From childs to heroes: constructions of masculinity in the African National Congress during Apartheid and post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

In line with feminist analyses of the gendered dimensions of domination, the present research work is aimed at developing an intersectional understanding of the processes through which the figures of the “manly dominant” and the “emasculated native” are constructed and the ways they shape successive resistance and nation-building processes. For the South African case in particular, this research work provides a qualitative analysis of the tension between, on the one hand, the apartheid project as a driver of black men’s emasculation and, on the other, constructions of masculinity embedded in both responses and resistances to it and the subsequent nation-building process, with attention payed to the African National Congress. In this respect, it identifies the apartheid’s politics of racialisation and spatial and sexual seggregation as determinants of hierarchic relationships between white dominant and black marginalised and subordinate - and ultimately emasculated - masculinities. Furthermore, and in relation to the African National Congress, the present research work sheds light on the formation and enactment of constructions of masculinity aimed at reasserting black men’s virility and embodying the new South Africa in the context of nation-building.