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Sexual Politics and the Zuma Rape Trial*

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 34; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070802038066

1465-3893

Steven Robins,

Gender, Security, and Conflict

Abstract This article focuses on post-apartheid developments in relation to the sexual politics that surrounded the 2006 rape trial of South Africa's former Deputy President, Jacob Zuma. The trial and its aftermath highlight contested interpretations of rights, morality, religion, culture and political leadership in post-apartheid South Africa. It also serves as a mirror reflecting the tension between sexual rights and patriarchal cultures. Whereas race and class concerns dominated oppositional politics during the apartheid era, sexual and gender rights now compete for space in the post-apartheid public sphere. There is a glaring gap between the progressive character of ‘official’ state, constitutional and NGO endorsements of gender and sexual equality on the one hand, and the deeply embedded ideas and practices that reproduce gender and sexual inequality on the other. Idealised conceptions of ‘civil society’ fail to adequately acknowledge its ‘unruly’ and ‘uncivil’ character. The responses of Zuma supporters, including NGOs, activists, academics and journalists attending the trial reveal a chasm between the sexual and gender equality ideals enshrined in the Constitution and promoted by progressive civil society organisations, and the sexual conservatism within the wider South African public. The article also examines how ideas about ‘traditional’ Zulu masculinity were represented and performed in the Zuma trial, thereby highlighting a tension between constitutional conceptions of universalistic sexual rights on the one hand, and claims to particularistic sexual cultures on the other. This tension, I argue, is reproduced by the rhetorical productivity of a series of binaries: modern and traditional, rights and culture, liberal democracy and African communitarianism. Notes *I would like to thank Chris Colvin, Jean Comaroff, Raymond Suttner, Lauren Muller and the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Southern African Studies for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Thanks also go to Zapiro for his superb cartoons. 1 E. Fassin, ‘The Rise and Fall of Sexual Politics in the Public Sphere: a Transatlantic Contrast’, Public Culture, 18, 1 (2006), pp. 79–110. 2 Fassin, ‘Rise and Fall’, p. 92. 3 Raymond Suttner is currently working on the range of hegemonic masculinities within the ANC during the liberation struggle and the post-1994 years. He has also published on ‘underground masculinities’ where he shows that ‘the militaristic masculinities were qualified by gender conscious people like [Chris] Hani’ (personal correspondence, 14 June 2008). Suttner has also written a fascinating article on the Zuma rape trial and what he refers to as ‘African National Congress masculinities’ (forthcoming). 4 See G. Wills, ‘Bush's Faith-Based Government’, The New York Review of Books (16 November 2006) p. 10. Wills notes that, in a show of support for his evangelical constituency, President Bush ensured that $170 million were made available for promoting a policy of ‘abstinence only’ in US schools during 2005. Meanwhile, the Centre of Disease Control removed from its website the findings of a panel that abstinence-only programme do not work, and 3 per cent of Bush's $15 billion Presidential Programme for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to prevent and treat AIDS in Africa was earmarked for promoting sexual abstinence and none of it was for condoms. This directly challenges the A (Abstinence), B (Be faithful) and C (Condomise) approach of mainstream AIDS prevention programmes by seeking to exclude the ‘C’ of ABC. 5 In her book, Erotic Welfare: Sexual Theory and Politics in the Age of Epidemic, Linda Singer (New York, Routledge, 1990) writes that AIDS contributed towards the emergence of a logic of contagion, ‘a panic logic’ that profoundly influenced political and cultural life in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Singer identifies this ‘panic logic’ in numerous domains, including ‘outbreaks’ of new ‘epidemics’ such as teenage pregnancy, child abuse, rape, and drug abuse. This epidemic logic, Singer argues, was accompanied by heightened forms of sexual regulation and adversely impacted upon women's attempts to achieve ‘reproductive freedom’ and challenge the hegemony of the nuclear family. This ‘panic logic’ also contributed to increasing public calls for regulatory practices such as mandatory AIDS testing, quarantining those who are HIV-positive, and mandatory notification of sexual partners. 