual violence, noting that, “[i]n contemporary popular culture, the silence on rape has been broken with an outburst of discourse. As Alcoff and Gray suggest, the worry for feminists now concerns the extraordinary publicity swirling around rape and the fact that ‘the media … often eroticize the depictions … of sexual violence to titillate and expand their audiences’” (Alcoff and Gray, Public Rape, 3).
41 Berlant and Duggan, Our Monica, 4.
42 Berlant, The Queen, 221, emphases in original.
43 Quoted in Molele, Malefane, and Mafela, “World According To Jacob,” 13.
44 See McGregor, “Victim Takes Lion’s”; Motsei, The Kanga; Ratele, “Ruling Masculinity”; Direko, “Jacob Zuma”; Dlamini, “Ominous Echoes”; Gasa, “Dear Jacob”; Govender, “Strike A Woman”; Gqola, “Bleeding On The Streets”; Haffajee, “Politics of Demagogy”; Jacobson and Mafela, “Zuma Divides”; Khumalo and Peacock, “Zuma Won”; “Letters”; Magardie, “Zuma’s Rubber”; Mabuza, “Rape Or No”; Mabuza, “Voice Of Reason”; Msomi, “Sika Lekhekhe”; Mde, “Zuma Invites”; Sefara, “Zuma Digs.”
45 Consult Hassim, “Democracy’s Shadows”; Robins, “Sexual Politics.”
46 Quoted in in Monare, “I’m Sorry,” 1. Malema was one of Zuma’s most zealous adherents prior to his expulsion from the ANC. He now leads the EFF, a party in opposition to the governing ANC.
47 Monare, “I’m Sorry,” 1.
48 Jossey Buthane quoted in Modjadji, “Malema Will Lead,” 3.
49 Postapartheid apartheid is another term that has come into use.
50 Robins, “Sexual Politics,” 427.
51 White, “Post-Fordist Ethnicity,” 397.
52 Although they are debatable, Johnny Steinberg’s recent comments about the government “creating large blocs of ethnic power” and “degrading…rural people’s” citizenship might nevertheless be brought to bear on an analysis of this trial (“We Should’ve Heeded,” online).
53 Braidotti, “In the Sign,” (online). Like Braidotti, Massumi posits that affect is not a synonym for emotion (Parables for the Virtual).
54 Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” 117.
55 Massumi, Parables For The Virtual, 42.
56 Ibid., 40.
57 Van De Port, Ecstatic Encounters, 101.
58 A report in the Financial Mail highlighted that this strategy was largely successful (Motloung, “Waning Star,” 46). By April 2008, Zuma enjoyed a significant increase in positive international media coverage.
59 Thomas Keenan posits that the much maligned “photo opportunity” is not just a trivial matter, but rather one to which we should pay serious attention (“Mobilizing Shame,” 435).
60 Van de Port, Ecstatic Encounters, 240.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid., emphasis added.
63 Liz Gunner traces the song’s complex and “unruly power” as it has traveled across time and the “social body” (“Jacob Zuma”).
64 After his acquittal, Zuma had to deal with the prospect of a corruption charge which did not materialize due to the National Prosecuting Authority’s controversial decision.
65 Jameson, quoted in Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, 27.
66 Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” 120.
67 Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, 23–45.
68 Gqola analyses the role media played in “giving the public access to the trial” (Rape, 102).
69 Shildrick, Embodying the Monster.
70 Mbalula led the ANCYL at that time.
71 This incident brings to mind Jessica Horn’s remarks about another event on the continent at which “priests perform[ed] exorcisms in a room where a lesbian caucus had met” (“Re-Righting the Sexual”).
72 Shildrick, Embodying the Monster, 1.
73 Ibid., 1, 6.
74 Derrida, “Passages,” 386–7.
75 Ibid., 2 and 6.
76 Ibid., 6.
77 Ibid., 3.
78 Berlant, The Queen, 239.
79 Artz, “Weather Watchers,” 379.
80 For instance, Naomi Wolf who argues that “[t]he convention of anonymity […] lets rape myths flourish” (“Cloaking Rape,” 45).
