Deevia Bhana

Power and Identity: An Introduction to Sexualities in Southern Africa

In this introduction we provide a framework for and an overview of the seven articles included in this special issue. We begin by discussing the history and historiography of sexuality in Southern ...

Childhood sexuality and rights in the context of HIV/AIDS.

The primary objective in this study was to explore what HIV and AIDS mean to seven‐ and eight‐year‐old children in South Africa and how sexual and gender dynamics are embedded within these meanings. Against representations that associate young children with innocence, the paper argues for a more capacious view of young children as sexual and gendered agents with the ability to exercise their rights. In contrast to research that addresses children as relatively passive desexualised beings, focusing on their dependence on adults, their innocence and their need for protection, this paper examines how HIV and AIDS are constructed and negotiated by young people. It views children not simply in terms of their need for sexual rights but as potentially active participants in the negotiation of their rights. Viewing childrens rights as highly contested, the notion that young children have sexual rights opens up possibilities for children (including those from marginalised groups) to talk about their concerns and pleasures, fears and hopes, as well as issues relating to sexual rights and resistances. By working creatively with teachers, it may be possible to broaden young childrens knowledge of HIV and AIDS and sexuality within a more supportive environment.

What matters to girls and boys in a black primary school in South Africa

This article focuses on the construction of gender identities among young boys and girls in a black primary school. Against the backdrop of food insecurity, young boys’ and girls’ vulnerability to violence and to using violence as a means of getting food is increased. Violence is a clear manifestation of gender inequalities. Drawing on data derived from an ethnographic exploration of children’s gender identities in the first years of primary schooling, this article examines how violence underscores much of social relations amongs boys and girls. The article further illustrates how different forms of masculinities and femininities are constructed. Violence is not the domain of boys only. Girls too take on violent femininities. The implications of recognizing children’s gendered and violent cultures are discussed briefly in the concluding part of the paper.This article focuses on the construction of gender identities among young boys and girls in a black primary school. Against the backdrop of food insecurity, young boys’ and girls’ vulnerability to violence and to using violence as a means of getting food is increased. Violence is a clear manifestation of gender inequalities. Drawing on data derived from an ethnographic exploration of children’s gender identities in the first years of primary schooling, this article examines how violence underscores much of social relations amongs boys and girls. The article further illustrates how different forms of masculinities and femininities are constructed. Violence is not the domain of boys only. Girls too take on violent femininities. The implications of recognizing children’s gendered and violent cultures are discussed briefly in the concluding part of the paper.

‘Girls hit!’ Constructing and negotiating violent African femininities in a working-class primary school

Whenever gender violence and schooling have been the topic of South African research, the investigations focus on African boys in secondary schools. In contrast, this paper focuses on the ways in which violence is mobilized by African schoolgirls in a working-class primary school context. By drawing on selected elements of an ethnographic study of gender in the junior years of primary schooling, the paper examines young seven- and eight-year-old girls’ use of violence as a significant resource in a context of massive social deprivation and economic instability. In such contexts, violence is an important means through which some girls define, create and consolidate their femininities. In the absence of research which focuses on the violent expressions of femininity, this paper argues that within the context of persistent social and economic inequalities which mark South African society, girl-on-girl violence is an important means to secure resources and claims to power.

Desire and constraint in the construction of South African teenage women’s sexualities

Understanding the ways in which South African teenage women give meaning to sexuality is important particularly in the context of increased risk to HIV and violence. Drawing from a focus-group interview with teenage women, this article challenges representations of African female sexuality as docile, in suffering and pain. Instead the article argues that teenage women’s construction of sexuality reveals both agency and complicity with male power. Agency was evident in the expression of sexual desire and pleasure and the ability to act on same-sex relations. Agency was ambiguous however and constrained by the need to protect sexual reputations, complicity in violent gender relations and the use of alcohol and drugs which serves to advance male sexual opportunities and power. The article demonstrates the need to work with young women as sexual agents, constrained by unequal relations of power, understanding and reflecting on their complicity in the reproduction of inequalities as well as taking heed of the diverse contexts within which gender relations are produced in South Africa.