6 S. Robins, ‘“Long Live Zackie, Long Live”: AIDS Activism, Science and Citizenship after Apartheid’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 3 (2004), pp. 651–72. 7 See Singer, Erotic Welfare; V. Adams and S. Pigg (eds), Sex in Development: Science, Sexuality, and Morality in Global Perspective (Durham, NH, London, Duke University Press, 2005). Vincanne Adams and Stacey Leigh Pigg deploy a Foucauldian critique of public health in developing their argument that the recent proliferation of sex education and sexual health programmes in the Global South, largely in response to the AIDS pandemic, has strengthened surveillance medicine's capacity and contributed towards the global expansion of processes of the ‘medicalisation,’ ‘scientisation’ and ‘normalisation’ of sexuality and sexual health. Ibid., p. 26. 8 Although the Civil Union Bill purported to be equal in status and legal rights to the Marriages Act, it was opposed by many gay activists who claimed it created a separate and unequal regime for same-sex couples (See Mail & Guardian, October 13, 2006, p. 3). See also, Melanie Judge, ‘Civil Unions Go to the Heart of Society’, Cape Times, 21 December 2006, p. 11. Judge, a programme manager of OUT LGBT Well-being, concludes that notwithstanding the deep-seated ‘public resistance’ to the Civil Unions Bill, ‘the granting of same-sex marriage was the next logical step in our broader movement for social transformation’. 9 Mail & Guardian, 26 September 2006. 10 Mail & Guardian, 26 September 2006 Gay activists were outraged by the overt hostility to same-sex marriage and gay rights exposed at these public hearings. For instance, Jonathan Berger, a lawyer from the AIDS Law Project (ALP), in his submission to the Home Affairs Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on the Civil Unions Bill, noted that ‘the atmosphere [at the hearings] generally was extremely homophobic’. Portfolio committee members had asked people who appeared before the committee questions such as ‘What is gay?’, ‘How do two men have sex with each other?’ and ‘How do two women have a baby together?’ (Mail & Guardian, 20 October 2006), p. 23. 11 These developments also revealed that, although NGOs and civil society organisations were very vocal and visible in the public sphere, in South Africa, as in many other parts of the Global South, their members tended to be confined to the relatively small elite enclave of the educated middle classes (see P. Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York, Columbia University Press, 2004). The disjuncture between constitutionally enshrined sexual and gender rights on the one side, and everyday social realities on the other, is also glaringly evident in the extraordinarily high incidence of rape and sexual violence in South African society. For example, it is estimated that at least one in three South African women will be raped in her lifetime (see H. Moffett, ‘“These Women, They Force Us to Rape Them”: Rape as Narrative of Social Control in Post Apartheid South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, 1 (March 2006), pp. 129–49. 12Although I use the term ‘hegemonic masculinities’ in this article, I recognise that it is a highly problematic concept that often fails adequately to take into account the historical and cultural particularities and settings within which these discourses and practices take place. 13 In addition, like the United States and other parts of the world, a conservative reaction to this ‘sexual revolution’ is being fuelled by the rise of Evangelical Christianity and the promotion of moralising discourses on ‘family values’. In South Africa, this backlash has also been fuelled by President Thabo Mbeki's promotion of gender equality within the ANC movement and government structures. These calls for gender and sexual equality have catalysed a conservative mobilisation and re-articulation of deeply embedded discourses on ‘African tradition’ and Christian ‘family values’. 14 Mail & Guardian (5 May 2006), p. 2. 15 Mail & Guardian, May 5, 2006, p. 2 16 For the full judgment see Mail & Guardian website: http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area = zuma_report. 