Sex Then and Now: Exploring South Africa's Sexual Histories

South Africa is experiencing a crisis of sex. This contemporary crisis is evident in the shocking incidence of baby rape, child sexual abuse, sexual violence and the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Public outcry and media outrage often manifest themselves in moral panics over matters of sexuality. These angry responses suggest that this is a new phenomenon, born of the transition to democracy and the resulting unsettling of sexual identities and norms. For example, the proliferation of adult sex shops, the availability of pornographic material and explicit safer sex messaging in the public domain represent a dramatic shift from the repressive and prurient practices of the apartheid era.' While the Christian national model promoted the heterosexual nuclear family as an ideal type, the 1996 Constitution allowed for liberal definitions of the family, promoted gender equality and protected sexual minorities. The closely monitored boundaries of a heterosexual, patriarchal sexuality were fundamentally breached. Medical aids and pension schemes are now compelled to recognise same-sex partnerships, while the South African Law Commission continues to deliberate the complexities of different forms of marriage and domestic partnership. But is baby rape a new phenomenon? Is HIV/AIDS a post-apartheid disease? These questions and others have prompted scholars to re-look at the past through the lens of sexuality, in order to understand South Africa's crisis of sex. It is this contemporary focus that has revealed the paucity of historical material on sexuality. How has sexuality been engaged in the past? There are two main trends in South African anthropological and historical scholarship on sexuality. Predictably, these trends have been shaped by gender. The focus on male sexuality has been on the sexually aberrant or deviant. For example, social histories of homosexuality