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1 Rachel Sandwell Mcgill University Rachel.Sandwell@Mcgill.Ca Draft, Please Do Not Cite Or Circulate for Seminar May 31, 2021 T Rachel Sandwell McGill University [email protected] Draft, please do not cite or circulate FOR seminar May 31, 2021 This is an excerpt from a chapter of my current book manuscript in progress, which explores the history of women and gender within South African exile politics. The Impasses of Politics: Sexual Violence and the ANC in Exile In October 1981, senior African National Congress (ANC) Women’s Secretariat members Gertrude Shope and Florence Mophosho, both based in Lusaka at the time, visited the ANC exile community of Morogoro, Tanzania, where some 5,000 South African exiles then resided. Their visit was one of many undertaken to investigate problems among the young people living at SOMAFCO school and in the Charlottes (residential homes from mothers of infants and young children) – in this case, to address the issue of young women dating men from another South African political formation (the PAC), but also broader problems of “discipline” among the young cadres. Dividing the students into separate groups of men and women, Shope and Mophosho addressed the students about the importance of maintaining discipline, particularly in avoiding alcohol consumption and dagga (marijuana) smoking. To the boys, they “appealed to male students to take their women folk along to be on par with them politically and otherwise by assisting them where they are weak and accept them as sisters and comrades and not as objects for their entertainment, where they will end up at Charlottes with unplanned babies.”1 To the young women, they were “equally frank and harsh”, counselling the female students “not to allow themselves to be misused”, and to avoid drinking alcohol. They also addressed one particular situation, that of a young woman who had been gang- raped by a group of five SOMAFCO students. After discussing the incident publicly and with leadership, Shope and Mophosho came to share the conclusions reached by the woman’s classmates and leadership, saying “After getting reports of the girl’s general conduct, we shared the view of the committee and of other girls that she should have received some [sic? Same?] 1 “Report on Visit to Morogoro, by F Mophosho and G Shope,” 1981, MCH01-1.7, Mayibuye. 1 kind of punishment as boys as she also enticed the boys, in that she went with them on a drinking spree.” They then “spoke very strongly to her outside the meeting. She apologised and promised not to repeat this mistake again.”2 Almost forty years later, in 2017, South African media personality Redi Tlhabi published a book on Fezekile Kuzwayo, or Khwezi, the young woman and former exile who in 2006 accused Jacob Zuma of rape. Tlhabi’s account delves into sexual violence in exile in greater depth than any other book and includes a recounting of an event that echoes against the 1981 events captured in the ANC archive: Tlhabi describes a woman who was gang-raped by her comrades from SOMAFCO after drinking with them, but chose not to say anything to the authorities, knowing she would be punished as much as the men would be. Tlhabi includes the account as part of her passionate call to action – the sexual violence of exile has not, she insists, been dealt with in post-apartheid, post-exile South Africa.3 Despite its absence from discussion in official programming for women within the ANC (and there was extensive programming aimed at “upgrading” women’s political awareness), it seems clear that sexual violence, the rape or assault of women and girls, was widely understood to occur with some frequency. Shireen Hassim has observed that “A significant and widespread problem [in exile] was violence against women."4 No comprehensive audit or commission has been done, as Redi Tlhabi highlights.5 But in multiple sites and on multiple occasions, public commentators have affirmed that rapes took place in the ANC’s military camps and at the SOMAFCO school.6 Indeed, the discussion of exile’s sexual violence is something that has surfaced repeatedly in the South African public sphere in the decades since exile ended – shortly after the ANC’s return from exile, during the TRC, during Zuma’s rape trial, and again in 2016 with the (final if partial) decline and fall of Zuma from public legitimacy. The topic of sexual violence and violence against women in exile has run unevenly alongside another public discussion about exile – namely, the public conversation about abuses 2 “Report on Visit to Morogoro, by F Mophosho and G Shope,” 1981, MCH01-1.7, Mayibuye. 3 Tlhabi, location 708 4 Shireen Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (Madison WI: Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 94. 5 Redi Tlhabi, Khwezi: The Remarkable Story of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo. (La Vergne: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2017), 542. 