Starfield Jane / University of Johannesburg

The Bildüng of Benny Griessel: Deon Meyer’s detective and the possibilities for gender and racial re-positioning in post-apartheid South Africa

Meyer’s Benny Griessel series (Devil’s Peak, Thirteen Hours, 7 Days and Cobra) has attracted readers in many languages worldwide and joins the wave of African crime fiction that highlights development in the identities of male protagonists (Primorac 2012). In portraying Benny, a white officer in the changing South African Police Service, Meyer foregrounds transforming racial and gender identities in post-apartheid Cape Town, an increasingly multiracial urban setting that erodes white hegemonic power. Here ‘white police,’ once signifiers of white power, now face marginalisation, while competent black and coloured male and female officers ascend the male-dominated SAPS hierarchy. Morrell argues that “it has been common to think that men stand in the way of gender transformation, [but] there are signs that this is not uniformly the case. There are indeed instances where men are actively contributing to campaigns for gender equality” (2005: 271).
Yet, Benny, with his seemingly isolated, atomistic identity, is neither a theorist nor a ‘men’s group’ member. He drinks excessively, is ejected from the family home and exiled to an inner-city apartment. Here, he experiences the violent racial geography and changing race/gender dynamics of the SAPS, which enables him to form strong working relationships and learn from black and coloured colleagues. Motivated by two mentors, he acts heroically to solve several dangerous crimes.

Steedman Robin / SOAS, University of London

Gendering Production/Producing Gender: A Textual and Contextual Analysis of Yellow Fever (2012) and Something Necessary (2013)

The Kenyan film industry is the only film industry in Africa where the most celebrated directors are women, yet almost no research exists on these highly unusual women or their films. This presentation will examine depictions of gender on screen in a selection of these directors’ films while also gendering their production process. Filmmaking involves negotiations among a wide range of stakeholders and it is the conflicts and collaborations here that determine what ends up on screen, and often how and where it is shown. Thus, I am concerned with examining how gender shapes the political dynamics of film production. It is important not to lose sight of a film’s content in studying its context because gender is performed and thus gender norms can be both constructed and contested in film.
In this presentation I will look specifically at Ng’endo Mukii’s Yellow Fever and Judy Kibinge’s Something Necessary. Mukii’s animated short explicitly addresses oppressive ideals of black female beauty. Kibinge’s feature film explores a woman’s experience of politically motivated violence, and paints an intimate and gendered portrait of survival. Both directors are challenging conventional representations of African women on screen and, through their art, are proposing new ways of being African today. The aim of this presentation is to explore how these two filmmakers represent gender on screen and also to shown how the artistic process, from production through to reception, is gendered.

Ofuatey-Alazard Nadja / University of Bayreuth

Narrating new relational Feminisms and Masculinities in Afropolitan Women Writings

The non-hierarchical and inclusive nature of rhizomic thinking, or Relation (Eduard Glissant), allows it to elude the binary logic and homogenizing impulse of the hegemonic discourse of western universalism. The three young African/-diasporic women writers Chimananda Ngozi Adichie, Taiye Selasi and Bernardine Evaristo conceive of afropolitan feminist identities as rhizomatic and dialogical. These attributes make a modified, gender-conscious version of Relation a relevant frame within which to analyze their narratives (Evaristos “Mr. Loverman”, Adichie’s “Americanah” and Selasie’s “Ghana must Go”). Their writings open up the debate on the intersections of afropolitanism and gender by refusing to tie down identity to geography, race/ethnicity, or even culture. In her 2014 modified print version of her 2013 TEDxEuston talk “We Should All Be Feminists,” Adichie argues, “Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture” (p 46). Identity is thus presented as indefinable and dynamic, and the basis of an inclusive and relational feminist Afropolitanism/afropolitan Feminism lies in a shared sensibility and enables new masculinities as well.

Nabutanyi Edgar / Makerere University

Portrayals of Homosexuals in Ugandan Media Coverage of Sexual Scandals

The point of convergence for the irrevocably polarised homosexuality camps in Ugandan discourses on homosexuality is odiousness of homosexual predation on and/or exploitation of children. While the anti-homosexuality lobby justifies their ‘homophobic’ rhetoric with claims to protect young Ugandans from being variously violated and/or lured and/or recruited into homosexuality, the pro-homosexuality group concedes to the need to protect children from sexual predation of any kind, but cite the tough laws on the Ugandan penal code against child molestation to argue that any further legislation aims at infringing on the rights of consenting adult Ugandan homosexuals. Therefore, when a sexual scandal involving a minor like the case of Chris Mubiru’s alleged homosexual violation of an underage footballer breaks, it is ammunition for both sides in different ways, and is often played out in the media. If a child victim of homosexual violation is an allegorical pawn in the debate about same sex relationships, what language do newspapers deploy in depicting his/her violator? What images of his/her violator does this register create and distribute in the public? In this paper, I examine how a Ugandan newspaper — Redpepper — used language to create and circulate a caricatured and demonic image of an alleged homosexual violator of a minor.