Kammila Naidoo

Framing the problem of rape in South Africa: Gender, race, class and state histories

With rates of rape in South Africa among the highest in the world, the significance of context has surfaced repeatedly in South African scholarship on rape. Most commonly, rape is understood as a symptom of deep and pervasive gender inequality, historical, social and economic legacies of apartheid as well as post-apartheid state discourses that have normalized rape and enabled it to be tolerated. In addition, the role of masculinities has received significant attention, linked to social and economic histories and contemporary political narratives. This article considers how scholarly discussions on rape in South Africa are evolving. Applying a critical sociological lens of enquiry to the ways in which the problem of rape is constructed, it outlines the significance of state histories in understandings of rape in South Africa today, the explicit and implicit ways in which research and writing on rape is racialized and classed, and considers the implications of this.

Constructions and representations of masculinity in South Africa's tabloid press: Reflections on discursive tensions in the Sunday Sun

Abstract The South African print news media have witnessed a sharp rise in tabloidised news forms and newspapers in recent years. While tabloidisation offers interesting possibilities in terms of contesting and transforming traditional masculinised news forms, it also raises serious questions with regard to the appropriation of these forms of news towards reinforcing and naturalising constructions of gender. This article explores the ways in which a South African tabloid newspaper, the Sunday Sun, represents and constructs masculinity. It is argued that the performance of masculinity, especially through the performance of (hetero)sexuality, is central to the way in which the ‘project’ of masculinity is constructed within the Sunday Sun. In addition, violent masculinities are largely normalised and framed as part of the performance and legitimation of masculinities. While alternative discourses around masculinity also emerge, recasting ‘manhood’ in a way that challenges violence, these voices are still comparatively limited. The implications of these representations are reflected on in relation to the ongoing ‘project’ of masculinity within South Africa.

Poverty and socio-political transition: Perceptions in four racially demarcated residential sites in Gauteng

In the period preceding the May 2011 municipal elections there was speculation in the South African media about how widespread dissatisfaction with economic insecurity and poor service delivery would affect voting behaviour. The popular protests that occur intermittently are symptoms of a deep structural malady: the prevalence of chronic poverty in the context of a widening gap between South Africas rich and poor. State officials keep pointing to the cushioning effects of social grants and poverty alleviation initiatives, but critics argue that poor state performance and failure to include communities in political processes are holding back socioeconomic development. This article discusses recent research on economic hardship and the ‘politics of the poor’ in four residential sites in the vicinity of Pretoria. The data reveal grassroots perceptions of poverty and vulnerability and the coalescing and contradictory political discourses across racial divides.

TRADITIONAL HEALERS, THEIR SERVICES AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF SOUTH AFRICAN YOUTH

In the aftermath of the Marikana massacre in 2012, a number of observers raised questions about young men’s traditional beliefs. Did young miners apply muthi on their bodies believing that they would be invincible in the face of police bullets? How do young men generally, in the course of wrestling everyday challenges, draw on ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ medicine? The findings in the literature seem to be contradictory and mediated by age differentials, educational levels, and place of residence. In this article, both qualitative and quantitative evidence is drawn upon to offer insight into the views of young men in a particular site: Chiawelo, in Soweto. The study suggests that while young men do not hold a special place for traditional healers in their lives, their insecure life circumstances and the dynamics of the groups to which they affiliate, lead them when necessary to consult traditional healers for immediate or out-of-the-ordinary help, particularly if trusted institutions do not provide satisfactory assistance. The study links and uses the theoretical constructs, ‘socialisation’, ‘habitus’ and ‘anomie’.

Family biography, fertility and memory-making in an AIDS-affected South African site

The critical challenges of AIDS and poverty in post-apartheid South Africa impact the ways in which memories are articulated and family and fertility histories ultimately constructed. This article considers three life histories written in the course of ethnographic work on womens childbearing conducted intermittently between 1998 and 2014, and typical of other histories in the same peri-urban locale. Personal accounts of a mother and her two daughters initially centre on domestic strife and adversity – and the family as a whole is represented as struggling and disunited. In the aftermath of the death of one of the daughters from AIDS in 2001, the memories and discourse are subtly reworked by the two women in ways that are meant to counteract stigma, reclaim dignity and defend the family. The paper focuses on reproductive dynamics and memory-making in a hardship-driven and AIDS-affected setting and on the ethnographers endeavours in witnessing, interviewing and making sense of peoples ‘intent’ and ‘the urge to forget, to go on living’.

‘Getting Involved on Campus’: Student Identities, Student Politics, and Perceptions of the Student Representative Council (SRC)

Abstract Since 1976 when school students in Soweto took to the streets in active defiance of the apartheid state, students as a political constituency have always been admired, noted and feared for the political positions they have taken and campaigns launched. South African student organisations in the 1980s and 1990s aligned themselves with mass democratic movements and engaged with and shaped their agendas. Commentators suggest however, that the nature and character of student organisations have changed in post-apartheid South Africa, and consequently, also students’ interest in ‘getting involved’. With regard to SRCs, while many authors argue that SRCs are no longer a ‘revolutionary force’ and have become either retrogressive or disempowered, others suggest that more effort needs to be made to understand the content of ‘new’ SRCs in post-apartheid South Africa and their appeal to diverse student populations. This paper seeks to establish the attitudesof University of Johannesburg (UJ) students towards voting for, and supporting, the Students Representative Council (SRC), and, for involving themselves in student politics at UJ. In making sense of students’ perceptions, the paper probes differences and similarities in terms of four key factors: gender, race, year of study, and residential background.

Development, inequality and social justice in southern Africa

This special issue of Development Southern Africa brings together a number of case studies that illuminate the micro-level struggles of interest groups seeking to access resources and rights, against the background of embedded poverty, discrimination and dislocation in southern Africa. As a collaborative project by sociologists, the articles avoid a restricted focus on economic understandings of basic needs or requirements for physiological survival and instead draw on what Amartya Sen suggests are the ‘beings and doings’ that people value; that is, the connectedness of social and material well-being to the exercising of political and human rights. The articles outlined below use various kinds of evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, to build selective and contemporary arguments on prevailing inequities and the limits and possibilities of state and popular interventions.

Intergenerational life histories: Women's contrasting experiences of marriage and childbearing in a rural enclave

abstract This paper draws on ethnographic material and life histories of a group of mothers and daughters living in the rural 10 Morgen section of the Winterveld area in the Northwest Province of South Africa. Thirty-three women representing an older and younger generation were invited to tell their life stories and reflect on significant and gendered experiences. The older women describe the early phases of their lives as heavily constrained in apartheid South Africa, with their performances of ‘womanhood’ and ‘motherhood’ habitually monitored by kin and familial networks. The younger women offer insight into rural womens maturation into adulthood amid major social and political upheavals and against the background of the gradual weakening of kin and marital systems in South Africa. This Briefing focuses on selected themes emerging out of the fieldwork, and pays specific attention to the different articulations of feminine identity, marriage and childbearing.