Sexual harassment has seemingly become normalised. In South Africa, it took the #EndRapeCulture campaign on university campuses in 2016, to highlight how deeply rooted and normalized sexual harassment is and that the only way in which we can put an end to it is by dealing with the cultures that promote sexual violence. (Photo: courtesy of Citizen News)
The collective outcry of female students in South African university campuses, using the #EndRapeCulture campaign, to indicate that each of them are victims of sexual violence gripped the country’s imagination. This came after a list containing names of male Rhodes University students alleged to have committed rape or sexual misconduct was published anonymously online also known as the RU Reference list, on 22 April 2016 and a lack of action taken against them. This sparked protest action which saw black female students marching in the street bare-breasted to say enough is enough. Solidarity among women’s students from UCT, Wits, and Stellenbosch through topless marched spread across campuses in its wake. One could say they embraced a feminist identity.
Rhodes University black female students took to the streets to protest bare-breasted against the pervasive rape culture at the university’s campus. (Photo: courtesy of iol news)
The #EndRapeCulture campaign was pioneered by black African women in 2016 as a call to universities across the country to end attitudes, behaviours and practices that normalized sexual violence on university campuses across the country. In my view, women students were expressing their and resentment about their voicelessness in the face of gender-based violence through the #EndRapeCulture campaign thus taking into consideration the asymmetrical punishments that are handed down to perpetrators of sexual violence versus their victims in court. According to Gouws (2018), the campaign viewed patriarchy “as one of the main obstacles to end the pervasive rape culture (attitudes, perceptions and stereotypes that normalise sexual violence) in society at large and universities in particular, not only for heterosexual women but also for members of the LGBTQIA and transgender communities”. Gouws (2018) noted that
“the actions of women students in the #EndRapeCulture campaign, on a symbolic level, articulate how the intersectionality of race, gender and sexuality positions black African women as sexual subjects in relation to black African men but also in relation to white women and white men – something that an intersectional African feminist identity expresses”.
According to the Mail & Guardian,
“what #EndRapeCulture showed is that individual men are socialised and groomed into the normalisation of sexual violence and that unless we look at this as a systemic problem, we will only remove perpetrators one at a time and still not deal with cultures that promote sexual violence”.
I believe that this is true as black female students were at the forefront of this campaign. As a result, the campaign received little support from white students black African men some felt that they were acting in un-African ways as they seemed as if they were objectifying themselves. I felt that the black African men’s perception of the campaign was flawed and showed that many of them still ascribed to patriarchal ideals that seek to dictate how women should carry themselves. Furthermore, as a black woman, I felt that the female student’s protest action was right so as to say to men that they are not entitled to our bodies and that they need to respect them.
The #EndRapeCulture campaign made extensive use of digital platforms such as Twitter because according to Gouws (1992) “it creates subaltern counter-public spaces”. In other words, it provides marginalized individuals with a platform to come together for the purpose of engaging or holding discussions about matters of common interest or to find solutions to counteract institutionalized discourses which in this instance would be rape culture. According to Frazer (1992),
“the idea of a public sphere is that of a body of private persons assembled to discuss matters of concern or common interest.”
Therefore, the use of Twitter enabled women who were victims of sexual harassment to break the silence by voicing their needs for justice due to the failure of the country’s justice system to serve them with it and it allows them to get validation and vindication from a supportive online audience and to possibly find solutions to counteract rape culture in university campuses and to hold perpetrators of sexual violence accountable. However, it can also extend the harm of sexual violence by further harassment, humiliation and the naming and shaming of survivors.
https://twitter.com/BlackDerecho/status/1176831490266730496
I think that the #EndRapeCulture campaign was successful as I feel that it managed to raise awareness about pervasive sexual harassment and/or sexual violence in universities across the country and it also managed to get most universities to set up task teams that would look into cultures on university campuses that perpetuate sexual harassment and/or sexual violence and subsequently create policies to deal with rape culture. One could say that it was an embodiment of experience that informed the country’s politics.
References
Fraser, N., 1992. Rethining the public sphere: A contribution to the critique Actually Existing Democracy. In: H. A. Giroux & P. McLaren, eds. Between Borders: Pedagogy and the Politics of Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 74-83.
Gouws, A., 2017, Celebrity campaigns and rape culture: the pluses and the pitfalls, Mail & Guardian, viewed 24 September 2019, https://mg.co.za/article/2017-11-08-celebrity-campaigns-and-rape-culture-the-pluses-and-the-pitfalls
Gouw, A., 2018. #EndRapeCulture Campaign in South Africa: Resisting Sexual Violence Through Protest and the Politics of Experience. South African Journal of Political Studies: Decolonisation after democracy, 45(1), pp. 3-15.
Conflict with thyself 