admin
Cetshwayo Mabhena
The Production of the Female Other
Whenever yet another woman is kidnapped, raped and murdered the Republic goes into a spectacular rage that has now become a ritual. There will be the usual angry calls for the return of the death sentence, million women will march in the streets and give the government stringent ultimatums; until the next rape and murder of another woman; life goes on. The fight against Gender-Based Violence is pronounced in the manifesto of every political party. Every politically conscious South African wears a T-shirt or ribbon that memorialises violence against women. In political and legal rhetoric, the female other, is a protected species in South Africa.
In world systemic terms, in the life of nations and states, as designed by Empire the female others have always been the Other. They only were allowed to vote recently, in the entire world. In the imagination of Empire the woman has always been a child, a sorcerer or a b***h. Women as practitioners of witchcraft and sex objects are a metaphor of Empire that has spread throughout the world. Powerful men, Empire-builders, Missionaries, Merchants and politicians have held women as things, fruits and flowers. The “opposite sex,” meaning opposite of the real gender, men, the “weaker sex” meaning the fragile other are constructed to be objects to be protected which is the other side of desire and harm. Reference to a woman as “baby” is not really an innocent metaphor but a politically charged cliché that describes the vulnerability and usability of female people.
The present naming and construction of women, especially mature girls, in South African popular culture as “Slay Queens” is not removed from the imagination of women as “parasites” that pester and prey on men, and must be overcome, conquered and disciplined. In that imagination women are constructed as that which will eat you if you do not eat it and devour it, and that which makes it a sport to conquer, own and use. An attractive woman is called “hot” and “slaying” which are words that signify a temptress to be conquered by the daring and adventurous man. In many ways, the female figure and personage is ignored for everything that it can be, and reduced to its organ and what can be done with it. Otherwise, women are rapeable, killable and disposable in a systematic and structural way that has normalised and made understandable the act of violating women and the Female Other at large.
The Invention of the Foreign Other
Throughout the world, refugees, exiles, immigrants and other foreigners are accused of four interesting and major crimes, that is: Stealing our jobs, taking our women, committing crimes and spreading diseases. For analytical purposes and the heuristic interests of this piece I elect the second crime, which is no small crime by the way. First, the suggestion is that women are things that have no agency, do not consent or deny, but can just be “taken” or “stolen” by the foreigner. In other words, the women of the nation-state are kind of natural resources that are exploited and siphoned by the thieving foreigners. Both the female other and the foreign other are objects, one criminal and another exploitable. The foreign other is a criminal, a monopolist of resources, is diseased and a predator that robs the nation of its feminine properties and resources. A popular stereotype and joke about foreign men in South Africa, which is the other side of an insult to South African men, is that they have exaggerated sexual abilities and large organs. The foreign man and woman are bestial and perverted. The nation-state must be protected from the foreigner who is not only the Alien other but the Sexual Other.
Interestingly, one of the first legislations that the Apartheid Regime enacted after its victory in 1948 was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Act No 55 of 1949. Not only that cross-racial marriage were prohibited; black men who got into sexual congress with white women were killed; but white men treated themselves to their black female servants giving South Africa one of the world’s largest coloured population. A black man that intruded into white womanity committed treason against the nation and it was the duty of the white patriotic men to defend the national honour and protect the land from pollutants, parasites and pests. The female and the foreign other are presently troubled and troubling political identities.
Decolonising the Others
I write this short article when females and foreigners are being violated in South Africa in more frequent and alarming ways. My observation is that the Female and the Foreign others in South Africa are still colonial political identities that rob the othered of humanity and renders them exploitable and disposable. The modern colonial world system has an economy of violence that classifies females and foreigners as objects, natural resources and is exploitable. The national imagination of women and foreigners is still part of the colonial imaginary. Women and foreigners must be re-imagined as other human beings that are not essentially embodiments of negations but authentic and legitimate citizens of the human family. The war begins with little jokes men crack about women and innocent little slurs that nationals cast upon foreigners, and then it grows into a monstrosity of the imagination that escalates into acts, and the end is found in raped, burnt and violated bodies of the Others. South Africa is presently not far from a slow but sure genocide of women. The reported cases that make it to the news and that inspire the many marches are nothing compared to silent cases that go unreported. Political and intellectual effort is needed in helping the Republic re-imagine the woman and the Foreigner, especially the woman.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Braamfontein, Johannesburg. This piece is an abridged version of a Keynote Address to the National Business Initiative; Sandton, 19 September, 2019. [email protected]
Online Reporter