Black lesbian women in South Africa: Citizenship and the coloniality of power

What does citizenship look like in contemporary South Africa?

Citizenship is a contested and slippery concept. It means many different things to people in different contexts. Current conceptualisations of citizenship in South Africa may be argued to resemble traditional Marshallian models that focus on the political relationship between the state and individuals, state responsibilities and obligations, the legal status and rights of citizens, and their access to economic and social resources. Current conceptualisations of citizenship in South Africa are also embedded in the egalitarian discourse of the Constitution, lauded for its legal recognition of historically marginalised groups, including sexually and gender diverse minorities. Several pieces of progressive legislation have been promulgated which promote citizen rights and an egalitarian society for sexually and gender diverse people specifically. These include the Civil Union Act of 2006, the Children’s Act of 2005, the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act of 2000, and most recently, the Prevention and Combatting of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill. It is tempting to think that full citizenship of sexually and gender diverse people has been achieved in light of these legal advancements that promote social and economic equities for all citizens. While the state-individual relationship marks an important dimension of citizenship, we maintain that this dichotomous conceptualisation masks how power is discursively and socially deployed in ways that are reminiscent of colonial constructions of the subjugated other (Mama, 1995). We suggest that black lesbian women are constructed and positioned as the subjugated other in contemporary South Africa. We suggest further that this “othering” denies black lesbian women full citizenship.

In this paper, we adopt a feminist social-psychological framework that conceives of citizenship as an “active practice, embedded in everyday social life” (Stevenson et al., 2015, p. 192). Citizenship constitutes an embodied, affective and psychic lived subjectivity and experience, embedded within the dynamic intersections of multiple identities, feelings of belonging, and historical, structural and discursive patterns of power-knowledge relations (Yuval-Davis, 2007). As such, full citizenship extends beyond legal citizenship to include sexual, reproductive, social, economic and psychological citizenship. Stevenson et al. (2015) identify three areas of investigation for future research that also offer a useful analytical tool: 1) citizenship and recognition, 2) enactments of citizenship in public spaces (place and performance of citizenship), and 3) citizenship and lived coexistence. We are cognisant that these areas intersect in complex, nuanced and changing ways in everyday life. In this paper, we focus on the performance of citizenship in public spaces to highlight the coloniality of power (Quijano, 2007).

We recognise the fluidity, multiplicity and heterogeneity of women’s identities, as well as the limitations of labels that impose particular meanings on identities. Social categories and labels are of particular importance in an engagement of citizenship that recognises the historical context in which socially engineered identity categories and labels (race being the most obvious) were enmeshed in justificatory narratives that rationalised colonial power and oppression (Quijano, 2007). Notwithstanding the limitations of labels as identity markers, we use the label lesbian to refer to women in same-sex relationships as the majority of participants in the original study self-identified as such. Additionally, we use the label black to refer to persons currently classified by Statistics South Africa as being ‘black African’, ‘black coloured’ and ‘black Indian’. Importantly, the term black signifies the political positioning of those who identify as black as a distinct identity from white and “non-white” relational identities. Black represents a conscious subversion to white colonial oppression (Biko, 2004).

Contexualising and historicising black lesbian citizenship in South Africa

During the colonial era in South Africa, race, gender and sexuality were deployed as powerful political and social technologies that advanced white supremacy and the brutal enslavement and exploitation of black people (Gqola, 2010; Young, 1995, cited in Tamale, 2011). Tamale (2011) argues that the colonial project redefined African sexualities within a discourse of public, sexual and social morality to advance colonial exploitation. She argues further that African women’s sexualities and the bodies of African women were constructed as the antithesis of conservative European sexual norms. Several anthropological accounts rendered African women and African sexuality as primitive, savage and excessive (Tamale, 2011), thereby establishing African women’s sexualities as unintelligible and unimaginable against European norms (Butler, 1990).

The apartheid system formalised and reinforced colonial power relations. Under apartheid law, South African citizens were classified into one of four racial categories under the Population Registration Act (Act No. 30 of 1950). The Act worked in tandem with other key apartheid laws to discriminate against citizens classified as African, “coloured” or Indian/Asian, through controlled access or denial to political, legal and social rights, resources, opportunities and geographical locations. This formal system of racial classification and segregation informed and justified the creation of socially engineered racial hierarchies, enabled through gross per capita disparities among the racially categorised groups.

