Sobering inaugural lecture unpacks years of research on gender-based violence, femicide

“How was it that this girl from Mitchell’s Plain came to do this work at a place like the University of Cape Town (UCT), where her experiences have vacillated between the extremes of alienation, isolation and exclusion to those of love, of joy, of belonging and of healing?”

It was with these words that Professor Floretta Boonzaier launched a gripping and sobering inaugural lecture, titled “Finding hope and healing while researching violence: Decolonial feminist explorations into gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide”. Held in the Chris Hani Lecture Theatre on upper campus on Wednesday, 11 September, the lecture marked Professor Boonzaier’s ascent to full professorship – a highlight in a scholar’s research career. The event also coincided with her 20th year in the academy at UCT; a celebration and milestone of its own.

For Boonzaier, the question of what it means to profess as black and as a woman has an answer of two interwoven stories: the story of her scholarship and the story of her. And when she contemplated which story best described her journey towards becoming a professor, she said she toyed with the idea of focusing solely on her scholarship. But she decided otherwise.

“I realised that doing that would be telling an incomplete story. A story that would leave out the large and important part of the narrative of how I came to do the work that I do,” she said.

So, Boonzaier took the audience on a journey that highlighted her years of research into the scourge of GBV and femicide in South Africa, and the role of the media when reporting on these atrocities. She also offered some valuable insight into the origins of her feminism.

Intro to feminism

As is the case in many families in South Africa and on the continent, Boonzaier said, feminism was practised in her home, but the word was never used. She learned the true meaning of feminism from her mother, Carol Veronica Boonzaier, who she described as “the strongest, most steadfast woman I know”.

She also learned feminism from many other women in her family who held the family together, and who displayed massive strength and resilience in the face of state and other forms of violence that inevitably shaped their lives. Boonzaier also learned feminism from the women in the different Cape Flats communities where she lived, in Heideveld and Mitchell’s Plain. Similarly, these women held it together while their families and communities were falling apart. And while doing so, they ensured that their loved ones were fed, provided shelter and meals to those who were destitute, and raised and educated others’ children when they were unable to do so themselves.

“I learned feminism from respected members of these different communities, [while] doing work underground to support the struggle against apartheid.”

“I learned feminism from respected members of these different communities, [while] doing work underground to support the struggle against apartheid. The feminism I [learned] was grounded in my own experiences of injustice and inequality, of poverty, of witnessing violence and trauma around me,” she said.

“It was learned from seeing the devastating effects of historical forms of trauma and the many psychological scars it has left on people around me.”

The early stages of her research career

When she started out as an early-career researcher whose work focused primarily on intimate partner violence, Boonzaier said, one of the questions that regularly occupied her mind was society’s obsession with why women stay in abusive relationships.

The question was everywhere, she said, and every article she read blamed women who stayed with their abusive partners – locating the question of abuse with the abused women rather than with the men who perpetuate that abuse. So, she shifted the question from ‘why do women stay in abusive relationships’ to deeper, more contextually relevant questions about these relationships. Boonzaier wanted to understand the context in which women in abusive relationships find themselves, how women stay, and how they navigate these relationships after suffering violence at the hands of a partner.

Her research found that women find multiple ways to resist violence, and to resist the gendered expectations of them as women. Their stories reflected the contradictory nature of their experiences. And her work showed that women straddle the gap between society’s social and gendered expectations of them and their own personal aspirations for independence and strength, which highlights their resistance.

“In my doctoral work, I was interested in the kinds of relational narratives told about violence in heterosexual relationships. I was interested [to find out] how two people in a relationship – with a man who is violent – talk about this relationship. How do their stories differ, where does it stay the same [and] how do they talk about violence and its impact?” she asked.

The power of storytelling

As she unpacked the question of women’s agency and resistance, Boonzaier said, her research next focused on how women relay their experiences of violence and abuse, and how these stories shape how they see themselves in the world.

“We were interested in how one asks about violence in the lives of women, where violence [perpetrated by] a partner is just one of the many things, one of the many difficulties that they face as women. How do you ask about violence in the lives of poor, black, marginalised women?” she said.

Opening safe spaces for storytelling aided this process. She said it allowed women to share the complexities of what it means to be poor, black and a woman, while facing intimate partner violence.

“Stories, we argued, are important for the expression of experience of identity.”

“Stories, we argued, are important for the expression of experience and identity. Telling stories about [the] violence they experienced allowed women to represent their inner realities, to interpret their past, to understand their present and to envision their futures,” she said. “Telling stories on their own terms allowed women the opportunity to reclaim their narratives in ways that challenge dominant ideas of what an abused woman is supposed to be.”

Stories as a means of resistance

During these and subsequent engagements, Boonzaier discovered that women’s stories and their experiences challenge the popular image regularly painted of a passive and helpless woman. Instead, she said, their experiences reveal “counter-stories” that challenge society’s focus on physical violence as the only form of legitimate violence. She said women indicated that they experience psychological abuse as being more harmful than physical abuse.

To those on the outside, women portray themselves as strong and in control of their lives. Yet, Boonzaier said, they are deeply limited by the intersectional forms of oppression such as gender, race and class that shape their lives.

“Collectively, this work was important for showing how – despite the fact that women survivors of violence often experience shame – women also use their stories as a means for resistance and empowerment.”

“Collectively, this work was important for showing how – despite the fact that women survivors of violence often experience shame – women also use their stories as a means for resistance and empowerment, even in the face of economic and other difficulties. They find ways to centre the feminist narrative of resistance against men’s violence,” she said.

“And they offer us an alternative reading of the popular image of abused women.”

A sobering recollection

As her lecture unfolded, Boonzaier also discussed the way in which the South African media report on GBV and intimate partner violence, and highlighted one example. She took her audience back to February 2013, when 17-year-old Anene Booysen was raped and murdered in Bredasdorp in the Western Cape’s Overberg region.

From day one, Boonzaier said, Booysen’s story was etched in her mind – and it still is. And when the South African Journal of Psychology issued a special call for contributions a few years after the murder, Boonzaier felt compelled to contribute to this tragic, heart-wrenching story. As she combed through media reports, she said, she realised that while so much had been written about Booysen’s death, the public knew very little about her life.

“All we really knew was the recollection of her movements on the night of the murder and the very graphic details about how she died,” she said.

With analysis, Boonzaier said, her research demonstrated that while reporting on Booysen’s murder, the media used colonial legacies that hyper-visiblise the bodies of black women in the most public ways and yet hid their identities. She said her research also showed how the media’s representation of GBV, particularly in the case of Booysen, dehumanised black women, “making them less deserving of our empathy”.

“I argued that the ways in which Anene [Booysen] was represented mirrored the colonial stories about Sarah Baartman,” she said.

A reflection

As she concluded her lecture, Boonzaier returned to the question she posed at the beginning, and asked: “What does it mean to profess while black and woman?”

“In this moment that I’m owning as a celebration, it’s hard to stand here and not recall the indignities I had to suffer in order [for me] to be considered full, a full professor. It’s hard not to recall the indignities of what it meant to be racialised [as] coloured in the apartheid and colonial imageries of fellow students when I was a student here,” she said. “[It’s] hard not to recall the snide remarks, forms of surveillance and racism I experienced from colleagues as I worked hard to move up the ranks.”

“For us, the practice of decolonial feminist psychology has centred radical hope, love and healing.”

And yet, she conceded, “Here I am, in celebration of this occasion, talking decolonial love, hope and joy. For us, the practice of decolonial feminist psychology has centred radical hope, love and healing – a methodology of decolonial love [and] a commitment to creating alternatives to the present,” she said.