How the ‘cult of femininity’ and violent masculinities support endemic gender based violence in contemporary South Africa

Abstract

This essay draws on South African history in order to deepen understanding of the high level of gender based violence in that country, post‐apartheid. Demonstrating the limitations of current public discourses about gender, violence and sexuality, its writer argues that events like the recent rape trial of former national vice‐president, Jacob Zuma, are unsurprising. Rather, such moments are enabled by the continuum through which masculinities and feminities are thought and sanctioned in contemporary South Africa. The patterns of complicity that prop up gender based violence require historicized feminist undoing.