Likewise, gender and sexuality were highly regulated and repressed during colonial and apartheid eras. “Heavy censorship and repressive policing” (p. 53) under apartheid law situated sex and sexuality exclusively as a matter for the private, domestic sphere, prohibited inter-racial sexual relationships, criminalised homosexuality and promoted the notion of uncontrolled black hyper-sexuality juxtaposed with that of a vulnerable white minority sexuality (Posel, 2005). As Ratele and Shefer (2013) suggest, intimate relationships, and through this, the regulation of gender and sexuality, “were a key site for the reproduction of racism” (p. 190). During the colonial and apartheid eras in South Africa, the repression and censorship of sexuality within a highly raced and gendered context functioned to construct and position white, male, heterosexuality as the most powerful within the socially engineered hierarchy. The discourse of hegemonic white masculinity was strengthened by concurrent discourses of “blackness”, violence and deviance that were associated with black people. These discourses served to position black people on the lower end of the social hierarchy.

We agree with Gqola (2010), who argues that “slavery, colonialism and apartheid” are “embedded in each other and beyond” (pp. 6–7). We contend that this embeddedness carries through into the current democratic context, which, despite its progressive nature, also contains oppressive practices. In this paper, we are particularly interested in the intersections of citizenship as embodied experiences and oppressive practices that are obscured in the lives of black lesbian women. We argue that during the colonial and apartheid eras in South Africa, the deviant other/subject was brought about through the active dehumanisation of black people (Lugones, 2010), who were constructed as hyper-sexualised and predatory in their sexual practices (Lewis, 2005; Mama, 1995; Tamale, 2011). The gross colonial subjectification and fixation on the body of Sara Baartman not only reflects how power inequities intersect with race, gender and sexuality (Boonzaier, 2017) but also epitomises the colonial fragmentation and disembodiment of black subjectivities (Gqola, 2010).

The fight for sexual freedom and expression is a political matter. In South Africa, gay and lesbian history has unfolded as part of the broader agenda for liberation (Morgan & Reid, 2003). Issues pertaining to sexuality and gender were considered to be less urgent in comparison to racial imbalances that required redress (Potgieter & de la Rey, 1997). Seidman (1999), however, maintains that South Africa’s new democracy has adopted an explicitly gendered stance regarding citizenship. Despite this focus on gendered citizenship, several trends indicate the contrary for black lesbian women specifically. Local studies have foregrounded the intersections of lesbian subjectivities and continuing forms of institutional homophobia, sexual prejudice, societal discrimination and hate crimes against lesbian women (Judge, 2018; Stephens, 2018).

While legislative recognition of diverse sexual orientations has created greater visibility of the lesbian population, it has simultaneously increased their vulnerability to discrimination, homophobic acts and hate crimes. This is especially pertinent in the absence of adequate and effective legal and institutional support to give tangible effect to constitutional priorities. As such, the enactment of sexual violence and homophobic rape of black lesbian women represent forms of discipline and social control of black lesbian sexuality. These enactments are embedded within justificatory (Tamale, 2014) and pathologising (Hames, 2011) cultural narratives that reflect the continued subjectification and objectification of black women. Public discourse constructs black lesbian women as being deviant, due to their perceived gender and sexual nonconformity (Morrissey, 2013). The continued use of the discourse of “corrective” rape (as opposed to homophobic rape) in communities, media reports and scholarly articles serves to legitimise the practice (Hames, 2011). Furthermore, the sensationalist nature of media focus on crimes against black lesbian women (Hames, 2011) reinforces the discourses of blackness and violence, and discursively constructs black lesbian women as disempowered, powerless victims (Morrissey, 2013). Boonzaier and Zway (2015) argue that the discourse of “risk” presents black lesbian women as “perpetual victims” (p. 8) who lack agency.

One of the ironic effects of constitutional recognition of sexual diversity has been the creation of conditions of possibilities that enable the emergence of the “othered” citizen and the continued fixation on the sexuality of the “other”. This is reminiscent of colonial fixation on the black body – what Gqola (2008) terms “paradoxical hypervisibility” – the heightened focus on the physical and the external that is reminiscent of the “hyper-embodied” colonial “objectification” of the African body and the simultaneous invisibilisation of black lesbian subjectivities (p. 47). Thus, although the human rights discourse used in the South African Constitution and legislation speaks to sexual and gender diversity, the embedded power of coloniality continues to establish white heterosexuality as the colonial “original” against which “othered” sexualities and genders are performed and defined (Butler, 1990) within an ordered and hierarchical modern system (Maldonado-Torres, 2017). The lesbian and lesbian sexuality come to be constituted as the sexually deviant (postcolonial) other in post-apartheid South Africa through this awkward tension. In this paper, we ask how South Africa’s colonial and apartheid history shapes the embodied experiences of full citizenship among black lesbian women in contemporary South Africa.

