South Africa's Hidden War: Histories of Sexual and Gender-based Violence from Apartheid to the Present

基于性别的暴力和性暴力是南非今天面临的一些最重要的问题，该国经常被认为是非战争社会中性暴力发生率最高的国家之一。这种暴力在公共话语中往往被框定为后种族隔离时代的“危机”，而且在目前一直比过去更糟糕--更丰富、更残酷、更厚颜无耻。然而，这种框架鼓励了对过去性暴力的历史健忘症，忽视了这种暴力的长期轨迹及其影响。南非的隐藏战争是一个历史研究项目，探讨如何基于性别的暴力和性暴力的概念化，经验，并在南非种族隔离和早期后种族隔离时期，从20世纪40年代到21世纪初的反应。在进行这项研究时，该项目还寻求为研究过去的暴力行为制定创新方法和道德最佳做法。这项研究的结果将被用来弥合那些研究和努力防止南非这种暴力行为的人之间现有的学科和部门分歧。该项目将促进当代对妇女过去生活和经历的更多了解，并促进学术界、活动家、非政府组织和预防暴力组织对南非目前基于性别的暴力问题的更长历史的更多认识。由于其普遍性，当代南非的性暴力是人类学家，心理学家和公共卫生学者的热门研究课题，大多数学者专注于后种族隔离时期和男性为什么实施暴力的关键问题。在寻求理解当今基于性别的暴力的高发生率时，这些工作往往转向过去寻找答案，在该国漫长的殖民主义，种族主义和国家认可的暴力历史中找到答案。然而，性暴力本身的历史--过去人们是如何理解、经历和反对性暴力的--仍然很少有人探讨，特别是在种族隔离时期。因此，强奸被视为种族隔离的遗产，而不是种族隔离期间发生的事情。妇女的声音和经验也被忽视在大多数这类研究中，往往侧重于男子和男子气概。《南非隐藏的战争》通过探索妇女自己如何叙述和记住自己生活和社区中过去的性暴力，回应了研究中的这些差距。这项研究是通过一种创新的跨学科方法进行的，包括三个主要方面：档案研究，用于追踪不同历史行为者如何理解、辩论和解决性暴力问题;对多代和多个社区的妇女进行口述历史访谈，探讨她们在种族隔离及其后果的更广泛记忆中对性暴力的意义;与妇女一起参加焦点小组和讲习班，以调查她们自己对性暴力的概念、施暴者和解决问题的手段。该项目与当地非政府组织和预防暴力组织的直接合作促进了这一方法。解决南非现有性暴力研究的不足之处是当务之急，以确保该国目前基于性别的性暴力“危机”得到适当的历史化，并将妇女自己的声音和过去的经历纳入奖学金和暴力预防工作。通过其计划的学术成果，影响活动和数字档案，该项目将对南非性暴力的长期历史产生持久的影响，这些历史是由地球仪的性别和暴力历史学家，南非暴力的跨学科学者以及参与南非当代妇女运动和暴力预防工作的个人和组织理解的。

Gender-based and sexual violence are some of the most significant issues facing South Africa today, with the country often cited as having one of the highest rates of sexual violence for a society not at war. This violence is often framed in public discourse as a post-apartheid 'crisis' and as something that is consistently worse in the present - more profuse, brutal, and brazen - than it was in the past. Yet such a framing has encouraged historical amnesia about past sexual violence and ignores the longer trajectories of such violence and its impacts. South Africa's Hidden War is a historical research project which explores how gender-based and sexual violence were conceptualised, experienced, and responded to in South Africa across the apartheid and early post-apartheid periods, from the 1940s to early 2000s. In conducting this research, the project also seeks to develop innovative methodologies and ethical best practice for researching violence in the past. The results of this research will be used to bridge existing disciplinary and sectoral divides between those who research and work to prevent such violence in South Africa. The project will foster greater contemporary understanding of women's past lives and experiences and promote greater awareness of the longer histories of South Africa's current gender-based violence problem amongst academics, activists, NGOs, and violence prevention organisations. Due to its prevalence, contemporary sexual violence in South Africa is a popular topic of research amongst anthropologists, psychologists, and scholars of public health, with most scholars focusing on the post-apartheid period and the key question of why men perpetrate violence. In seeking to understand today's high rates of gender-based violence, such work often turns to the past for answers, finding them in the country's long histories of colonialism, racism, and state-sanctioned violence. However, the history of sexual violence itself - how it was understood, experienced, and acted against in the past - remains little explored, particularly over the apartheid period. Rape is consequently seen as a legacy of, rather than something that occurred during, apartheid. Women's voices and experiences are also overlooked in much of this research, which tends to focus on men and masculinity. South Africa's Hidden War responds to these gaps in research by exploring how women themselves narrate and remember past sexual violence in their own lives and communities. This research is conducted through an innovative and interdisciplinary methodology consisting of three main strands: archival research, used to trace how sexual violence has been understood, debated, and addressed by various historical actors over time; oral history interviews with women across multiple generations and communities to explore the meanings they attach to sexual violence within their broader memories of apartheid and its aftermaths; and focus groups and workshops with women to investigate their own conceptualisations of sexual violence, its perpetrators, and means of addressing the problem. This methodology is facilitated by the project's direct collaboration with local NGOs and violence prevention organisations. Addressing the shortcomings of existing research on sexual violence in South Africa is a matter of urgency to ensure that the country's current gender-based and sexual violence 'crisis' is properly historicised and that women's own voices and past experiences are incorporated into scholarship and violence prevention work. Through its planned academic outputs, impact activities, and digital archive, this project will have a lasting impact on how the longer histories of sexual violence in South Africa are understood by historians of gender and violence across the globe, interdisciplinary scholars of violence in South Africa, and individuals and organisations involved in South Africa's contemporary women's movement and violence prevention efforts.