Call for a core societal shift on rape

THE book Rape: A South African Nightmare examines how rape has been woven into, and normalised within, our country’s social fabric.

In a recent interview, professor Pumla Dineo Gqola describes her latest book as an “attempt to make sense of what the rape crisis is in SA”. She takes on this mammoth task with exceptional lucidity.

Gqola stresses that race cannot be disentangled from gender when conceptualising rape in SA. She begins by looking at how rape was institutionalised during the country’s colonisation as well as apartheid.

She argues that the sharp rise of reported rapes after 1994 was indicative of the hope on to which South African women held.

Rather than instances of rape increasing, many South African women felt that, for the first time, they could and would be listened to. This book chronicles how these women have been let down.

For Gqola, the nightmare is that rape, for so long, has been an inextricable part of South African society. She argues this by highlighting a South African discourse that positions rape as taking on a particular form. Deviations from this form are often not taken seriously.

For different reasons, this discourse renders people such as sex workers, wives, those identifying as LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning), men, or the “hypersexualised black woman” as impossible to rape.

The author argues that such discourse casts rape as “inappropriate sex”, causing South African society to forget that it is, in fact, sexual violence.

In each chapter, the reader is shown how rape — its social acceptance and/or indifference — may be understood as a form of patriarchal control over women’s bodies. South African women are told to live in fear of rape and are constantly reminded of their “rapeability”. Gqola refers to this as the “female fear factory”.

She muses that while it is difficult to imagine, realising women moving freely within public spaces “is not an impossible legacy, and indeed, it is an urgent future to build”.

It is because rape in SA is embedded within a culture that allows it to flourish, largely unchallenged, that Gqola stresses an understanding of rape not as a moment, but as a language.

As a means of interrogating the language of rape, the book offers an excellent analysis of various public and legislative reactions to specific cases.

Within these cases, women are repeatedly blamed, victimised and made secondary.

The author posits that when powerful men are accused of rape — such as Jacob Zuma and Bob Hewitt — they become “supermen” as a result of their financial power being compounded with the patriarchal power awarded to all men. Survivors involved in cases like these often attract tremendous scorn from those supporting these “supermen”, as was the case with Zuma’s rape accuser, Khwezi.

Throughout the book, it is frequently stressed that when women report rape, they do not have “nothing to lose”. Rape survivors are repeatedly disbelieved, blamed, ignored and stigmatised. The author argues, quite solemnly, that it is imperative that rape survivors are given healthier choices in making sense of their rape.

Offering concretised, simplistic solutions for SA’s nightmare is a folly to which Gqola does not succumb. Instead she offers a kind of vision of SA in which rape is not accepted and is made difficult to carry out.

She quotes feminist and activist bell hooks in saying that our silence is our complicity, and it is the duty of all South Africans to disrupt every instance that allows a culture of rape to fester.

It is when patriarchal moments — what Gqola refers to as “violent masculinities and the cult of femininity” — are disrupted that we may meaningfully challenge rape culture and begin to render all forms of it socially deviant.

Gqola’s writing is especially powerful for two reasons. The first pertains to the book’s accessibility. Despite drawing on numerous academic texts, each message and argument is conveyed simply. She conflates what she calls “rioting and writing”, whereby she considers the act of writing to be a form of activism. This book serves as a testament to the effectiveness of the written riot.

Second, this book is powerful because of how personal it is. The author frequently brings herself into her writing.

She states, “I wish that I did not have to think about rape” and acknowledges the emotional process of writing this book. She details how her experience working at Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust allowed her to understand that just as rape does not look a particular way, there is no universal healing process. Each survivor heals in their own way and at his or her own pace.

Reading this book as a white male was not always easy. Gqola speaks of the importance of knowing who the allies are in the fight against rape.

She recalls instances of meeting men who were extremely gender equitable in many regards but held on to profound problematic understandings of rape and rape culture.

It would seem the sustainability of rape depends on the manner in which it is both subtly and explicitly accepted.

Gqola’s book serves as an essential reminder to challenge everything in our society that allows the nightmare of rape to continue uninterrupted.