The research context

This paper draws from five focus groups that were part of a multi-site, qualitative study that explored the intersections of identity, power and violence in the lives of black lesbian women in public and private spaces in South Africa. Women who were or had been in same-sex intimate relationships of an emotional and/or sexual nature were invited to participate in focus groups. As a feminist study, we challenge dominant cultural narratives that construct black lesbian sexuality as unintelligible (Butler, 1990) against gender and sexual (hetero) normativities. Through a decolonial feminist reading of black women’s subjectivities, we privilege the perspective of the “othered” (Mama, 1995; Tamale, 2011) by centring the focus on the lived experiences of black lesbian women themselves. This marks a deliberate reclaiming of personhood to disrupt colonial discourses of depersonalised and anonymous black women.

Analysis and discussion

Lugones (2010) argues that the dichotomous and hierarchical logic of categories is “central to modern, colonial, capitalist thinking about race, gender, and sexuality” (p. 742). The women drew on a strong discourse of “us and them” which foregrounded how power relations are interwoven in social hierarchies that construct and position black lesbian women as different and “othered”. Social hierarchies centred on gender, race and class differences, and political histories and activism. Although nuanced at times, race featured as a consistent thread in their talk. We suggest that this underlying narrative points to the centrality of race, and the enduring legacy of the coloniality of power (Quijano, 2007) in contemporary South Africa. We explore these discursive tensions in the women’s accounts of their experiences in social, institutional, NGO and activist/community spaces.

Concluding remarks

This paper explored the notion of citizenship for black lesbian women in contemporary South Africa. In their narratives of their experiences in various public spaces, the women drew on a strong discourse of “us and them” in which categories of difference centred on race, gender, class, and political history and activism. Their sense of alienation and erasure and their constructions of black lesbian sexuality as invisible and anonymous suggest that the embodiment of full citizenship among black lesbian women in contemporary, neoliberal South Africa is constrained. As the women had articulated, geographical location and language are imbued with socio-historical and political struggles associated with race and class, the intersections of which shape black lesbian sexuality and citizenship (Stephens, 2018).

Cognisant of the narrative of race that permeated much of the women’s talk, we argue that the neoliberalist, rights-based post-apartheid South African context presents fertile ground for the coloniality of power (Quijano, 2007). We contend that the rights-based discourse of egalitarianism has established a protective veil that obscures the raced, classed “us/them” hierarchical divides that continue to reproduce and maintain existing dominant discourses of masculinity and whiteness as privileged and entitled. McIntosh (2015) asserts that a key feature of privilege is that it goes unnoticed. Within the South African context, privilege is closely linked to class and material privilege. Ironically, the current focus on human rights detracts attention from practices that are sustained by historical privilege. While the brutal rape and murder of black lesbian women may be argued to evoke the colonial violence on the black body (Gqola, 2008; Tamale, 2011), other forms of violence against black lesbian women go unnoticed. We argue that the construction of black lesbian women as lesser citizens represents one such form of violence.

The women’s accounts highlighted how experiences of belonging and disconnect are shifting in different contexts. We argue that this draws attention to the heterogeneity of sexually and gender diverse identities (Irwin, 2008). Furthermore, their accounts disrupt the dominant cultural constructions of the gay white male identity. In pointing to differences in subjectivities, the women allude to the ways in which black subjectivity may be deployed in an “infra-political” way, that is, as an expression of resistant/active subjectivity and agency (Lugones, 2010). Agency marks an important decolonial turn (Lugones, 2010) that disrupts “colonial epistemes that confine groups to sameness and anonymity” (Gqola, 2010, p. 11). Decolonisation is about praxis (Kessi & Boonzaier, 2018). Thus, the lived experiences of black lesbian women and the resistances that they offer to coloniality provide new ways to think about black subjectivity and agency (Rutherford, 2018) as they actively subvert dominant ideologies and cultural practices that position black lesbian women as lesser citizens.

We argue that current conceptualisations of full citizenship in contemporary South Africa require a reframing that recognises the coloniality of power and the heterogeneity of marginalised and invisibilised subjectivities as a way of decolonising everyday praxis. We suggest that a decolonial feminist approach to the intersections of (black) sexuality and citizenship offers an appropriate starting point to critique the extent of constitutional reform in the context of globalisation and internationalisation. Such a critique is envisioned as one that disrupts the uncomfortable silence around race and class and seeks to bring to the fore, marginalised and “othered” subjectivities and identities.