Abstract
This article explores sexual violence in male prisons in South Africa. It focuses on the social meanings and identities that surround sexual violence, particularly the ideas of manhood that shape both the perpetration of sexual abuses and how it is dealt with – or not. The dominant inmate culture endorses prison rape and long-term relationships of sexual abuse, largely through legitimising violence and through replicating societal notions of gender and sexuality. The Department of Correctional Services and its staff have so far failed to meaningfully engage with the problem of sexual violence in prisons, or to provide adequate support for victims. There are indications that the department may be beginning to address the problem, but past attempts to get the issue of sexual violence recognised, provide cautions as to how this should be done. Specifically, there is a need to ensure that damaging and brutal notions of masculinity are challenged rather than accentuated in the process of addressing the problem.
Highlights
Sexual violence in prisons is a global problem and one typically marginalised by correctional administrations and research on prisons, with the result that we do not have a clear understanding of its true extent
Without an appreciation of the cultural workings involved in the dynamics of sexual violence we are unlikely to make much progress in tackling it
In 2004 and 2005 the Centre for the Study of Violence (CSVR) surveyed juvenile inmates in a Gauteng correctional centre (n=311) through administered questionnaires that posed questions about their experiences of violence, sex and sexual violence in prison, as well as about more general features of their personal lives and experiences in prison, including issues related to HIV and AIDS, sexuality and gender.[3]
Summary
This article explores sexual violence in male prisons in South Africa. It focuses on the social meanings and identities that surround sexual violence, the ideas of manhood that shape both the perpetration of sexual abuses and how it is dealt with – or not. During 2000 and 2001, multiple-session focus groups with young offenders were conducted along with a focus group and individual in-depth interviews with ex-prisoners in Gauteng (n=23).[2] based in Gauteng, some respondents had been incarcerated in prisons in other provinces as well This was exploratory research that sought to understand the nature and circumstances of sex and sexual violence taking place in men's prisons. 'Wyfies' (who have had this feminised identity imposed on them) are seen as the means to the 'men's' sexual gratification and, in the majority of cases, 'marriages' become the place of ongoing sexual abuse for 'wyfies' While these marriages are abruptly and brutally brought about through rape and various degrees of coercion (many of which fall into the legal definition of rape determined in the Sexual Offences Act, and implied through its definition of consent), in more than a few ways they mimic heterosexual marriages outside prison. While these discourses work to make the violence seem normal and acceptable (or hide it altogether) at the same time as stigmatising victims, there are other forms of violence that are central to establishing identities that are desirable and validated in inmate culture
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