Rape: A South African Nightmare

Front Cover
MF Books Joburg, 2015 - Nature - 192 pages
Why has South Africa been labelled the 'world's rape capital'? What don't we as South Africans understand about rape? In Rape: A South African Nightmare, Pumla Dineo Gqola unpacks the complex relationship South Africa has with rape by paying attention to the patterns and trends of rape, asking what we can learn from famous cases and why South Africa is losing the battle against rape. This highly readable book leaps off the dusty book shelves of academia by asking penetrating questions and examining the shock belief syndrome that characterises public responses to rape, the female fear factory, boy rape, the rape of Black lesbians and violent masculinities. The book interrogates the high profile rape trials of Jacob Zuma, Bob Hewitt, Makhaya Ntini and Baby Tshepang as well as the feminist responses to the Anene Booysen case.

About the author (2015)

Pumla Dineo Gqola is the author of What is Slavery to Me? Postcolonial/Slave memory in Post-apartheid South Africa (published by Wits Press in 2010), A Renegade Called Simphiwe (published by MFBooks Joburg in 2013) and editor of Regarding Winnie: Feminism, race and nation in global representations of Winnie Madikizela Mandela (forthcoming with Cassava Republic Press). She has written non-fiction and opinion pieces for Pambazuka, Mail & Guardian, The Weekender and City Press as well as the British publications BBC Focus on Africa, SABLE and Drum (UK) and short stories in literary journals and books published in South Africa, the USA and the UK.

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