Sexual violence, Bare Life and Necropolitics
“Gender-based violence and sexual violence, in specific, have reached unprecedented levels in countries in the Global North and South. Feminist scholarship and activism in South Africa have contributed to different theories to explain sexual violence but have also exposed the state that has the monopoly on exercising violence, as inadequate or unwilling to reduce gender-based violence,” said Amanda Gouws, holder of the SARChI Chair in Gender Politics in the Department of Political Science at Stellenbosch University.
Gouws began by sketching some of the statistics related to gender-based violence (GBV) in South Africa where intimate femicide is five times the global average. She noted that in 2023, 42 780 rapes were reported but that the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) estimates that only one in 25 rapes are actually reported. “From 2017 to 2020 an estimated seven women were dying from intimate partner violence per day.”
But even if rapes are reported, the trauma doesn’t end there. Gouws pointed out that the criminal justice system drastically fails women – with only 40% of rape cases ever going to trial and convictions in only 18%. Added to this is the high rate of rapes by police – there were 150 rape cases against the police in 2013. “The police are deeply implicated in sexual violence – sometimes raping women who come to make a case,” said Gouws.
“Of course, South Africa has a very violent history, but 30 years down the line why is it still so violent, why is the violence so brutal, and why are men specifically so violent? We make a case for feeling sorry for perpetrators if we say it’s past trauma. Social exclusion and poverty affect men and women equally,” she added.
Gouws’s book project will aim to connect the South African case to a broader global condition of turbulent times showing that GBV and the diminishing spaces for a feminist articulation of a critique of an anti-gender ideology contribute to precarious conditions for women.
“The project will have a theoretical dimension (working with the theories of Giorgio Agamben and Achille Mbembe); as well as an empirical dimension investigating how feminist activism develops around sexual violence, and how it can be used to reinvigorate anti-violence gender work.”
For her seminar she looked at how states currently govern through biopolitics to determine under what conditions of possibility it allows for brutal and extreme interpersonal violence in intimate relationships, such as we see in South Africa.
Gouws explained that in many countries sexual violence and femicide have rendered women into ‘bare life’ (such as Italian philosopher Agamben’s Homo Sacer), especially those who are exposed to a state of exception (living under law that does not protect them). “In applying Agamben’s theory to sexual violence we see that the state abandons its women citizens by not enforcing the necessary laws or providing state protection, contributing to necropolitics (the politics of death).”
She explained that Agamben’s Homo Sacer theory describes lives so devoid of political significance that killing is therefore not a crime, while his concept of ‘bare life’ refers to a form of existence stripped of rights and political significance, highlighting the intersection of sovereignty and biopolitics.
As examples, she pointed to migrants attempting to cross the channel from the ’Jungle’, a refugee site in Calais in France to the United Kingdom and living in an ongoing state of not having any legal protection, as well as the Trump-dominated world where deportation and incarceration in ICE facilities without due process have become the norm. “Suspension of law in the name of security has become the rule. We don’t govern through rights, we govern bodies. People are either invisible or treated as entitled to legal protection.”
“In late modernity, law has become displaced by security apparatuses rendering many people into ‘bare life’,” she emphasised. “While the ‘bare life’ for women specifically often comes about not because of a decision by the state but because the state neglects to take decisions or to implement its own laws.”
Turning to Cameroonian philosopher, Achille Mbembe’s theories of necropolitics, she explained that biopolitics gives the sovereign state the right to kill or make certain categories of people disposable. “It regulates the distribution of death. Mbembe thinks about this in relation to race, I want to think about it in relation to women. How does the state create the possibilities of death for women through femicide?”
She also pointed to the public/private divide where life for women is still often concentrated in the private sphere. “The politics of inclusion/exclusion work very differently across genders,” she said. “The public-private divide in modern democracies may be one of the most central instruments for excluding from political significance and abandoning from legal protection everyone designated feminine and thus private.”
Gouws also pointed to the impact of neoliberalism which is characterised by outsourcing and privatisation, and the limited role of the state. “More and more facets of human activity are under market control with a loss of vision of social and collective good,” she explained. “Individuals must improve themselves making them both self-centred and with moral autonomy.”
“According to cultural critic Henry Giroux the mass media reconfigures the nature of politics, and conformity, depoliticisation and passivity hijack any viable notion of critical engagement and resistance. This gives legitimacy to a reading of politics and agency in which fear, death, survival and security replace more abstract principles of truth, reason and justice,” she continued.
“In this way the neoliberal, post-colonial state creates conditions for the possibility of extreme violence. This normalisation of violence is deadly for women.”
South African context specific
Turning to explanations for GBV in South Africa, Gouws emphasised the weak state, the existence of strong patron-client networks, corruption and state capture, “South Africa is one of the most corrupt states globally. Where the state apparatus is weak, people fall back on traditional ways of understanding society.”
“The security apparatus doesn’t enforce the law and citizens are abandoned,” she said. “Fear of violence is pervasive – for example, a recent SAMRC study asked men and women if they felt safe to walk alone at night, and nearly 90% said no.”
Gouws also pointed out that despite massive unemployment (62%) in the category 18-25 years, South Africa has the highest mobile-phone saturation in Africa – with an estimated two phones per person. She explained that this can build the politics of resentment with young people able to see but not access goods that give status. “Those excluded are regarded as losers, invisible, failures. It’s a commodity culture characterised by desire and shame. This leads to the politics of resentment for which women are often blamed.”
“The influence of technology and screens can also not be ignored. It makes it possible to view and normalise egregious violence. It also increases pornography consumption with an estimated 55% of under 18s regularly watching.”
She also highlighted the sugar daddy (or blesser/blessee) culture which means young men often cannot access young women; as well as high unemployment combined with traditional values (sometimes enhanced at male-initiation schools) telling young men they are superior to women.
“Male powerlessness contributes to resentment – they are unemployment, ashamed and feel inadequate.”
Gouws also highlighted the gross inadequacy of the state’s response – the National Strategic Plan on GBV which does not deal with the urgency of the matter; calls for a National State of Emergency on GBV that have gone unheeded and would be hard to implement anyway; and, despite 45% of members of parliament being women in South Africa this seems to make no difference to legislation that is passed. “There are political agendas and a lack of interest and political will to deal with pressing social matters.”
She also noted that this work is largely theoretical at this stage and requires much more empirical research. “Ultimately men should answer the question of why they rape and what they are going to do about it. GBV should not be a woman’s problem only,” she concluded.
Michelle Galloway: Part-time media officer at STIAS
Photograph: SCPS Photograph