Lecture 23: Violence and On Violence PDF

FamilyID=Office_ArchiveTorn HST2047S LECTURE 23: VIOLENCE AND ON VIOLENCE JACQUELINE ROSE INSIDIOUS, INVISIBLE VIOLENCE Rose begins her article by arguing that the most insidious forms of violence are often those that we cannot see. January 2017 passing of the ‘Global Gag R...

FamilyID=Office_ArchiveTorn HST2047S LECTURE 23: VIOLENCE AND ON VIOLENCE JACQUELINE ROSE INSIDIOUS, INVISIBLE VIOLENCE Rose begins her article by arguing that the most insidious forms of violence are often those that we cannot see. January 2017 passing of the ‘Global Gag Rule.’ This signing of a piece of paper by white men in a government building in the United States, meant an increase in deaths by unsafe abortions by a plethora of women across the developing world. She continues by discussing other examples of insidious violence that we cannot see. If we expand our understanding of violence in this way, what are other examples of this type of violence? VIOLENCE OF QUIET CONDITIONS Post-apartheid South Africa  different forms of violence, intimate and historic, rearrange themselves and spread throughout society. But it is only in examining history, that these contemporary forms of violence might be understood. Cecil John Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896, founder of the territory in Southern Africa he named Rhodesia, believed that Anglo-Saxons were the ‘first race.’ Rhodes who propelled the British into Africa, persuading them that expansion and exports of instruments of violence was the key to protecting investments By violence here, Rose means the subjugation and exploitation of the native people. South Africa indicates that violence never belongs solely in the present as it cannot be separated from the historic legacies of oppression which trail behind it. For instance, it was the 1913 Natives Land Act enacted by the British, which laid the work for racial segregation and eventually apartheid. It was Reagan and Thatcher who made the decision to allow multinational corporations into the global south, which has made possible racialized economic injustices that continue to scar the nation. This is the violence of ‘quiet conditions.’ GBSV: A SOUTH AFRICAN EPIDEMIC History  Hegemony of patriarchy and male dominance which manifests as violence. The post-apartheid dispensation welcomed a new flag, a new anthem and a new constitution, but violence against women and girls is the price paid for the ongoing inequality and injustice which have snatched away the dreams of many. Today, South Africa has one of the worst rates of sexual violence. More than 100 rapes are reported daily and a woman is killed every three hours. In Sept. 2019, women marched on the streets of Cape Town against such violence to hand Cyril Ramaphosa a memorandum which called for a state of emergency. This was in response to Uyinene’s death, a 19-year-old UCT student who was raped and murdered by a post office employee who had tricked her into returning to the post office after closing. Days before Reeva Steenkamp was killed by Oscar Pistorius, on February 2 nd, 2013, a 17-year-old Black girl, Anene Booysen was gang raped and disemboweled in Bredasdorp in the Western Cape. The cruel disparity between the neglected black woman’s body and that of her glamorous white counterpart is not new. #AmINext In SA, the hashtag of the slogan against sexual violence is #AmINext. Similarly to Steenkamp’s racial solidarity, it is a hashtag that cuts across racial lines to make violence against women the responsibility and potential destiny of anyone. The hashtag draws in everyone regardless of race, class or status. Rose argues that South Africa indicates that violence never belongs solely in the present as it cannot be separated from the historic legacies of oppression which trail behind it. Natives Land Act – Contemporary Spatial Apartheid in Cities Hegemony of Colonial Patriarchy – Contemporary GBV & femicide Thatcher, Reagan and Neoliberalism – Contemporary Global Hierarchy & Class inequalities What are other examples you can think of?  Nation Building Through Sports Disappointment after end of apartheid, no redistribution of resources The government employed sport as a means of restoring faith to a ‘self-doubting’ nation. Hence, the euphoria surrounding the Rugby World Cup in 1995. An impossible burden of idealization is laid on the heroes of the sporting world, because sport is one of the tactics that was used to unite a divided nation. Oscar Pistorius is a former South African athlete Oscar Pistorius, hence, was held up as proof of who competed in the Paralympics and Olympics as the win in the fight for social justice. If a a sprinter. He is a double amputee who was known disabled man could succeed in South Africa, as the ‘Blade Runner’ due to the prostheses he wore and then on a global stage, first at the on his legs while competing. Paralympics and then the Olympics, so could anyone else. He was convicted of killing his then girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Oscar Pistorius Trial On 3 March 2014, Oscar Pistorius trial began. It was presided over by Judge Thokozile Matilda Maspia. She found Pistorius not guilty of