‘We have nothing to celebrate!’: Fighting gender-based violence in Cape Town, South Africa

This article illustrates the de-politicisation and re-politicisation of the fight against gender-based violence and femicide in Cape Town, South Africa. Firstly, this article shows how gender-based violence and femicide has been de-politicised through a conservative political narrative of the African National Congress (ANC) and through restricting funding relationships between Northern donor organisations and womxn’s NGOs in Cape Town. Secondly, I argue that, with the emerge of a new autonomous feminist movement in 2018, the Total Shutdown (TTS), the re-politicisation of gender-based violence happened on multiple levels. Not only did the activist movement manage to put gender-based violence back on the political agenda, it also helped NGO benefactors to reconnect with their feminist goals to end femicide in South Africa. This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Cape Town from September 2018 until January 2019 and includes the stories of Capetonian NGO benefactors and TTS activists.

‘They tried to exterminate us for 600 years, would you trust them?’ Antigypsyism and the post-racial use of intersectionality in state response to Intimate Partner Violence

This paper is an invitation to critically interrogate the ‘post-racial’ understanding of intersectionality in European policy work on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), through a focus on Antigypsyism in Spain’s specialised institutions. Spain’s ‘gender violence’ law has inspired international admiration for introducing measures aimed at the protection of all women regardless of their status or situation. However, its criminal justice system is marked by centuries of legislation constructing Romani women as innately suspicious. Semi-structured interviews conducted in IPV specialised courts, local police, and support services in Madrid indicate that practitioners reject legal colour-blindness and support intercultural mediation but refuse to address this racist legacy. Their intervention exposes Romani plaintiffs to harm by (1) promoting their cultural assimilation, (2) questioning their victim status, and (3) turning against their community support networks.

The nuns’ story: Empirical research into religious, post/colonial, and gender power issues as illustrated by the lives and work of the missionary congregation, the Zusters van de Jacht

This article is based on interviews carried out with sixteen members of the Zusters van de Jacht, a congregation founded in Belgium, and whose Belgian Sisters are today a mainly retired community. The Sisters served abroad as missionaries throughout the world, during and in the aftermath of colonial rule, and this article investigates issues of power using a three-fold lens of religion, post/colonialism, and gender. As nationals of the colonising country of Belgium and as members of an established church, the Sisters had a certain power and authority in the mission field, which they exercised in different ways. As foreign women and members of a religious congregation, they held roles of leadership and influence abroad, which allowed them to be effective bringers of change and help as well as active entrepreneurs. These roles transcended the gendered roles of submission they would have held as religious Sisters in the Roman Catholic Church back in Belgium. This article examines where and how power was exercised and experienced in their frequently adventurous, sometimes dangerous, missionary lives. It situates the life stories of the Zusters van de Jacht in the context of ongoing debates about the role and influence of missionary women. It makes a contribution to the oral history of religious missionary women by presenting extracts from their life stories in their own words.

The strong global trend of prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation

Over the last 30 years, more than 85 countries have prohibited sexual orientation discrimination in employment. Enacting such legal prohibitions has thereby become the most common form of legal recognition of homosexual orientation (more so than the decriminalisation of homosexual sex or the opening up of family law to same-sex partners). The trend is global (ten countries in Africa, more in Asia/Oceania, many in Europe and the Americas). The trend is reflected in supranational rules of the European Union and the Organisation of American States and also in decisions of international human rights bodies. On the basis of these numbers and developments, and in light of the various factors that help explain the strength of this global trend, the author argues that it is to be expected that the trend will continue to reach more and more countries. Explicit legal prohibitions of sexual orientation discrimination in employment can play a useful – perhaps central – role amongst other legal, educational, and social strategies aimed at increasing LGB inclusion.

Ingredients of empire: An oceanic approach to the study of Dutch imperialism and its aftermath

This article turns to the figure of the ship in the controversial Dutch Sinterklaas celebration to explore what an oceanic framework might bring to the study of Dutch imperialism, colonialism, and slavery. Drawing on what Renisa Mawani calls an ‘oceanic approach and method’ for the study of colonial history, law, and colonial–racial orders, I examine the ship as an anchor point for abstracting, enacting, and rehearsing a colonial–racial order that emerged during the highpoint of Dutch imperialism and continues to permeate the national imaginary at present. Looking at how a Dutch ‘maritime imagination’ conditions imperial fantasies and desires, this article is an exercise in developing what I call a ‘cultural oceanography’ of Dutch imperialism and its aftermath.