The Politics of Sex (PERSPECTIVE)

By Jane Duncan

Recent revelations that (South African) Sports Minister Filike Mbalula had sex with a women, Joyce Molamu, while he was separated from his wife, have prompted public debate about how public the private lives of politicians should be. Mbalula has called on young people to be faithful to their partners in the context of the fight against HIV/ Aids.
Black working class women suffered triple oppression by virtue of their race, class and gender. Credit: M Bociurkiw/HUMNEWS

Media commentators have justified publication of the story on the basis that it was in the public interest to know about his hypocrisy, as it raises questions about his trustworthiness as a politician.

But South African popular opinion seems to be curiously impervious to these concerns. If it was, then Jacob Zuma's presidency would never have been supported, given his own questionable conduct on matters sexual. Clearly, many feel that what politicians do in their private time is their own business, as long as they perform their official duties. 

Some even believe that sex is one of the perks of being in power: as one commentator in a weekly newspaper stated, ‘…all I can say is that ministers eat. They are in a position of power. I’d also eat if I were him.”

Such behaviour and attitudes seem to have become the natural order of things in political life. Yet this natural order does not seem to apply to women; how often are women ministers caught using their positions of power to ‘eat’? Why has it become socially accepted, even expected for men to use power to get sex? And why do women like Molamu play along?

The widespread tolerance of male dishonesty on matters sexual implies a society that lacks moral codes around sex. Unfortunately, the terrain of morality has been occupied by social and religious conservatives, who tend to support gender inequality while despising gays and lesbians. The concept of a revolutionary morality based on care and respect for others - and which found expression in liberation politics - has largely been lost. 

South Africa has emerged from a deeply conservative Christian nationalist society which repressed sexuality. Black working class women suffered triple oppression by virtue of their race, class and gender. 

In the struggle against apartheid, many activists recognised that the problems that women experienced in their personal lives were not individual experiences only, but were as a result of systemic, gendered oppression. In line with the dictum that 'the personal is political', women were not belittled for bringing personal issues into the political arena and men were encouraged to change how they related to women. 

This created a moral climate where women were treated as equals and an expectation of behaviour that recognised their humanity. As a result, activists refused to close their eyes to abusive sexual practices. 

Many organisations and unions also set up childcare facilities and other support networks to ensure women’s participation, at the same time advocating for the socialisation of these activities to remove the burden of unwaged domestic labour on women. 

It seems fair to say that the promise of the struggle to remake gender relations has not been realised. While formal equality for women and the right to sexual orientation have been recognised in the Constitution, and women are now able to access abortion on demand, the sorts of social and cultural changes that many hoped for have not occured. 

As many gender activists feared, there has been a backsliding on gender equality under Jacob Zuma's administration. The global economic crisis, which coincided with Zuma's rise to power, is gendered in its nature and its effects, in that it has widened the gap between men and women. 

The number of economically active women has dropped and many have been forced back into the home, which has made them more vulnerable to gender-based violence. The capitalist system will concede demands for equality, including gender equality, fairly easily during periods of economic growth. But in recessionary periods, regressive ideologies that emphasise inequality, including sexism and homophobia, become more pronounced.

The system actively promotes these ideologies, as they provide ideological justifications for keeping women out of the workforce and confining them to a reproductive role to rear the next generation of labourers. Forms of sexual expression that unsettle these ideologies are demonised as unnatural.

Either through acts of commission or ommission, the Zuma administration has reproduced conservative sexual ideologies so typical of recessionary periods by actively discouraging open discussions of sexuality and allowing the demonisation of alternative sexualities. 

For instance, a recent amendment to the Film and Publications Amendment Bill subjected certain forms of sexual content to pre-publication censorship by the government-controlled Film and Publications Board, ostensibly to protect children. Thankfully, this provision was declared unconstitutional recently.

The growth of these ideologies has had deadly consequences for many women and lesbians, with violence against women and corrective rapes and even murders of lesbians increasing.

While it is difficult to map changes to the social organisation of sex during the crisis, it should be anticipated that transactional sex - where sex is used as a currency - has become more prevalent. This is because women’s economic vulnerability makes it harder for them to maintain control over their own bodies and assert an autonomous sexuality and easier for men to define the terms and conditions in which sex takes place. 

This is not to say that women are incapable of practicing sexual agency, but the balance of power in the bedroom and in society generally still largely favours men. By seducing Mbalula, the Molamu's of the world are not practicing sexual freedom. Rather they are reproducing abusive sexual practices that conflate sex with power: practices that will backfire on the very women who use them in time.

The social conservatism of Jacob Zuma’s administration has made it more difficult for women to challenge gender oppression, leading to the depoliticisation of relationship problems. Women’s demands for cultural change have become muted. 

Under Zuma, heterosexual men largely define the terms and conditions on which sex is practiced, and heterosexuality has become the normal, even desirable, expression of the sexual emotion. To this extent, he has ushered in a new era of heteronormativity. 

Hidebound, ideologically backward mentalities around the role of women in society are not being challenged, which creates a climate where more men, including Zuma's male Ministers, use their positions of power to 'eat', irrespective of the pain and humiliation caused to their partners. 

Taking their cue from the top, even men who consider themselves to be politically progressive find it all too easy to lapse into sexual behaviour where they too 'eat', rather than promoting more just and respectful human relationships. There is simply too little pressure on them to change. 

Why has this backsliding happened? University of the Witwatersrand academic Shireen Hassim has argued that in the transition to democracy, the women’s movement allowed itself to be pulled into focussing on democratising the state, assuming that when more women were represented in official structures, then gender equality would automatically flow from there. 

This approach led to the institutionalisation of the gender movement, and the transformative grassroots organisation of women, using mass mobilisation and confrontation, withered away. 

A further factor in the demobilisation of the grassroots gender movement was that the African National Congress (ANC), including its Women’s League, rejected arguments for an autonomous women’s movement, claiming that the ANC was the only home for progressive gender politics. These shifts led to changes that benefited elite women primarily, with black working class women still remaining the most socially, economically and politically marginalised constituency. 

South Africa lacks a national social movement that generalises women’s individual experiences, challenges gendered abuse of power in the workplace or in the home, and struggles to change the systemic conditions that disadvantage women. Matters that were considered private under apartheid have become private once again. 

A free society encourages sexual relations that are based on free choice, mutual respect and interpersonal responsibility. Clearly, South Africa has some way to travel before it is free.

Professor Duncan is Highway Africa Chair of Media and Information Society, School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University. This article first appeared on the website of the South Africa Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS)