Despite its progressive constitution, gender-based violence remains a pervasive problem in post-apartheid South Africa. In this poignantly written book, Hannah Britton provides a powerful intersectional framework to account for this troubling reality. Fundamentally, her research holds that the carceral approach to addressing gender-based violence—with its focus on criminalizing and incarcerating perpetrators—has proved to be inadequate because it has helped the state eschew accountability for protecting all citizens. Shifting attention away from individual-level solutions, Ending Gender-Based Violence develops a novel community-level analysis. This analysis helps explain both the endurance of violence against women in the post-apartheid era and offers solutions to address the root causes of such violence.
In the early pages of the book, Britton persuasively argues that gender-based violence in South Africa must be understood as a legacy of apartheid-era policies and overlapping structures of “racism, xenophobia, poverty, and sexism” that persist in the country to the present day (p. 46). The introductory chapter compellingly argues that a transition to electoral democracy and the adoption of gender-sensitive laws have proved insufficient for combating gender-based violence precisely because these approaches have failed to “distill the complexities of structural violence” in a democratizing, postconflict, and racially segregated society (p. 20). In advancing these arguments, Britton’s work shares several key insights with research on gender-based violence in India, where scholars have similarly found that unequal experiences of citizenship and state access have served to enable violence against women, particularly those from marginalized communities, despite constitutional guarantees of formal equality (e.g., see Natasha Behl, Gendered Citizenship, 2019).
Conceptually, Ending Gender-Based Violence holds that while such violence is contextual, it is neither cultural nor “tribal” (p. 14). This conceptual clarity is one of the major strengths of the book insofar as complex phenomena such as violence, especially in the Global South, are all too often explained away as offshoots of cultural practices.
The central findings of the book are presented in five chapters. In chapter 1, Britton provides “a genealogy of gender-based violence,” drawing on interviews with service providers, community leaders, and issue advocates (p. 25). Chapters 2–5 then detail the importance of place, people, police, and points of contact—or what Britton terms the “four p’s”—as pivotal factors that can influence the possibilities for gender-based violence, as well as its containment, on the ground. The empirical evidence for the book’s major arguments comes from interviews with a range of service providers across nine South African communities. These communities span “urban and rural areas; white, coloured, and black populations; formal and informal settlements, [as well as] long-standing communities and newly formed townships” (p. 26). The sheer breadth of research sites is a second notable strength of the work, because it allows Britton to shine a light on multiple forms of gender-based violence in post-apartheid South Africa.
In chapter 2, Britton expertly shows that “place, space, and geography” continue to influence the contemporary context of violence against women (p. 49). Not only do these variables affect the ways in which gender-based violence is described on the ground, but they also affect the availability of critical resources and service providers, including counselors and police officers, who are necessary to address such issues. Drawing on case studies of five South African communities, Britton further finds that the places that are most engaged in fighting gender-based violence are those where three or more stakeholders—with one of them being the police—have entered into intentional partnerships with each other. These partnerships have served to combat violence against women because they have treated such violence as a structural phenomenon as opposed to a singular issue.
From illuminating the importance of place, the third chapter of the book highlights the roles of two “understudied sectors”—religious leaders and traditional leaders and healers—in the fight against gender-based violence (p. 75). Crucially, Britton finds that the activities of these groups have served to fill critical gaps left by the uneven provision of services from the national state. Equally important, however, is her discussion of the tensions and unintended consequences that can emerge when religious and traditional leaders become involved in carrying out such “stopgap” roles (p. 74). These consequences range from reinforcing “regressive ideas about women’s position in the family and society” to emphasizing justice and compensation, which can serve to keep victims and survivors stuck in cycles of violence (p. 88).
The third “p,” which Britton examines in chapter 4, pertains to the role of the police and its promise and challenges in combating gender-based violence in post-apartheid South Africa. This chapter demonstrates that police officers can help address violence against women when they use their discretion “to change the culture of policing within their stations, transform the relationship between the police and local communities,” and commit themselves to tackling gender-based violence (p. 99). At the same time, Britton notes that a lack of resources—both material and in terms of training—and trust deficits with local constituents are continuing challenges that the South African Police Services (SAPS) encounter in their work.
Finally, in chapter 5, Britton discusses four additional “points of contact” that are engaged in combating gender-based violence: the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offenses Units (FCS); sexual offenses courts; trauma units; and the Thuthuzela Care Centres (TCCs). Overall, the chapter shows that although some of these institutions have realized important accomplishments, they all remain “nested within” a carceral framework and are thus unable to provide upstream prevention-focused approaches for fighting gender-based violence (p. 125).
In the final chapter of Ending Gender-Based Violence, Britton reminds readers that the implementation of a carceral approach in post-apartheid South Africa has shifted “attention away from the state” and its responsibilities to its people (p. 150). She also acknowledges that greater involvement on the part of the national state in stemming violence is difficult to envision today, because the ruling ANC has moved “further and further away from its constitutional commitments to gender equality” (p. 157). Yet, such engagement—in the form of “a commitment and investment from the national government”—is precisely what Britton suggests will help address “violence in all forms” going forward (p. 155). However, it remains unclear that the South African government actually has the incentives to engage in these efforts. Given the fact that community-level groups and leaders have taken on the responsibility of combating gender-based violence, the final pages of this book would have thus benefited from a clearer articulation of how, when, and why the state might be compelled to become more involved in such work.
This critical remark aside, Ending Gender-Based Violence provides an empirically rich and theoretically engaging contribution to the scholarship on violence against women. Its findings stand to inform both scholars and policy makers about how to address such violence in stratified societies where gaps persist between formal guarantees and the lived realities of citizenship and belonging.
