Intimacy, labour and sexual violence: Nama and Baster women in Namaqualand’s copper mining district, c.1879–1900

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the intersection of labour, sexual violence and intimacy in the late nineteenth-century copper mining district of Namaqualand, focusing on the impact of male labourers’ brutalities on local Nama and Baster women. Small in scale, lacking state interference and offering vast employment opportunities to women, Namaqualand’s mines and the towns that grew around them were a key destination for local female labour migration. Due to these unique characteristics, however, women were also exposed to unwanted attention and sexual abuse by male labourers, particularly miners. Women used the Cape’s legal system to protest, but the indifference shown towards their suffering by colonial officials and the public allowed men to use violence without much restraint, rendering women’s legal efforts futile. Ultimately, sexual violence reinforced gendered and racial hierarchies, restricting women’s socio-economic agency and autonomy. The article argues that these dynamics highlight the violent (re)shaping of colonial and patriarchal power asymmetries in the north-western Cape between two major colonial wars after the stabilization of the northern frontier by means of armed conquest.