Pumla Gqola Book Launch: ''Rape: A South African Nightmare''

Comrades at war: the decline and fall of the Socialist Workers Party

Edward Platt, The New Statesmen

The supporters of the Socialist Workers Party who gathered in Trafalgar Square on a bright sunny day at the end of March could not agree how to define the relationship between their organisation and the rally taking place around them. One seller of the weekly Socialist Worker, who was down from Sheffield for the day, told me that Unite Against Fascism was a “front” for the SWP, but the man working on the stall selling party literature was more cautious: “It’s not an SWP event,” he said. “We’re part of it. But it’s bigger than us.”

Estelle Freedman: Redefining Rape

Manufacturing Consent: Estelle B. Freedman's "Redefining Rape"

Annie Shields, Los Angeles Review of Books

IN SEPTEMBER 2011, the FBI released its 82nd annual Uniform Crime Report (UCR). Up to this point, the agency had only counted one very specific type of rape in the UCR: rapes of females by vaginal intercourse committed by males through the use of force. It did not count rape of men or boys. It did not count rapes of transgender people. It did not count assaults involving forced anal or oral sex. Frequently, it did not count rapes in which victims were unconscious or unable to consent because of physical or mental disabilities, or assaults in which drugs or alcohol were used to inhibit the victim’s capacity to resist.

Chris Vick speaks to Proffessor Suttner about the political effects of the Cosatu rupture

Letter to the Socialist Workers' Party (UK)

The ongoing crisis in the Socialist Workers’ Party – precipitated by the handling of rape allegations against a senior party member – has raised fundamental questions about democracy, power and sexism in the organisations and culture of the left. We believe that the way in which the central committee of the SWP has handled the situation, and its lack of a reasonable response to the legitimate protests voiced by many of its own members, as well as others on the left, point to issues that cannot simply be swept under the rug.

We have all previously participated in events and initiatives promoted by the SWP, including the annual Marxism festival, or written for its publications. We continue to value the commitment and work of many SWP members as trades unionists, activists and comrades. Nonetheless, we can no longer in good conscience participate in SWP publications and platforms until the party recognises and seriously addresses the legitimate criticisms of its handling of this case and the ensuing crisis.

Greg Albo, Abbie Bakan, Jairus Banaji, Gail Day, Steve Edwards, Nadine El-Enany, Phil Gasper, Peter Hallward, Adam Hanieh, Owen Hatherley, Paul Kellogg, Brian Kelly, Conor Kostick, Robert Knox, Thomas Marois, David McNally, Adam Morton, James Murphy, Kevin Murphy, Ilan Pappé, Charles Post, Nina Power, Gregory Schwartz, Peter Thomas, Alberto Toscano, Thomas Walpole, Jeffery Webber, Rafeef Ziadah

Cry me a river of crocodile tears

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

It is March. Anene Booysen is mutilated, murdered and raped. We are shamed into action, shaken by the brutality of the crime. We imagine our own seventeen year olds and we pray that her soul rests in peace.

It is October. Zandile and Yonelisa are murdered in communal toilets in Diepsloot. We think about our own babies, fat and brown swaying precariously on newly found feet. We wonder what their mothers would have felt. We want to weep.We are outraged.

How patriarchy fuels a culture of fear in women

Vavi: Discursive Tension Stifles Rape Discussion

by Mandisi Majavu, SACSIS

One of the issues that the rape allegations against Zwelinzima Vavi highlighted is the unresolved discursive tension between feminists and anti-racists. This discursive tension  stems from the way in which both the feminist and anti-racist intellectual tradition respectively regard sexuality as a site upon which the oppression of women and the repression of black masculinity occurs. Feminists understand rape as a violent patriarchal tool that some men use to assert their power over women. Anti-racists, on the other hand, point out that, traditionally, black masculinity has been constructed by mainstream white society around the idea of a hypersexual, natural born rapist.

Eleventh Annual Teach-In: The Rape Crisis

You are cordially invited to attend the Eleventh Annual Teach-In hosted by the Department of Political and International Studies.

Venue: Barratt Lecture Theatre 1

Dates:   Monday 22nd  - Friday 26th July

Time:     13:00 - 14:00 daily

THE ANNUAL TEACH-IN takes the form of a week of public lectures hosted by the Department of Political and International Studies.

These lectures bring a particular issue of interest and concern in the public sphere to the attention of the University and the wider community

The Secret History of the Vietnam War

By Daniel Denvir, Vice

If you thought you knew all there was to know about the Vietnam War, you were wrong. For example: ever heard of the "Mere Gook Rule," a code of conduct the US military came up with in order to make it easier for soldiers to murder Vietnamese civilians without feeling too bad about it? ("It's only a mere gook you're killing!")

