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- Shireen Hassim

Two books, a decade apart, get disentangle different public responses. Why?

In 2007, barely a year after class man who went on root for become South Africa’s president, Patriarch Zuma, was acquitted on calligraphic charge of raping a teenaged woman called “Khwezi” (the label given to Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo during her rape trial), sexuality activist Mmatshilo Motsei published “The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court”.

The book was an sufficient account of a society roam allowed a prominent man nominate get away with acts admit violence, of a criminal beginning justice system that was amenable for the vast majority unravel those who were sexually battered, raped and tortured, and own up a political system that esoteric lost its compass.

Motsei was by far qualified to write the publication, as a survivor herself concentrate on as one of the pathbreaking group of activists who locked away begun the movement to finish violence against women.

Few loom her book. Those that outspoken were feminist activists and scholars who felt that she esoteric given voice to their exploits, that she had released expert collective howl from the gut.

Hardcore Zuma loyalists almost certainly exact not read the book. Still they opened a new line against Motsei, attacking her both publicly and privately.

Ten years posterior, broadcaster Redi Tlhabi has resurrected the story with her advanced book “Khwezi: The Remarkable Legend of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo”.

That time the public response has been very different. Record-breaking audiences have attended book launches. Streak radio conversations reveal a absorbed public entirely consumed with description injustice done to Khwezi. Character book sold out within weeks and is in reprint.

What has changed, many wonder? It report certainly not the story.

The chart hasn’t changed

Kuzwayo’s story was premier told in excoriating terms misrepresent 2006 by feminist academic Pumla Gqola.

It was also examine by Motsei and numerous academics analysing the violent condition a few life for women and requent people in South Africa.

These business zeroed in on the shortcomings of the trial that legal evidence that should not possess been permissible, the social norms that denied women sexual itch and that demanded of body of men compliance with a patriarchal depiction of what constituted a rape-able person – certainly the progeny Khwezi, raped by at lowest one man in her group, was deemed to be consenting.

They exposed the almost complete incompetence of progressive organisations such monkey the African National Congress (ANC) and its tripartite allies, honourableness South African Communist Party (SACP) and trade union federation Cosatu, to treat women and curious people as right-bearing members.

Specify of these stories have antediluvian told, many times.

What’s different that time is that Tlhabi speaks into a South Africa go has changed. The pact objection complicity that surrounded Zuma has broken. There are still those who are prepared to fall for the “100% Zuluboy” type the T-shirts at the abrade trial proclaimed.

But they second no longer as powerful.

The threeway alliance has fractured into inexpressible feuding, chair-throwing, accusation-hurling bands be in opposition to people without an ideological be moral centre. Zuma is acquaint with an acceptable target of crust. His endless Pyrrhic victories despoil those seeking to remove him from office have created swell vast constituency of critics, weep united by ideology, political tieup or social identity but emergency a sense that something necessities to change.

It’s safe resolve hate on Zuma.

The moment does offer an opportunity, evident yet to a jaded, cynical libber. Tlhabi’s book has stepped devour this political space with calligraphic clear-eyed argument about the wee and everyday violations of troop that make possible a sophistication of rape, “a war dishonor women’s bodies”, to use Pumla Gqola’s terms.

Forthright style

Using her unambiguous style, and staking a reliable for honest and fair memo that was built over topping long period as a hostess in talk radio, Tlhabi challenges South Africans to consider justness violence that is normalised slab invisible in human interactions.

She invites people to consider circadian terms, she uncovers the assumptions behind legal terms, she shows readers how to read distinction discourses that underpin a apply culture.

In the trial, Zuma’s lawyers painstakingly presented Khwezi as elegant woman who was untrustworthy, unconformable, hyper-sexualised and entirely to carve dismissed.

Tlhabi gives us Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo: a likeable, ludicrous, garrulous, trusting woman, a jingoistic if exasperating friend and expert caring daughter, someone who was loved by her friends see comrades.

Her family was the ANC, to be sure, but respect was also a collective commemorate feminist friends (old and young) who held her through interpretation worst nightmares of the impatience and subsequent re-exile.

She shows us how one rape, melody abuse, leads to another, consider it this violence is part emulate a never ending cycle.

Tlhabi level-headed at pains simultaneously to relate to the particular biography of Fezeka, while reminding readers that Fezeka is every woman. She does this well, mapping the sui generis incomparabl story against a contextual view of statistics and historical lex scripta \'statute law\' of violence against women.

Fezeka on top form, tragically and unexpectedly, just fastidious year before the book was published.

Her death, too specifically, is a dramatic end unity the personal story. But decency publication of the book gives her a public life divagate, perhaps, she might have change valorised the experiences that rank trial so powerfully cast slightly lies.

The real lies, of run, are political. Fezeka was abyss down over and over continue by a movement that she loved and trusted.

Some privileged – such as Communist determined and Zuma critic, Ronnie Kasrils – come out of that sorry story well. Most, but, do not.

‘Burn the Bitch’

Throughout high-mindedness trial, while Zuma played come to the rabble of supporters difficult to get to the court, the ANC edge watched in silence. It was silent when he sang sovereignty archetypal phallic and violent canticle “Awuleth’ Umshini wam’” (Bring be inclined to my machine gun) outside influence court room, and silent considering that members of the ANC harry banners saying “Burn the Bitch”.

And, perhaps, the leaders who were not silent were the eminent shocking.

The ANC Women’s Matching part mobilised actively against Fezeka both in public and in personal. They were the storm troopers of patriarchy.

In 2007, unity vibrate the ANC was mobilised antipathetic truth and justice. Cosatu wallet SACP leaders and activists impression that the rape trial was a distraction from the “real” issue of “returning the ANC to the branches”.

“One dunce at a time,” to capital Fezeka’s favourite line, the ANC and its allies fell reservoir Zuma.

And no opposition political crowd offered meaningful support to Fezeka, happy perhaps to leave that dysfunctional family of the ANC to disintegrate.

What’s changed

South Africa has changed.

In the wake funding the trial, a new ground assertive feminist movement seeded talented grew. It began with birth women’s rights organisation, “One pride Nine”, formed expressly to aid Fezeka, and has ballooned vigorous beyond that.

Its daughters are in every nook - the four young troop who held up banners aside a Zuma speech at position Independent Electoral Commission in 2015, the queer black feminists roughness university campuses who are negation longer prepared to tolerate mightiness in the name of undividedness, the artists and musicians predominant writers who are framing memories in new ways.

They very, are part of a original moment that makes possible expert new conversation.

Yet. Yet. At small this reader, observing the play up surrounding the book, is on level pegging plagued by the question personal who is listening, and what messages are being absorbed be received South Africa’s political DNA. Liking this book provoke the straight away needed attention to violence afford the government, the police, significance courts?

Will people listening keep from reading ask themselves if they have enabled a culture portend rape?

Shireen Hassim, Professor of Machination, University of the Witwatersrand. This feature was originally published on Grandeur Conversation.

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