Institutional Weakness

This piece has identified several instances where institutions that were rich with potential were nevertheless unable to fulfil their mandates, either immediately or even at all. At times the actions of institutions have resulted in repercussions that ran counter to their mandate and neutralised their effectiveness years down the line. TRC reparations are an excellent example of this. Although the ways in which women were disenfranchised at the time of the TRC hearings has been noted, an argument can be made that the lack of organisation around reparations led to the continued economic oppression of women and minorities and undermined the long-term gains intended by the Commission. Firstly, the Committee for the TRC defined ‘victims’ who would receive reparations as those that had suffered “gross violations of human rights”

(Simcock, 2011, p. 247). This not only eliminated the possibility of ‘proxy payments’ for women who had lost the primary breadwinners in their households to apartheid, but the definition of human rights violations much like the definition of ‘politically motivated crime’ failed to include sexual violence or any other form of VAW specifically (Simcock, 2011, p. 247). As a result, thousands of women were excluded from the process.

Now, over ten years after the TRC submitted its report, this omission stands as evidence of incomplete ‘compliance’ with internationally and nationally recommended principles. Even Yasmin Sooka, who herself was a TRC Commissioner, admitted that by taking so long to implement a reparations process, the government of South Africa undermined the TRC’s

recommendations. She also expressed disappointment that a significant proportion of reparations had not been paid out at her time of writing (2009, p. 33). This lack of action also gives the impression that the TRC was a mere instrument of the government, “dragooned by an emergent bureaucratic elite into the service of nation-building” (Wilson, 2005, p. xvi) and a body that the government could choose to ignore once its recommendations were handed down. The trickle down of anti-VAW norms cannot diffuse through institutions that do not give sufficient credence to the issue, that grant amnesty to perpetrators and deny women who experienced violence access to reparations on the basis of a legal technicality. Recommendations must be borne out by action for changes to be effective (Minow, 1999, p. 57). For all of those reasons, the model reflects weakness in norm diffusion from the meso to the micro levels at this point.

Intersectionality theories now recognise the multiple, interlinked oppressions of class, ethnicity and gender that women and men in South Africa experience. Fragmentation of

women’s NGOs and women-led institutions in modern-day South Africa along ethnic and class weakens the overall ‘voice’ of these organisations and renders them less likely to be able to follow through on promises of reform. If these promises between the meso and micro level are broken, those oppressions will continue, and it is highly likely that violence will continue as inequality, poverty and frustrations perpetuate. This critique demonstrates that it is not just the language of institutions that counts, but their ability to fulfil their promises in the long-term.

5.3. Silencing

The silencing of women is often described in the context of VAW as a psychological issue that renders individual women unable to divulge details of the violence they have

experienced. Silencing as a blockage to feedback between the micro and meso levels speaks to an individual psychological problem, but also to a wider, community-level silencing. This problem is grounded in several factors: community traditions encourage silence in the face of adversity or victimhood; fear of unfamiliar or new institutions reinforce perceived shame or judgment, as evidenced by women’s testimony during the TRC; or access and activism is drowned in the face of public discourse about women’s ‘place,’ value, or common experience. The activist women’s movement in South Africa may have succeeded in ‘bringing in’ women’s institutions, but it has not yet been able to deconstruct successfully the underlying and

entrenched patriarchy that encourages female silencing and affects women at the micro level. Under Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) model of norm diffusion, in the event that national groups are blocked by the state from accessing ‘open space,’ they are able to reach out in other directions to new NGOs or transnational bodies (p. 13). However, if the blockage is the result of self-silencing by women themselves, that may perpetuate within the micro level and prevent women from reaching out at all. South Africa’s police and courts are walking a fine line between establishing primacy for modern provisions on sexual and domestic violence, and showing respect for traditional custom, which may reaffirm patriarchy and contribute to the silencing of women. Myths and socially reinforced beliefs about women, who suffer as a result of violence, change the narrative from one of openness to one of blame. Every time an institution at the meso

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level reinforces these myths, be it the police, courts or traditional authorities, women are silenced and find it harder to reach out to either the meso or the macro levels and plead their case.

Silencing therefore acts as a complete blockage to successful norm feedback.