Well, few people knew about this bit of history either until author Nick Turse discovered it in secret US military archives, which he used as the primary sources for his new(ish) book, Kill Everything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. The book is based on Turse's discovery of theretofore secret internal military investigations of US-perpetrated atrocities alongside extensive reporting in Vietnam and among American veterans, and it reminds us that the most significant fact about the Vietnam War is its most overlooked: massive and devastating Vietnamese civilian suffering.

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

How the ‘cult of femininity’ and violentmasculinities support endemic genderbased violence in contemporary... by TigersEye99

The Jacob Zuma Rape Trial: Power and African National Congress (ANC) Masculinities

The Jacob Zuma Rape Trial: Power and African National Congress (ANC)Masculinities by TigersEye99

Why I no longer tell my brother to wear his pants properly

By Siphokazi Magadla, Thought Leader

Saggy pants is a popular form of displaying rebellion to teenage respectability by young men who wear their trousers far down their waists, often times generously exposing their underwear. Saggy pants are mostly associated with black male masculinity, which has been highlighted by the imagery often associated with mainstream hip-hop culture. Of course today this phenomenon is no longer the privilege of young black lads as many white boys in my classrooms and elsewhere subscribe to the ”sagging” pants phenomenon. Yet, nevertheless, sagging pants are historically linked to black male adolescence. Like many black sisters and mothers I had been particularly averse to my two brothers engaging in these displays as I unconsciously saw them as yet another easy way black men attract negative attention (read racism and police brutality) to themselves. I have however shifted in this view.

South Africa: police brutality

by Benjamin Fogel, The Zambezian

The police in South Africa have taken yet another life, this time that of a 27 year old Mozambican Taxi Driver in Daveyton a neighbourhood in East Johannesburg . Mido Marcia was killed for parking on the wrong side of the road and having the gall to challenge the officer attempting to arrest him. For this he was handcuffed to the back of a police truck and dragged several hundred meters down the road in front of a crowd amassed at a taxi rank. Later it seems like he was beaten to death by police officers in a cell in a two hour assault.

Thandiswa Qubuda – another dead brick in the wall of rape imprisoning South Africa

Mandy de Waal

Very little is known about Thandiswa Qubuda, a recent casualty of South Africa’s violent rape pandemic. She was raped, beaten and died after lying brain dead in hospital for six weeks. There are no photos of her in newspapers, no stories of her life, no media headlines about the savage gang attack that led to her death. Qubuda’s passing would have been largely unnoticed, were it not for activists who demanded that people learn about what happened to her: that she was an unemployed woman, failed by the police and by a justice system supposed to protect her. By MANDY DE WAAL, The Daily Maverick

Time of the signs: Feminism, by any other name . . .

Nokulinda Mkhize

by Nokulinda Mkhize, City  Press

Our pages have been filled with news and stories of statistics regarding ­gender-based violence and the abuse, assault and violation of women and girls. One that received great prominence was the case of Anene Booysens.

Men in her community, who were known to her, violently assaulted and raped her. She sustained heinous injuries and later died.

This is but one example of the violent acts perpetrated against South African women every four minutes.

Thandiswa Qubuda has Died

1 March 2013

Unemployed People’s Movement Press Statement

Thandiswa Qubuda has Died

Dark clouds are not strangers in our patriarchal society. They are gaining momentum. On Thursday night, 28 February 2013, Thandiswa Qubuda passed from this world. She had spent six weeks in hospital, brain dead, after she was savagely raped and beaten.

We ask ourselves why her story, such a painful story, is not getting media coverage and creating an uproar. The lives of poor people count for nothing in this country. There is no democracy for us.

Pumla Gqola's talk at One Billion Rising (Wits & Constitution Hill)

Loudrastress

I am a feminist, a WITS Professor, a member of the African feminist and global feminist movements, and a member of the 1in9 Campaign, a feminist campaign – now organization – started to provide support to the woman we call Khwezi, who laid a charge of rape against the man who is now President Zuma, 1in9, an organization which supports other survivors of sexualized violence.

From Delhi to Bredasdorp

by Richard Pithouse, The Mercury & The Daily Dispatch

In December last year Jyoti Singh Pandey,  a student on the cusp of her adult life, stepped into a bus in Delhi. She was with a friend. They had been to see the film version of the Life of Pi and were on the way home. And then, without warning, their passage through the night suddenly dropped out of the flow of ordinary life and into hell.

The bus went off the expected route, the doors were closed and Jyoti's friend was beaten unconscious by the six men in the bus. In what sounds like a ritual performance of absolute domination and absolute sadism Joyti was raped and attacked with such violence that most of the entrails were ripped from her body.