17 For the full judgment see Mail & Guardian website: http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area = zuma_report 19 http://www.friendsofjz.co.za/viewmessage.asp 21 Ndosi, 06/05/2006, http://www.friendsofjz.co.za/viewmessage.asp 18 See http://www.friendsofjz.co.za 20 Postings on the Friends of Jacob Zuma website also attacked the complainant for falsely accusing Zuma, and accused her of being part of an organised political conspiracy to prevent Zuma from becoming the next President (see ‘Let's be fair’, 07/05/2006, http://www.friendsofjz.co.za/viewmessage.asp). 22 Unlike President Mbeki, Jacob Zuma was widely believed to be an advocate for strengthening the position of traditional leadership. He also built up a strong support base in traditionalist rural areas in KwaZulu-Natal. For instance, each Christmas he slaughters about a dozen bulls and holds a massive feast for the elderly and for hundreds of children orphaned by years of faction fighting in his home district in northern KwaZulu-Natal. A Zuma family member told a Mail & Guardian journalist that at his annual Christmas feast ‘Zuma will be thanking ancestors of the Nxamalala tribe for watching over him, and thousands of supporters for standing behind him through two trials from which he emerged victorious’ (Mail & Guardian, 21 December 2006). 23 This leadership struggle split the ANC into two factions, those who supported Zuma's ‘populist’ (and traditionalist) leadership style, and those who supported Mbeki's more centralist and managerialist democratic approach. It is important to note that Zuma and his supporters did not challenge Mbeki's managerialist approach until he was dismissed following corruption allegations in 2005 (Raymond Suttner, personal correspondence, 14 June 2007). This divide also coincided with deep ideological cleavages within the Tripartite Alliance of the ANC, COSATU and the SACP. From the perspective of COSATU and the SACP, President Mbeki's neo-liberal economic policies benefited big business and global capital rather than the workers. 26 Mail & Guardian, 17 March 2006. 24 Lisa Vetten writes that ‘on [the] … first day of the trial, stones were thrown at a woman wearing a headscarf similar to that of the complainant. Those at court also said they heard the woman described as a slut. Both the insult and the action evoke echoes of the stoning of women for adultery. The following week, a woman arrived with a placard bearing the complainant's name and the claim that she shamed all South African women. Not only were flyers with a photograph of the complainant, as well as her name and address made available for sale, but her picture was publicly burned, an action which led some journalists to draw parallels with the burning of witches.’ Vetten, ‘Violence against Women in South Africa’, in S. Buhlungu, J. Daniel, R. Southall and J. Lutchman (eds), State of the Nation. South Africa 2007 (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2007), p. 439; pp. 425–47, cited in R. Suttner, The Jacob Zuma Rape Trial: Power and the African National Congress (ANC) Masculinities (forthcoming). 25 Sunday Independent, 16 April 2006. 27 See Robins, ‘“Long Live Zackie”’. In his press conference a day after the acquittal Zuma apologised for having made a ‘mistake’ by having ‘unsafe sex’ with an HIV-positive woman. He stated that he would recommit himself to promoting AIDS prevention programmes. Yet, he still sought to justify his shower statement by telling a female journalist, ‘If you've been in the kitchen, my dear, peeling onions, you wash your hands, not so? What's so funny about washing my hands after doing something?’, Mail and Guardian, 12 May 2006, p. 31. 28 AIDS activists slammed the national leadership for a series of failures including President Mbeki's controversial denial of the scale of the pandemic, his questioning of the link between HIV and AIDS, and his support for dissident claims that antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) were dangerously toxic (see Robins, ‘“Long Live Zackie”’). Similarly, the Minister of Health had infuriated AIDS activists by supporting the dubious AIDS remedies of vitamin manufacturer Dr Matthias Rath and promoting her own ‘African solution’ for AIDS comprising a diet of garlic, onion, the African potato and olive oil. Zuma's sexual behaviour and court statements were, from the perspective of activists, yet another leadership blunder. 