Knowing rape: Turning ethnoracialized victims into moral citizens in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

In South Africa, a disparate coalition of law enforcement, human rights workers, health officials, and activists claim that women don't know they have been raped. Claims of misrecognition typically follow from the observation that most women who experience gendered violence in South Africa do not report to the police and are especially leveled at Black women living in rural areas under the judicial authority of customary leaders. This article examines this assertion about not knowing gendered violence and the interventions it inspired. Dwelling on the story of one survivor's search for justice in Thohoyandou, South Africa, I argue that in the years following the transition from apartheid to democracy, a consensus coalesced around Black Indigenous women, who were seen as key political agents in post-colonial nation-building. During this time, knowing rape was touted as a gendered civic duty, one that enacted moral citizenship for the sake of a more orderly, democratic and vigorous multicultural nation. In spite of the consensus around knowing rape, “rape,” I suggest, remains an ambivalent sign for both those who encourage its recognition and for survivors. Amidst these disjunctures, survivors’ demands for justice often go denied.