murder, but guilty of culpable homicide. After an appeal she increased the sentence by one year. After a subsequent appeal the sentence was doubled to 13 years and five months. Judge Msipa was met with numerous She was admitted as an advocate in 1991 as one of only three black misogynistic and patronizing vitriol. women at the Johannesburg bar. She was appointed judge in the She was dubbed an ‘incompetent Black Transvaal Provincial Division of the High Court in 1998, the second woman,’ she was taunted with being ‘blind and deaf’ and she required black woman to be appointed to the bench. Judge Msipa was often around the clock security from the known for giving maximum sentences especially in cases of GBV court. Nameless, Faceless, Black Intruder “This famous trial sits at the crux of violence in our times. First, because a woman was killed by a man in the privacy of a home. It is therefore, a case of justice for women. Secondly, because it contains at its core questions of race and disability which have been the focus of so much discrimination and hatred. And finally, because the trial turned crucially on intent…” p.234. If Pistorius was not aware that he was firing shots into the bathroom at Steenkamp and believed that he was shooting at an offender, then the charge of premeditation would fall. The second possibility was seen as the lesser offense. Not only because of it then being ‘putative private defense’ which would make the shooting a legitimate response to fear. But also, what is largely unspoken, and silent, is that it also would have been a lesser offense because in the second instance we can be certain that the person imagined and killed in the bathroom would be imagined as Black. The faceless intruder of his imagination had a black face, because the fact was that for white people, the face of crime is black. In an article for the Sunday Times, Margie Orford was quick to point this out. The imagery drawn on in court of the threatening, nameless and faceless, armed and dangerous black intruder is simply a reclaiming of the old white fear of the swart gevaar [black peril]. Race and the Toilet: A history A deeper understanding of the violence surrounding this case lies in examining the history. Pistorius claimed to be shooting at an imagined intruder in the bathroom, one we can presume, was imagined as black. The significance of the bathroom is one Rose draws back into history. Under apartheid law, the rules for white private residences were explicit: helpers’ quarters had to be across the yard with their own toilets. There were to be no shared walls and above all no shared ablution facilities across races. The body fluids of different races bodies must not mix. In many ways in the imagery of the black intruder in the bathroom, we find the trial drawing on the country’s legacy of fear and violence. Pistorius in his defense does not realize that when he says he imagined an intruder behind the door he re- enacts a strand of the nation’s cruelest past. Firing at such close range meant that whoever he imagined on the other side of the door would be a body on the bathroom floor. Manipulating Gender and A History of Guns The defense also drew on gender, by attempting to align Pistorius with the vulnerability of a woman in two instances. Firstly, by claiming that when he is scared and screams he sounds like a woman. But also the discrimination and disadvantage he would have faced from society as a disabled man is ironically, compared to the abuse a woman faces at the hands of an intimate partner, with his shooting being parallel to the day the abused woman fights back against her oppressor. Fortunately, the judge dismissed these ideas as nonsensical. Another instance in which Rose draws on history is with regards to guns. Between Pistorius, his father, two uncles and his grandfather, his family owned fifty-five guns. On one instance after an altercation with the police Pistorius shot from his firearm through the sunroof of his car. The Afrikaner had conquered Southern Africa with guns. This is a heritage the Pistorius clan were proud of. Guns have been used as tools of violence in the nation, both to maintain apartheid, as well as to disrupt it. The violence of the gun draws back to a terrible time in the nation’s history. Whilst it is reasonable to fear crime, most victims of violent crime are often the poor and in nine out of ten burglary cases no one is harmed. In addition, barely five percent of the population own guns. His actions not justifiable by fear.  In conclusion, the Oscar Pistorius case provides an example of a space where history helps us understand the violence at the centre of the case. Race, gender and disability are present in the court room and drawn on in Pistorius’s defense. Indicating an attempt to defend violent actions, with a violent history embedded deep within the psyche. This case sits at the intersection of two poles: violence against women and race- based fear. If Pistorius knew it was Reeva in the bathroom, it is a textbook case of domestic violence. If, as he claims, he thought it was an intruder, it reflects a defense which draws on an irrational fear of black people and that justifies killing black bodies