Jacklyn Cock

ENGENDERING GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS: THE EQUALITY CLAUSE IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONSTITUTION

Abstract The paper focuses on the origins and impact of the “gay rights clause” in the post-apartheid constitution of South Africa. The clause, explicitly prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, was the first of its kind in the world. It represents a paradox given the commitment of the post-apartheid state to mass participation in policy formulation and high levels of homophobia. The clause is explained in terms of the ability of a male-dominated gay rights movement to form strategic alliances with the anti-apartheid struggle, to mobilize the master narrative of equality and to lobby effectively during the constitution making process. Since 1996, it is shown that lesbian initiatives have been significant in attempts to mobilize the clause to realize substantive equality. However, these have tended to reflect class- and race-based privilege, and for the gay rights movement to become a transformative force, any development depends on an extension of the present focus on justice as rights, to include redistribution.

A Gendered Analysis of the Crisis of Social Reproduction in Contemporary South Africa

This article argues that African working class households are the sites of a crisis of social reproduction in contemporary South Africa. Through a gendered analysis of five townships in Emnambithi the article demonstrates that African working class women are the shock absorbers of this crisis. While feminist scholars point to a growing crisis of social reproduction as a global phenomenon, the South African material illustrates how poor women experience this in the South.

WOMEN AND THE MILITARY: Implications for Demilitarization in the 1990s in South Africa

Militarization—the mobilization of resources for war—is a gendering process. It both uses and maintains the ideological construction of gender in the definitions of masculinity and femininity. This article draws on material from contemporary South Africa to illustrate the relation between gender and militarization in four respects: how women actively contribute toward the process of militarization; the similarities in the position of women in both conventional and guerrilla armies; the durability of patriarchy and the fragility of the gains made for women during periods of war; and, finally, how the South African experience sharpens the debate about the relation between equal rights and womens participation in armies. The article concludes that there is no necessary relation between demilitarization and gender equality.

‘Guards and Guns’: Towards Privatised Militarism in Post-Apartheid South Africa

This article argues that contemporary South Africa is marked by the coexistence of both old and new forms of militarism. A shallow and uneven process of state demilitarisation was underway between 1990 to 1998 in the form of reductions in military expenditure, weapons holdings, force levels, employment in arms production and base closures. However, this has had contradictory consequences including providing an impetus to a ‘privatised militarism’ that is evident in three related processes: new forms of violence, the growth of private security firms and the proliferation of small arms. Since 1998 a process of re-militarisation is evident in the use of the military in foreign policy and a re-armament programme. Both trends illustrate how a restructured, but not transformed, post-apartheid army represents a powerful block of military interests.

Gender Differences: Struggles Around "Needs" and "Rights" in South Africa

This article analyses the Womens National Coalition which was established in South Africa in 1992 and successfully mobilized thousands of women to demand equal rights in the new post-apartheid order. The success of the coalition rested on an acknowledgement of difference and raises important questions regarding both the limits and the possibilities of feminist struggles.

Challenging the Invisibility of Domestic Workers

(2011). Challenging the Invisibility of Domestic Workers. South African Review of Sociology: Vol. 42, DEBATING THE DOMESTIC, pp. 132-133.

Public sociology and the social crisis

Abstract At the core of the crisis of social relations in contemporary South Africa is a privatisation of the public sphere which is forcing individuals to seek private remedies to socially produced problems. The way access to clean and adequate water is threatened by both privatisation and pollution illustrates this process. The article argues that resistance to these processes has the potential to ‘resocialise’ the crisis, and could be strengthened by the involvement of sociologists.

The feminist challenge to militarism

JACKLYN COCK explores the globalisation of militarism in the post-Cold War era. She argues that gun ownership is a sign of social disintegration. Only complete demilitarisation will bring stability

Hidden consequences of state violence: Spinal cord injuries in Soweto, South Africa

Many spinal cord injured people in Soweto are victims of direct, repressive state violence, such as police shootings. All of them are victims of the indirect structural violence that is institutionalized against both blacks and disabled people in South Africa. SCI people in Soweto are therefore subject to two sources of disadvantage and exclusion. This paper describes a survey of 88 SCI Sowetans. Their lives are marked by poverty and social isolation. Their experiences bring into sharp focus some of the concrete and hidden results of apartheid as a violent and disabling system.

Life ‘Inside the Shell’: A Needs Survey of Spinal Cord-injured Wheelchair Users in a Black South African Township

The paper focuses on the experiences of a sample of black spinal cord-injured people living in Soweto. It is argued that their lives are marked by poverty and social isolation. Both are the outcome of environmental and attitudinal barriers. These barriers operate against both disabled people and black people in apartheid South Africa. Therefore black disabled people are doubly discriminated against. Both sets of constraints prevent them from developing their abilities and joining with others to lead socially productive and satisfying lives.