81 Samuelson, Remembering the Nation, 120–2.
82 Ibid.
83 Steinbock, “Speaking Transsexuality,” 98.
84 This is Berlant’s formulation. She explains that the “National Symbolic” is an imaginary, chimerical, and affect-laden screen projection through which citizens venture to “grasp the nation in its totality” by, among other things, producing “idealized national knowledge” (The Queen, 26, 40, 43, 47, 103).
85 Mkhize et al., Country We Want, 8–9.
86 Lloyd explains why poststructuralist feminist thought is not the dematerializing practice its detractors say it is. See Beyond Identity Politics.
87 Ibid., 6, emphasis in original. Lloyd surveys the impact Judith Butler’s, Donna Haraway’s, and Shane Phelan’s work has had on how this nexus has come to be understood.
88 Ibid., 6.
89 Ibid., 6–7, emphasis in original.
90 Ibid., 6–7.
91 As Gqola says the “way she spoke about her identity, as lesbian … was dismissed and replaced by another marker of identity as bisexual” (“Rape,” 119).
92 Mkhize et al., Country We Want, 9.
93 Ibid., 9–10.
94 Berlant, The Queen, 240.
95 Space constraints preclude analysis of the practice in this article. For further discussions of homophobia and violence in South Africa, consult Roberts and Reddy, “Pride and Prejudice”; Gunkel, Cultural Politics; “Slain Lesbian Laid to Rest”; Underhill, “People Are Dying”; Nkosi, “Fianl March”; Esau, Tshetlo, Mashego, “Outcry Over Lesbian”; Orford, “Deadly Cost”; Isaack, “LGBTI Mainstreaming”; Matebeni, “TRACKS”; Van Wyk, “No Justice”; Huff-Hanon, “Web War”; Gqola, “Rape”; Wells and Polders, “Hate Crimes.”
96 Matebeni, “Vela Bambhentsele,” 89.
97 See Reddy, “Subversive Pleasures.”
98 Gunkel, Cultural Politics, 10.
99 Ibid.
100 Isaack, quoted in Gqola, “Pumla Dineo,” 91–100.
101 Reddy, Potgieter and Mkhize, “Cloud Over,” 11.
102 Potgieter, “Sexualities? Hey.”
103 Ibid., 177ff.
104 Andrew van der Vlies points out that for black lesbians, becoming visible in South Africa can also mean being erased (“Art As Archive,” 103).
105 Memela, “JZ Slams Same-Sex.”
106 Ratele, “Ruling Masculinity,” 50. According to Ratele, Zuma said, “I can’t answer on wrong things that people do that are unnatural” (Ibid.).
107 Ibid., 59–60.
108 See also Tallie, “Queering Natal.”
109 Hoad, African Intimacies, 87. For historicising and divergent critical exegeses of the Equality Clause in the South African Constitution and the Civil Union Act, which legalized same-sex civil unions, refer to De Vos and Barnard, “Same-Sex Marriage”; Judge, Manion, De Waal, To Have; Gunkel, Cultural Politics; Van Zyl and Steyn, Performing Queer; Hoad, Martin and Reid, Sex And Politics; Reddy, “Queer Marriage”; Van Zyl, “Beyond The Constitution.” Needless to say the competing perspectives about the political efficacy of same-sex marriage evident within global LGBTQQi public spheres are present within the South African setting.
110 Munro, South Africa And The Dream, 177.
111 Ibid.
112 Refer to Arnefred, Rethinking Sexualities in Africa; Wieringa, “Postcolonial Amnesia;” Tamale, African Sexualities: A Reader; Hoad, African Intimacies; Gunkel, Cultural Politics.
113 Lind, “Importing Law,” 344.
114 One of the demands that have been made is for this practice to be legally codified as a hate crime. Talk in activist cyberspheres suggests that while there has been foot-dragging, some headway has been made.
115 Berlant, The Queen, 15.