Big man sovereignty and sexual politics in pandemic time

ABSTRACT This essay investigates why voters both forgive and reward the corruption enacted by Trump and Zuma because of the powerful illiberal fantasies they solicit in relation to their respective national mythologies of the good life. It does so by attending to the sexual politics these presidents articulate and perform. It describes and analyzes Mar-a-Lago and Nkandla as dream palaces of national belonging, Trump and Zuma’s public and private utterances about gender and sexual minorities, the rape allegations that have swirled around the two men, and their responses to pandemics. While their presidencies have no doubt violated the norms of constitutional democracy, the essay argues that we need to see them as both aberrant and symptomatic in relation to such norms.