Stunning Semenya does it on own terms

THE persecution has been inhumane. The Eurocentric gaze has been harsh, but not defeating. The unfriendly and shameful, non-congratulatory behaviour exhibited on the track by European and white female athletes towards Caster Semenya after she had won was there for all to see. The intensity of criticism against her body, her black being and her worth has been immense. It all tried to shut her down.

However, it couldn’t succeed. Whoever has attempted to attack and criticise Semenya hasn’t succeeded. If anything, all the attempts at public humiliation since she hit the international athletics track as a teenage girl have inspired her to not only run faster, but to live on her own terms.

Criticism about her body has been given lots of publicity in the media, but people’s power and justice have hit back to challenge patriarchal domination and its subsequent control over women’s bodies.

Participating in international athletics for just under a decade, Semenya, 27, has become South Africa’s greatest athlete. She has won local, African, world and Olympic titles, and gold medals – several times. This year has seen her in record-breaking form, smashing apartheid records. Today, a black woman holds South African and championship records in the 400m, 600m, 800m, 1 000m and 1 500m.

As the attacks against her body surface with new international means being devised to regulate her body and control her running prowess, Semenya has hit back with rampant performance.

Speaking at the Essence festival in Durban last year, she told of attempts to shame and degrade her and of how some tried to ridicule her and insist she “wasn’t a girl or woman”.

However, she spoke confidently about herself and her struggles against those who try to define her body: “I was concerned and disturbed by all this nonsense. I asked my mother if I am not the girl she said I was and knew I was because now they are saying I am not woman... I knew this is how God made me and no one will tell me anything else.”

This was an Olympic

Semenya has

Africa

champion, speaking about the pain and hurt she had been forced to endure. It was also the Semenya who revealed that she believed in herself. It was the Semenya who wasn’t going to allow any sports structure, male gaze, and patriarchal and heterosexual advocates to define her body, dominate her sexuality or trash her prowess.

Semenya has achieved greatness on her own terms. Knowing who she is and accepting her body as “God-given”, she has hit back at those who confront, criticise and attack her body and presence in sport by trying to remove her from athletics stardom.

This has taken the form of breaking old records, winning diamond leagues in incredible times and owning national, continental, world and Olympic titles.

Semenya is a talented athlete who trains hard with fierce determination.

While white, male-dominated international athletics attempts further persecution, she gets on with her athletics and has brought infinite pride to South Africa.

Roberts is a sports activist, publisher and writer.

PICTURE: EPA Despite criticism about her body, Caster Semenya continues to smash records. Here she wins the Women’s 800m competition at the Charlety stadium in Paris, on June 30.