Surfeit and Silence: Sexual Violence in the Apartheid Archive

ABSTRACT Despite contemporary concerns about sexual violence in South Africa, the longer history of violence against women has been insufficiently explored. This article examines the apartheid-era archive on sexual violence, exploring what methodologies can be used and histories written based on its contents. It argues that this archive is marked by a contradictory dichotomy of both excess and absence. While many sources from the 1950s to 1980s, and particularly white-authored ones, ignore sexual violence, others depict it in abundance and often gruesome detail. This surfeit of material shockingly confronts the researcher through both its quantity and the violent racism and misogyny that permeates each narrative. Yet there are coinciding glaring silences in the archive, particularly pertaining to Black women’s subjectivities. This renders Black women both hyper visible and invisible in the apartheid archive. Sexual violence is simultaneously hidden, spectacularised and made quotidian and banal. This article grapples with this peculiar mix of surfeit and silence and what the archive means for contemporary understandings of sexual violence in South Africa.