6 Sean Morrow, Brown Maaba, and Loyiso Pulumani, Education in Exile: SOMAFCO, the African National Congress School in Tanzania, 1978-1992 (Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, 2005). Blanche La Guma mentioned the same in her memoir. Author intervieW With Sukhthi Naidoo, May 19, 2012. 2 that took place in the ANC’s military camps and detention centres, which included torture, detention without trial, and executions. But while this ‘camps’ violence has been the subject of substantial investigation, by the ANC, by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and by journalists and scholars, violence against women in exile has not received the same organized or sustained investigation.7 Discussion of violence against women and sexual violence in exile has tended to surface briefly and allusively – events are “referred to” but seldom described, and consistently commentators suggest, as Redi Tlhabi does, that the sexual violence and violence against women and girls in exile has not been reckoned with. The subject of sexual violence then has become a charged and signifying topic, “difficult knowledge” that demands to be discussed and yet reiterates itself through public dialogue around silences.8 As a topic, it is braided into a discussion about the South African nation itself, and the place of the ANC in that nation. This chapter examines why and how the intimate violence of exile resurfaces and recurs in the South African public sphere without resolution, suggesting that what happened in exile cannot now be meaningfully separated from the efforts to talk about it post-exile. We know, in broad strokes, what happened in exile – many women have reported that they were raped or sexually taken advantage of, many women suffered domestic abuse from their partners, and the ANC did a very uneven job of addressing these issues, punishing some perpetrators, but also punishing women, as the account above indicates. But the meaning of these situations persists as unresolved – the signification of these events for ANC history and for post-apartheid South Africa, as well as for the victims and survivors, remains unsettled. It is this unsettling that pushes the conversation back again and again. Commentators, including some who were present in exile, have offered sociological explanations for sexual violence in exile which fit the facts. In 1996, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits University hosted a workshop entitled ‘Gender and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).’ By this time, TRC hearings had already commenced. The workshop engaged scholars and activists, including current ANC members, most notably, Thenjiwe Mtintso and Jessie Duarte, both prominent political women in exile and after. 7 The most comprehensive accounts of the problems in the camps are in TreWhela and Ellis; Hugh Macmillan has also offered sensitive and nuanced analysis, as has Luli Callinicos, and a number of other scholars have discussed the events as well (Steve Davis, Van Vuuren, Cleveland). 8 See Erica Lehrer, Cynthia E. Milton, and Monica Patterson, Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places (Houndmills, Basingstoke Hampshire ; NeW York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 3 Researchers associated with the workshop also conducted in-depth interviews with women about their perspectives on the TRC. From this event, its conveners Sheila Meintjes and Beth Goldblatt made a detailed submission to the TRC suggesting that its format lacked sensitivity to women’s issues.9 Also contained in Goldblatt and Meintjes’ submission is the brief but compelling analysis of the possible causes of the particular violence against women in the ANC’s camps, performed by Thenjiwe Mtintso. She highlighted the challenging environment of the camps, the psychological damage most people there would have suffered in detention inside South Africa before leaving, the lack of support for people with psychological problems within the ANC, and gendered social roles and expectations as all potentially precipitating violence against women, including sexual violence. Indeed, such explanations resonate with contemporary African feminist work on the politics of militarism and the harms of militarization for women.10 While compelling, Mtintso’s analysis placed the violence against women in the camps squarely in the realm of the sociological – it suggested the phenomenon could be explained by a mixture of personal psychology and objective characteristics of the context. This reading maintains the events safely outside of history, and outside of meaning or significance. But these sociological explanations have been insufficient to satisfy the recurrent search for meaning around the sexual violence that occurred – despite these explanations, Redi Tlhabi could still argue
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