The price of innocence: teachers, gender, childhood sexuality, HIV and AIDS in early schooling

Drawing from data collected during interviews with grade 2 teachers who work in a black working‐class township school, this paper explores the meanings that teachers attach to HIV and AIDS education. It is argued that the relationship of many teachers to the subject of HIV and AIDS is inscribed within regulatory forces based on the notion of childhood sexual innocence which uphold and construct a particular version of childhood which is racialized, ‘classed’ and gendered. Despite the urgency of addressing young children’s right to HIV and AIDS education, teaching discourses mobilize a notion of innocence which culminates in fear and anxiety around expressions of sexuality in early childhood. Throughout the paper shows that while teachers’ constructions of childhood are formidable, they are not irreversible since teachers point in contradictory ways to young children’s sexual agency. The significance of starting early with young children together with the calamitous effects of HIV and AIDS in South Africa indicate that we must begin confronting the HIV and AIDS pandemic and start to develop HIV and AIDS reduction and prevention programmes appropriate to the early years of schooling. The findings reported herein have implications for teachers’ work in the development of such programmes.

White South African school girls and their accounts of black girls at school and cross-racial heterosexual relations outside school

The post-apartheid era has generated opportunities for cross-racial mixing and socializing among young people inconceivable under apartheid, and this perhaps is no more apparent than in the formation of racially mixed public schools. In this article we draw on an interview study that seeks to investigate Grade 11 (16—17-year-old) young people and their lives and identities in different schools near Durban. We concentrate on interviews conducted with a group of middle-class white girls in a formerly white school and we examine whether and if so how they draw on whiteness when asked to reflect on themselves and their relations with others in and outside the school. While we begin with how these girls spoke about themselves and their relations with others in the school, we focus mainly in this article on these girls’ accounts of cross-racial heterosexual relations outside the school. In their accounts of schooling whiteness was constructed in opposition to versions of blackness associated with racial essentialism and intransigence. What was very striking was how positively they presented (heterosexual) desire when directed to boys of other races, associating this with free will and agency as against ‘constraints’ imposed by their parents, peers and culture. In these accounts their sense of whiteness seemed much less assured and taken for granted than in their accounts of their relations with black girls in school. Whereas, we argue, white girls drew on versions of whiteness (and blackness) in school that reinforced racial divisions and hierarchies, despite presenting themselves as non-racial, their interest in cross-racial heterosexual relations and expressions of cross-racial desire subverted racial essentialisms even if, in some cases, this was extremely limited.

‘I don’t want to catch it’. Boys, girls and sexualities in an HIV/AIDS environment

This paper examines young South African school children’s understanding of HIV/AIDS. Based on ethnographic work in two schools in Greater Durban, it explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on the ways in which gender and sexuality are articulated against the backdrop of race and class specific contexts. The first part of the paper examines the children’s discourses of sex, sexuality and HIV/AIDS. We show that young children’s meanings of sex, sexuality and are not straightforward and are actively produced and defined through a range of social processes. These processes shape the extent to which young children experience sexuality within discourses of fear and pleasure. Young children’s meanings of HIV/AIDS are explored in the second part of the paper. Here we show how their knowledge of HIV/AIDS is socially structured through class/race and gender and these forms of social relations provide the framing and reference points for children’s constructions of meanings around HIV/AIDS. We finish the paper by raising some theoretical and practical/political questions about the implications of what we have found for HIV/AIDS education in South Africa.

Sex, gender and money in African teenage conceptions of love in HIV contexts

In much of Africa, teenage sexualities are often understood through the optic of danger, violence and disease without much attention to love within relationship dynamics. There is a strong case to be made for the continued focus on African teenage sexualities within unequal relations of power. However, whilst focusing on the structural factors that expand sexually aggressive masculinities and limit teenage womens sexual agency, the expression of teenage love in the daily battle for power remains neglected. Drawing on an interview study of teenage Africans, aged 16–17 years, in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, the paper focuses on the micro-dynamics of love, sex and gender. Teenagers account of love highlights changing discourses and include relationships based on care, negotiation and agency showing potential for equality. Such constructions however sit in tension with teenage womens vulnerability in relation to the sexual economy and money, masculine power and gender hierarchies. Intervention programmes that address teenage sexuality must pay careful attention to how love matters in their conceptualisation of relationships and requires consideration of the social and economic context within which they are located. The challenge is to build on equality, address gender hierarchies and ideologies within relationships which create vulnerability.

‘They’ve got all the knowledge’: HIV education, gender and sexuality in South African primary schools

Drawing on data derived from two socially contrasting primary schools in Durban, this paper focuses on how gender and sexuality feature in the teaching and discussion of HIV/AIDS. A detailed analysis of two ‘life‐skills’ lessons in the two schools shows that, despite the social differences between the schools, discussions of gender and sexuality remain muted. Discourses of childhood innocence make it difficult for teachers to provide comprehensive knowledge of sex, sexuality and gender in the primary school ‘life‐skills’ lessons. Implications for teacher training are suggested briefly in the conclusion.