Masculinities at War: The South African Border War and the Textual Representation of the “Moffie”

Abstract

SummaryThis article takes as its point of departure the discursive representation of the moffie (or “faggot”) in border literature (or grensliteratuur) that was produced after the fall of apartheid in South Africa. By investigating the textual representation of sexuality and gender during South Africa’s Border War, this article shows how autobiographical and non-fiction texts that are produced by former army conscripts still conform to ideals surrounding white, cisgender heterosexuality. Understanding war as a physical and discursive practice, this article is interested in how, in a contemporary South African context, the phenomenon of the Border War is drawn upon in certain literary works as a means to reconcile the author with a changing political system. However, as this article demonstrates, this process of textual retribution is still skewed towards sexual and gendered biases and, as a result, a narrative emerges in these works that centres on the experiences of the white, cisgender, heterosexual man, with his sexual and gendered “other”, the moffie, presented as menacing, treacherous and disgraceful. In this manner, works of non-fiction that were produced after the fall of apartheid and that offers a retrospective viewpoint on the Border War are often marked by the violent inscription of homosexual and transgender subjects as both inferior and weak, as well as deceitful and dangerous.