#AmINext? Social media against sexual violence– the case of the September South African protests
September of this year saw thousands of protestors -dressed in all black and singing anti-apartheid songs - gather outside the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to call on the country’s largest corporations to do more to tackle gender inequality in South Africa. Sexual violence protests across the country were triggered by the murder and rape of the 19-year-old girl Uyinene Mrwetyana in Cape Town in August. This event occurred against a backdrop of rising rates of murder and sexual offense across the country with incidents of rape increasing by 4.6% this year alone.
The protest brought traffic to a stop in the Sandton district of Johannesburg. Women adorning the streets of South Africa’s largest city could be seen with tears rolling down their faces singing "Senzeni na?", which roughly translates from Zulu as "what have we done to deserve this?". The country’s crime statistics suggest the women’s concerns are justified. In the year commencing April 2018 over 41,000 people were raped in South Africa which amounts to over one rape every 15 minutes. Furthermore, an average of eight women are murdered every day in the country which is five times higher than the global average.
However, the overstretched and underfunded South African police have gained themselves a reputation for turning away desperate victims seeking urgent help. If legal authorities cannot be trusted to tackle this disturbing phenomenon of femicides how are the country’s female population meant to protect themselves within this hostile and gendered environment?
A number of the protesters have called for financial support from companies on the stock exchange to fund education programmes in order to help South Africa move away from a culture of “toxic masculinity” which encourages men to think that violence targeted against women is socially acceptable in the modern-day. The protests have also spread to social media and following the death of Mrwetyana and thousands of young people and local celebrities took to Twitter to express their anger at the death of the young women and others who have been a victim of gender-based violence under the hashtags #AmINext? #NotInMyName and #SAShutDown.
These hashtags became a rallying point for South Africans to voice their anger concerning gender-based violence against women. During September the female population of South Africa were empowered to share their own experiences with certain participants even calling out their abusers directly on twitter. Twitter seemingly became a sort of digital support group for survivors of sexual violence in the African country, with certain participants going as far as directly naming their alleged abusers.
This is not the first-time incidences of sexual violence or harassment have elicited a significant reaction on social media in the last couple of years - with the infamous #MeToo movement rising to prominence in 2017. The importance of media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have arguably become key in not only promoting movements that protest sexual violence but also in raising awareness of the normalisation of violence against women around the world. The #MeToo campaign has slowly spread around the globe and has manifested a series of additional online movements within various countries all opposing gender-based violence including the #AmINext? campaign in South Africa.
The place of the #AmINext? movement within this trend of online protest against sexual violence has been recognised by significant international online platforms such as the blog ‘Feminist’ which acknowledged and further promoted the hashtag and its importance. Many believe that by connecting through social media the women of South Africa are not only empowered but also are able to work together in order to create a better and safer environment for female populations as women together have a greater voice within male-dominated South African politics.
Although the social media campaigns over the last few months have no doubt helped to gain both national and international awareness of issues of gender inequality in South Africa whether these online movements will produce any permanent political or social change is still under doubt. Hashtag campaigns, in general, have been praised for their ability to change political discourses however they have also been frequently criticised for lacking the social and economic base and organisation in order to sustain both themselves or long-term political and policy change.
In the case of South Africa Mrwetyana’s killer was - much to the satisfaction of women across the country – granted three life sentences. Furthermore, in September at an emergency sitting of the South African parliament on the issue of the protest and gender violence, President Cyril Ramaphosa stated that urgent action was needed and made the dramatic comparison of the country’s current figures for violence against women and children to those of a state during wartime. However, whether the Presidents condemnation of gender-based violence and the conviction of Mrwetyana’s murderer will amount to the restoration of the female population’s faith in justice system or lead to significant changes in gender relations in South Africa is yet to be seen.