29 See Robins, ‘“Long live Zackie”’. This was also evident in President Mbeki's attack on the anti-rape activist Charlene Smith. In his weekly letter posted on the ANC Today website, the President claimed that Smith's shocking rape statistics reproduced racist stereotypes of black men as habitual rapists. A similar attack was launched by ANC portfolio committee members against filmmaker Cliff Bestall for producing a devastating television documentary on baby rape. 30 Kwezi (‘star’) is the name that activists gave to the complainant. 31 Raymond Suttner is currently working on the range of hegemonic masculinities within the ANC during the liberation struggle and post-1994. He has also published on ‘underground masculinities’ where he shows that ‘the militaristic masculinities were qualified by gender conscious people like [Chris] Hani’ (personal correspondence, 14 June 2007). 32 See M. Channock, Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 1985); M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1996.); C. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1998). Spiegel draws attention to the centrality of bonyatsi (extramarital relations) for the identity and ‘worldview’ of Basotho men and women he met in Lesotho during 1973. He argues that these sexual relations referred to much more than simply sexual intercourse with multiple partners. As he puts it, ‘Many of the Basotho to whom I talked about bonyatsi were of the opinion that it is a feature of all human social life, that it was part of the Creation.’; A.D. Spiegel, ‘Polygyny as Myth: Towards an Understanding of Extramarital Relations in Lesotho’, in A.D. Spiegel and P.A. McAllister (eds), Tradition and Transition in Southern Africa, African Studies Fiftieth Anniversary Volume, 50, I & 2 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1991), pp. 145–66. The quotation is from p. 151. 33 See H.L. Moore, Space, Text and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya (Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press, 1986); H.L. Moore, Feminism and Anthropology (Cambridge, MA, Polity Press, 1988); S. Ortner, ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’, in M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (eds), Woman, Culture and Society (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1974), pp. 67–88; Spiegel, ‘Polygyny as Myth’, pp. 145–66. 34 I would like to thank Raymond Suttner for alerting me to the salience of ‘the patronage factor’ in explaining Zuma's popularity with the Tripartite Alliance. He also points out that President Mbeki's rule has been characterised by patronage politics (personal correspondence, 14 June 2007). 35 It is important to note here that it is clearly not the case that all rank-and-file members and leadership figures within the ANC and its Alliance partners share Zuma's ideas about sexuality and masculinity. In fact, there has been strong and widespread criticism of Zuma's sexual behaviour, courtroom statements and legal strategies from within the Alliance and from those who identify with the ANC. 36 See M. Demian, The Cultural Defence and other Legal Fictions (forthcoming, 2007) and W. Torry, ‘Multicultural Jurisprudence and the Culture Defence’, Journal of Legal Pluralism, 44 (1999), pp. 127–61. See also J. and J. Comaroff ‘Reflections on Liberalism, Policulturalism, and ID-ology: Citizenship and Difference in South Africa’, in S. Robins (ed.), Limits to Liberation After Apartheid: Culture, Citizenship and Governance (London, James Currey & David Philip, Cape Town, 2005). 39 Suttner, The Jacob Zuma Rape Trial, pp. 160–61, emphasis added. 40 Vetten, ‘Violence against Women in South Africa’, p. 439, cited in Suttner, The Jacob Zuma Rape Trial, p. 9. 41 Court case, Judgment of Judge Willem van der Merwe: State versus Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, High Court of South Africa, Witwatersrand Local Division, available on: http://66.102.9.104/search?q = cache:qcrAUvFKa50J:pics.media24.com/beeld/zumajud, pp. 151–52. 37 Suttner, The Jacob Zuma Rape Trial: Power and African National Congress (ANC) masculinities (forthcoming 2008). 38 Court case, Judgment of Judge Willem van der Merwe: State vs Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, High Court of South Africa, Witwatersrand Local Division, available on: http://66.102.9.104/search?q = cache:qcrAUvFKa50J:pics.media24.com/beeld/zumajud. See pp. 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 173. 