Feminist Africa 14 Rethinking Gender and Violence Issue 14: December 2010 First published in 2010 by the African Gender Institute All Africa House University of Cape Town Private Bag Rondebosch 7701 © in published edition: African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 2010 ISSN: 1726-4596 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording and/or otherwise without permission in writing from the publisher. Published with the support of HIVOS, and the African Women’s Development Fund. Printing and Cover design: Fareeda Jadwat and Compressdsl Cover photograph: Kayo Fusejima, proudlymemedia Distribution: AGI Staff Feminist Africa is a scholarly journal accredited by the South African Department of Education. • ii • Feminist Africa 14 Editorial policy Editor Feminist Africa is guided by a profound Amina Mama commitment to transforming gender hierarchies in Africa, and seeks to redress injustice and Issue 14 Editor inequality in its content and design, and by Jane Bennett its open-access and continentally-targeted distribution strategy. Feminist Africa targets Editorial team gender researchers, students, educators, Jane Bennett women’s organisations and feminist activists Awino Okech throughout Africa. It works to develop a Yaliwe Clarke feminist intellectual community by promoting Adelene Africa and enhancing African women’s intellectual Fareeda Jadwat work. To overcome the access and distribution challenges facing conventional academic Editorial advisory group publications, Feminist Africa deploys a dual The editorial advisory group of Feminist Africa dissemination strategy, using the Internet consists of scholars and researchers, located as a key tool for knowledge-sharing and in different fields in the social sciences and communication, while making hard copies humanities, who offer their expertise to the available to those based at African institutions. development and dissemination of Feminist Two issues are produced per annum, in Africa as an innovative African-focused journal. accordance with themes specified in the calls Advisory group members are: for contributions. Akosua Adamako-Ampofo, Bibi Bakare- The editorial team can be contacted at Yusuf, Teresa Barnes, Kum-Kum Bhavnani, [email protected] Hope Chigudu, Tsitsi Dangaremba, Carole Boyce Davies, Simidele Dosekun, Amanda Gouws, Acknowledgements Pregs Govender, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Shireen The Feminist Africa team acknowledges Hassim, Desiree Lewis, Zine Magubane, Takyiwaa the intellectual input of the community of Manuh, Helen Moffett, Chandra Mohanty, African feminist scholars and the Editorial Patricia Mohammed, Patricia McFadden, Ruth Advisory Board. Ochieng, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Awino Okech, We thank HIVOS and the African Women’s Charmaine Pereira, Jennifer Radloff, Rhoda Development Fund for their financial support Reddock, Vasu Reddy, Kopano Ratele, Ebrima towards production and publication. Sall, Fatou Sow, Julia Sudbury, Sylvia Tamale, Dzodzi Tsikata, Zenebeworke Tadesse, Muthoni Disclaimer Wanyeki and Paul Zeleza. 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Material, artwork extracts and articles South Africa from Feminist Africa may not be reproduced tel: 27 11 678 4416 in any form of print or electronic publication fax: 27 11 678 4464 without the permission of the Editors, who can email: [email protected] be contacted at [email protected]. web: www.ebsco.com/home/southafrica Requests for permission to reproduce material will not be granted until one calendar year after first online publication in Feminist Africa has lapsed. • iv • Feminist Africa 14 Feminist Africa 14 • v • Contents Editorial: Rethinking Gender and Violence – by Jane Bennett 1 Feature Articles Sexual Violence in Conflict: a Problematic International Discourse – by Eva Ayiera 7 “Circles and circles”: Notes on African feminist debates around gender and violence in the c21 – by Jane Bennett 21 Domestic Violence in the African North – by Fatima Sadiqi 49 Women’s Activism and Transformation: Arising from the Cusp – by Anu Pillay 63 Standpoint “Murderous women”? Rethinking gender and theories of violence – by Adelene Africa 79 In Conversation Godwin Murunga, from the University of Kenyatta, talks with Jane Bennett about the politics of masculinities studies and African feminisms 93 Pauline Dempers, from Breaking the Walls of Silence, Namibia, talks with Yaliwe Clarke about some of her ideas on peace-building which are rooted in experiences as a ex-combatant in the Namibian liberation struggle 103 • vi • Feminist Africa 14 Profiles One of the very few places in the country without abuse: The Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children (Cape Town, South Africa) – by Irma Maharaj 115 There is Hope…We are Not Giving Up : Freedom and Roam Uganda – by Kasha Jacqueline 123 Review A situation analysis of the women survivors of the 1989-2003 armed conflict in Liberia – Isis WICCE in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender and Development in Liberia and the Women in Peacebuilding Network Program of the West Africa Network for Peace (WANEP). 2009 – by Vicky Karimi 129 Contributors 135 Editorial • 1 • Editorial: Rethinking Gender and Violence Jane Bennett, African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town So what is there to rethink? In the final chapter of his book, Identity and Violence: the Illusion of Destiny, Amartya Sen writes of his encounter as an eleven-year boy with a dying man, at his home’s gates. The man’s name, he tells us, was Kader Mia and his murder was one of thousands and thousands in the Hindu-Muslim riots of the 1940’s in Bengal. The chapter concludes the book’s engagement with the way in which identities are implicated in violence, and the final sentence strikes home like an arrow: “We have to make sure, above all, that our mind is not halved by a horizon” (Sen, 2006: 186). The horizon has appeared earlier in the chapter, where Sen is drawing upon a line of Derek Walcott’s poetry, to suggest that Walcott’s rich and “integrated understanding of the Caribbean” depends on the focus of a poet’s gaze, and the ability to let dichotomization dissolve as possibilities unfurl (Sen, 2006:185). The challenge of Sen’s gentle injunction to feminists working against violence, especially sexual violence, is both breath-taking and troubling. As those who have been at the forefront, in different ways, of an insistence that gendered embodiment is a political process, and has imprisoned, tortured, and wounded millions of people gendered as women/ girls, the notion of a clear line between “right” and “wrong”, “innocence” and “perpetration”, “pain” and “dominance”, “woman” and “man” is a compelling one. Such a line (a “horizon”) offers a straightforward way of reading the relationship between gender and violence: becoming gendered ritualizes violence, predicting who will violate and who will be violated, seeking context merely as a backdrop to what we know. There’s a lot of empirical evidence for the assertion that this “horizon”, the line which establishes where we are when it comes to understanding gender and violence, is stable. Almost all forms of rape, domestic assassination and • 2 • Feminist Africa 14 brutality, sexual harassment, trafficking, and sexual abuse of children are carried out