So often we focus our attention on what happens and why those things that happen, happen. What and why? Those are the questions we tend to ask, those are the questions that guide our thoughts, and those are the questions that, at the same time, constrain our thoughts.
Daily, as South Africans, we are confronted with the remnants of our past – the unresolved reverberance of oppression’s foothold, a path dependence insured through institution, behaviour and economy. Each day, I am conscious of how my identity as a white woman, even born into democracy, takes away from the identities of those around me. My steps are louder, my voice is heard without shouting, and I do not have to make my grievance known to the public through the sight of my naked body. Whether I am murdered by my boyfriend’s gunshot through the bathroom door, whether I am strangled by my husband on a prestigious wine estate, or abducted and raped by a high-jacker, it does not matter, you will hear me, see me, mourn me, and cry for it to end. These dangers are part of my everyday experience as a woman in South Africa, but due to my access to the tenants of citizenship as a prescript of my race,I will not be a statistic, as my privilege renders me as more important than just a number – I will be a victim.
Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in South Africa is anepidemic – a social pathology run riot, a dis-ease. This much, if you happen to identify on the womxn side of the spectrum, we know. We know it so well that we know just how to quicken our footsteps, just how to hold our keys like prisoners with shives in between our fingers, just how to keep quiet enough to ensure that our life is spared, just how to run a red robot in our car at night, and just how to wipe the tears off the cheeks of a friend.
The difficulty is, is that when the South African public consciousness looks at issues of GBV it thinks of acts of violence against women. It does not think of acts of violence against trans-women, men, Black women, GNC folk, Black women who are also impoverished, Black women who are also impoverished, lesbian and HIV positive – the list goes on. The irony is that the grand narrative of GBV in South Africa is a narrative of 1 in 3, and yet the centre stage goes to women like me: cis, straight, middle class, white, and educated. Why might that be?
To elucidate, the problem with how we think about GBV is that we think of it as a social pathology that negatively affects women. Moreover, the problem with how we think about racism is that we think of it as a social pathology that affects Black people. And, again, the problem with how we think about classism is that we think of it as a social pathology that affects the poor. The ultimate problem with this kind of thinking is that it does not identify how these pathologies come into being. We treat each one of these forms of domination as their own self-contained phenomena, and in so doing we misrecognise not only the what and the why of the question, but more importantly, the how. If we choose not to see the intersectional complexity of oppression, wemisrecognise oppression as a whole, as we fail to address how oppression actually comes into being.
Gendered forms of domination work in and through other forms of domination to produce particular experiences of oppression. As such, if the South African consciousness continues to address GBV as a women’s only issue, we will find ourselves in the position of never actually understanding how a pathology like GBV exists to the degree that it does in our society today. As, we would have failed to inquire into how GBV operates through the economy, through sexual and gender norms, through race, through ableism, and through the instrumentalization of culture. In effect, my question is that if we don’t know how it operates, then how can we possibly pretend to be addressing it? I don’t know about you, but in twenty years I would not like to repeat the words of my mother,while I explain to my daughter why they should never enter a public bathroom alone.
Before I get to the point, I want to address the double-up pre-pro quo. That being, if you are not white you are black, if are not straight you are gay, and if you are not rich you are poor.The mechanism of thought that ensures that you are never understood for what you are, and that you are only understood for what you are not – not white enough, not hetero enough, not rich enough, not-not-not-not-not. In the eyes of those who are enough, you merely become a socially constructed void of nots. And so, it is unlikely that it is 1 in 3, I would say that it is 2.99999 in 3 – ask anyone you know, either they have been directly affected by GBV or they have held the hand of someone who has been directly affected by GBV. And so, I ask, how could it be 1 in 3 then? The answer is simple, some of us don’t need to shout to be heard, as we have one foot on the other side of the double-up line, and some of don’t, most of us don’t.
So, what’s next? Why does this matter? I’m not so sure. All I do know is that without understanding the how of GBV, it becomes very difficult to identify the what and the why, and without those, well, without those, all we are left with are the cries of the four women who stood in front of Jacob Zuma respectively holding up the signs, “Kanga”, “I am one in three”, “Remember Khwezi”, and “10 years later”, as they were escorted away from the cameras.
