Breathing Through the Wound
Open Access DepositedCo-opting Care and Surviving Intimate Partner Violence in Cape Town, South Africa
Downloadable Content
South Africa has amongst the highest rates of gender-based violence (GBV) and intimate femicide in the world, leading President Cyril Ramaphosa to declare GBV and femicide a national emergency in 2018, and a “second pandemic” in 2020. In response to this exceptional violence, South Africa has developed a comprehensive and purportedly survivor-centered assemblage of victim empowerment services to protect, respond to and care for GBV survivors, a “whole of government” approach supplemented by funding from international donors. Nevertheless, many women who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) exceed the official registers of support afforded by both the state and the community, and often find their abuse prolonged and reinforced by these assemblages of “victim empowerment.” Building upon two and a half years of ethnographic research embedded in Cape Town’s GBV sector, I illustrate how the notion of survivor-centered care has been captured by government officials, ideologies of professionalization, and the global political economy of abuse. Rather than uplifting and empowering survivors, I argue that state systems instead reinforce the cycle of violence within IPV, forcing survivors to remain in abusive relationships while punishing women who “waited too long.” In tracing the therapeutic trajectories of survivors as they attempt to solicit support, I highlight how time and attritional lawfare are used as techniques of governance to assess and discipline IPV survivors, and highlight how the state models the same abuse tactics as their perpetrators. Through prolonged engagement with survivors and survivor-advocates, I also uncover the forms of captivity women experience within these abusive relationships, the less exceptional but nonetheless devastating harms of being “kept like a prisoner” for so many years.
- All rights reserved
Notice to Authors
If you are the author of this work and you have any questions about the information on this page, please use the Contact form to get in touch with us.