The Politics of Rape in Colonial South Africa

During the South African winter of 2006, Jacob Zuma went on trial for rape. As the trial unfolded, thousands of South Africans participated in public demonstrations supporting his accuser. The public furor that surrounded Jacob Zuma's rape trial revealed both a deep cleavage in South African society on the subject of sexual consent and the explosive political charge of the issue. In contemporary South Africa, the question of who has the right to consent to—or refuse—sex is intertwined with the question of who has the legitimate right to exercise political power?

This paper traces the roots of this entanglement to the period of British colonialization of South Africa. Colonial South Africa saw intense debates over the question of governance. Liberal humanitarians, racial nationalists, defenders of African “custom,” and millenarian prophets all put forward distinctive visions of legitimate political authority. I argue here that these debates both shaped and were shaped by equally intense struggles over the control of sexuality, and particularly female sexuality. Fears of rape, of miscegenation, and of the loss of patriarchal control over women all drove the political claims put forth under colonial rule. Conversely, as colonial court records reveal, women’s attempts to prosecute complaints of rape were shaped—and undermined—by these competing theories of sexual and political authority.