42 Comaroff, ‘Reflections on Liberalism, Policulturalism, and ID-ology’. 44 Suttner, The Jacob Zuma Rape Trial, p. 8, emphasis in original. 43 Vetten, cited in Suttner, The Jacob Zuma Rape Trial, p. 8. 45 R.A. Wilson, ‘Reconciliation and Revenge in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Current Anthropology, 41, 1 (February 2000), pp. 75–87; R.A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimising the Post-Apartheid State (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005). 46 Equally ahistorical and essentialist ideas about ‘African sexuality’ circulate in public health discourses. In 2003 a South African Department of Health Report (2003:11) entitled Men in HIV/AIDS Partnership: ‘Men care enough to act’ reported on a series of consultative workshops in which men identified the following themes and strategies for tackling HIV and AIDS: unequal sexual and gender relations, culture and traditional values such as polygamy, lobolo (bridewealth) and virginity testing, and gender stereotypes and masculinity. The workshops concluded that there was a need to embark upon education and awareness programmes that targeted young boys from the age of five to 18 years in order to ‘challenge the status quo and the men's world view’ (2003, p. 11). The Report's ahistorical conception of African sexuality ignores a growing literature on changing constructions of African masculinities and sexualities. But perhaps the major problem facing these kinds of public health interventions is actually getting men involved in such programmes. 47 J.C Caldwell., P. Caldwell and I.O. Orubuloye, ‘The Family and Sexual Networking in Sub-Saharan Africa: Historical and Regional Differences and Present Day Implications’, Population Studies, 46, 3 (1992), pp. 385–410. 48 Recent historical and ethnographic research has critiqued essentialist ideas of ‘African promiscuity’. See S. Heald, ‘The Power of Sex: Some Reflections on the Caldwells’ “African Sexuality” Thesis', Africa, 65, 4 (1995), pp. 489–505; M. Hunter, ‘Fathers without Amandla: Zulu-speaking Men and Fatherhood’, in L. Richter and R. Morrell (eds), Baba: Men and Fatherhood in South Africa (Cape Town, Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2006). For example, historians have drawn attention to the existence, in many parts of Africa, of sexual restrictions and stringent rules of respect and avoidance (see P. Delius and C. Glaser, ‘Sexual Socialisation in South Africa: A Historical Perspective’, African Studies, 61, 1 (2002), pp. 27–54). This literature also documents the breakdown of these sexual strictures under historical conditions of underdevelopment and poverty (L. Ouzgane and R. Morrell (eds), African Masculinities: Men in Africa from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present (New York & Durban, Palgrave Macmillan & University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005); I. Niehaus, ‘Renegotiating Masculinity in the South African Lowveld: Narratives of Male-Male Sex in Labour Compounds and in Prisons’, African Studies, 61, 1 (2002), pp. 77–97; I. Niehaus, ‘Masculine Domination in Sexual Violence: Interpreting Accounts of Three Cases of Rape in the South African Lowveld’, in G. Reid and L. Walker (eds), Men Behaving Differently: South African Men Since 1994 (Cape Town, Double Storey Publishers, 2005); K. Wood and R. Jewkes, ‘Dangerous’ Love: Reflections on Violence among Xhosa Township Youth', in R. Morrell (ed.), Changing Men in Southern Africa (London, Zed Books, 2001); Reid and Walker, Men Behaving Differently: South African Men Since 1994; L. Richter and R. Morrell (eds), Baba: Men and Fatherhood in South Africa (Cape Town, Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2006). See also D. Moodie, Going For Gold (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1994); D. Mills and R. Ssewakiryanga, ‘No Romance Without Finance: Commodities, Masculinities and Relationships amongst Kampalan Students’, in Andrea Cornwall (ed.), Gender in Africa (Oxford, James Currey, 2005); A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfarne, ‘Dislocating Masculinity: Gender, Power and Anthropology’, in A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfarne (eds), Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London, Routledge, 1994), pp. 11–47; N. Hoad, K. Martin and G. Reid (eds), Sex and Politics in South Africa (Cape Town, Double Storey, 2005). 49 Hunter, ‘Fathers without Amandla’.